New Bio Exposes TV Great Raymond Burr’s Secret Life

By Todd Gold
Fancast.com

NY Post TV writer Michael Starr turned in an enjoyable and informative biography of television icon Raymond Burr, “Hiding in Plain Sight: The Secret Life of Raymond Burr.” The obvious hook is Starr’s exploration of Burr’s secret gay life, but the story that unfurls is broader and better than that one, albeit fascinating chapter in Burr’s long life and successful career, which includes two mainstays of prime time television history, the courtroom drama Perry Mason and his follow-up investigative series Ironside. The author of previous biographies on Joey Bishop and Bobby Darin, Starr spoke to Fancast about his latest project.

INT: Why did you choose Raymond Burr?
ANS: I’m always looking for somebody who hasn’t been written about in depth and who has an interesting back-story. I was on vacation, watching an episode of Perry Mason, one of the old ones in black and white, and I wondered how much do we really know about this guy?

INT: And what did you start to find out?
ANS: As looked at his backstory, read interviews and looked at his obits, I saw there were all these mentions of these two wives that maybe or maybe didn’t exist and the son that he said he had who probably didn’t exist. And then I just sort of wanted to connect the dots. The more I looked, the more I saw the story of a guy who was fearful of being outed and as a result he went totally overboard and invented this whole biography for himself of dead ex wives, both of whom he said died tragically, and a son who also died tragically. I wondered what was that all about?

INT: Did he feel the story got out of hand?
ANS: It’s hard to say. People constantly asked him about it in interviews, especially once he became famous with Perry Mason. But he did a good job of nipping it in the bud.

INT: Did it affect his career in the long run?
ANS: No. He certainly had huge success in television. I’m not criticizing him for what he did. I want to try to figure out why he felt the need to do this, not that it was wrong.

INT: What did you figure out? What do we know about him?
ANS: He had this need to make himself a heroic figure who overcame various tragedies. His parents broke up at a very early age. They separated when he was a young kid, and he didn’t have a father figure around. He was forced to grow up very quickly and help his mother out because he had two younger siblings that he had to help support. Later, he spent a lot of time in Korea and Vietnam visiting the troops, which is very admirable. But he also lied about his war service. Some stories from the late ‘40s to the late ‘50s have him being shot in the stomach at Okinawa, some stories have him being wounded at D-Day. It’s weird. Again I don’t know why he felt this need to be this heroic/tragic figure, but he did.

INT: Was the same true in terms of relationships?
ANS: He was married once to an actress named Isabella Ward in the mid ’40s. He could have just stuck with the story that they were married, they divorced and it didn’t work out. I mean, that happens all the time in Hollywood, today even. But he then went on to create this whole mythology of a Scottish wife who died in a plane crash with the British actor Leslie Howard and then another wife who died of cancer. Then there was no mention at all of his supposed son until the late ‘50s and all of a sudden he’s got a dead son. It’s like where did this come from?

INT: He was such a strong, unflappable character on TV.
ANS: People who read this book are going to think about him in a different light when they watch these old Perry Mason and Ironside episodes. You can’t help but ask what the hell was going on with this guy?

INT: He was scared of being outed. Yet in your book you say that he always traveled with his partner, Robert Benevides.
ANS: That’s right. Of course, Robert was always called his business partner, not his whatever, his life partner, the term that would be used today. But I think people who thought about it enough, if they were interested enough or was savvy enough could put two and two together and figure out these guys were living with each other.

INT: How did he and Robert meet?
ANS: It was on the set of Perry Mason. The story was that Robert had brought a script over and they met there and you know, before long Robert was running errands for Raymond and then a couple of year later he was part of his company.

INT: Even though the press wasn’t as aggressive as today, it’s still amazing no one found out about his secret life.
ANS: Raymond had that run in with Confidential Magazine, which I talk about in the book. He had come to New York in 1960 or ’61 to visit a child who had been burned and who wanted to meet his hero who was Perry Mason. And Raymond Burr was very
kind hearted in that way. He did things like that all the time and never alerted the press to it. So he came here to New York, he went down to a gay bar in Greenwich Village, had an encounter with a drag queen and had a one night stand. Then the drag queen, his name was Libby Reynolds, who I spoke to for the book, I guess needed the money and sold the story to Confidential. Confidential did Raymond a favor in that they sanitized the story and they made it seem like well, you know, he didn’t know that this woman was really a guy, and then once he discovered it, you know, that was the end of their encounter. Of course, it wasn’t. They spent the night together and he knew that Libby Reynolds was a man. But they did him a huge favor by cleaning that story up, even though it caught the attention of J. Edgar Hoover who himself had a lot of personal issues.

INT: There are several seasons of Perry Mason on Fancast. What should people look for when they watch this classic?
ANS: I think they have to be aware of the fact that it was the first one-hour legal drama, especially in the early seasons, and that everything they see, all this was new to TV viewers. It was like sort of a board game, like a who done it, and though we take it for granted now, it had never been done on TV before. Also, viewers knew that Perry Mason never defended anybody who was guilty, so viewers knew whoever he was defending was not the killer. And they knew that they would get 5 or 6 people in the first 10 or 15 minutes who might be the murderer. It was a good guessing game. I think it’s most important to keep in mind that it was really the first legal drama and it spawned so many shows in the years to come, including shows we watch now like Boston Legal and Law & Order. So I think watching it through that prism of being the first of its kind just in itself is interesting.

INT: Fancast also features his other big series, Ironside, which he went right into after Perry Mason. Why did he rush into work again?
ANS: That’s another – that’s a good question. You know, for all that bitching and moaning about how much he hated to work, and he was already by that time was a multi millionaire, I think he felt a need to be on television and to have another hit show. He went did the Ironside pilot less than a year after Perry Mason, but this time around, in addition to the big ego, he also had the luxury of his own production company being a part of the Ironside producing team so he could sort of dictate his own terms. There are stories in the book of how he all of a sudden he says, no I don’t want to shoot outside anymore. No more locations. Like what? He didn’t want to shoot in the sunlight. “It is hurting my eyes.” He was a difficult guy to work with. But he was also very powerful, and NBC knew that and they knew they had a hit show on their hands, and you know, that kind of stuff goes on today too.

INT: What do you suggest people to look for, you know, when they watch Ironside?
ANS: Look for the evolution of the characters, specifically Mark Singer who wheeled Ironside. His character really grew during the series. Look for how Ironside as a handicapped individual was treated. Look for how the show itself handled that aspect, and look for how Raymond Burr handled it. I mean, here was a guy who was paralyzed but managed to get around pretty well. As the series evolved, you kind of forgot that Ironside couldn’t walk. I mean, he just became another character. It’s a testament to that show where it sort of made being handicapped not such a big deal.

INT: As impressive as his on-air success were the range of his off-screen interests.
ANS: He started nurseries with his partner and they donated a large part of their orchid collection to one of the universities in Northern California. He had the island, which he made a handsome profit off of when he sold it in the early ‘80s. He was a gourmet cook, or he considered himself a gourmet cook, because he loved wine. He had the house in Malibu with a whole menagerie of pets. He loved animals. Basically, he was a guy with a lot of interests and who had the resources to sort of indulge himself.

INT: It’s a fascinating personal story and an equally fascinating book on a performer who is ripe for rediscovery, and hopefully on Fancast.
ANS: Thank you. It was fun to research and fun to write and like I said, I’m not out to criticize Raymond Burr. I respect him as a performer and all he did. He was a huge icon in television. He did have this bizarre back story and I just tried to sort of connect the dots of this story, tell the facts of his life, speak to people who knew him best and let the leader draw his or her own conclusions as to why he felt the need to concoct these fantastic fabrications and keep the cover story going until, well, until he went to his grave.