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he retains an impish sense of humor, Burr, 72, has not had an easy
life. The eldest of three children of a hardware dealer in British
Columbia, Canada, Burr moved to California with his mother after his
parents divorced when he was seven. The sensitive, overweight boy
was sent to military school where he was often teased. "I was
allowed to have some [tropical] fish," he recalls, " which were
killed by an older boy. I was put upon because I was
fat."
When the Depression hit, he herded sheep and
did other jobs instead of going to high school, then joined the navy and
fought in World War II. His first wife, actress Annette Sutherland,
died in a plane crash in 1943. A second marriage, to Isabella Ward,
ended in divorce; and his third wife, Laura Andrina Morgan, died of cancer
in 1955. (Burr is unwilling to talk about this part of his life or
about his only child, Michael Evan, who died of leukemia at the age of 10
in 1953.)
After the war Burr plunged into acting,
playing murderers and other bad guys before landing the ultimate good-guy
role of Perry Mason in 1957. He had so much dialogue to learn that
he slept in a bungalow on the lot, heading home on weekends.
According to Hale, 67, Burr was exhausted by the nine-year stint as
Mason. "Later," she says, "he boasted to me, 'I went
right on and did another series called Ironside.' 'Yeah, you sure did,' I
said, 'but you had to do it in a wheelchair!'"
After Ironside Burr increasingly turned his
back on Hollywood. With longtime friend and business partner Robert
Benevides, he bought an island in Fiji, raising orchids, coconuts and
livestock. In 1984 he sold his paradise and moved his operation to
Sonoma County, California, where he develops orchid hybrids, breeds sheep
and grows grapes for wine.
During a
recent lunch in New York City, Burr's extensive knowledge of wine proved
useful as he spoke of Fiji, Hitchcock, Godzilla and, inevitably, his
nemesis and alter ego, Perry Mason.
Why did you return to Perry mason after two decades? Did you
need the money?
No, not at all. When the show was canceled I told CBS, "If
you ever want to do a movie or a two-hour show, I'm available."
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No one took you up on that?
Not until five years ago. [Executive Producer]
Fred Silverman asked me to breakfast one morning and said, 'Would you do a
two-hour Perry
Mason?' I said, 'Can you get Barbara Hale?' He said yes and I said
yes. Three seconds was all it took.
It must have been a strange feeling working with Barbara Hale again.
It happened that the very first scene we shot was in the
courtroom. And we looked at each other and started to laugh, because
there is no other way of wiping 25 years off of your life. Suddenly
all the terrible things that have happened are gone and you are doing all
the lovely things you did long ago.
You and Hale have remained friends through the years, haven't you?
I have been very fortunate. I don't have 25 friends, but the ones
I have...
You keep.
Yes. It's just that I'm brilliant about finding people who are
patient with me. Don Galloway of Ironside is still one of my closest
friends. And Barbara certainly. When we started, if she wasn't
married I'm sure we would have been married now.
In real life?
In real life. If you have a very close friend as attractive as
Barbara Hale you try everything in the world to marry her. But she
was very happily married and still is.
You don't talk much about your personal life. Are you saving
it for your autobiography?
They've offered me a million advance to write an autobiography. The
first thing they want is a list of all the women I slept with, aside from
the ones I married.
And you wouldn't write that book?
My book would have none of that. What I'm grateful to see in my
business is a lot of young [entertainers] who say, 'I'll give you any kind
of interview, but I'm not going to talk about my private life.' And
they stick to that. And they should. You have to have some
place to retreat.
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Another subject people ask about is your weight. People like
Orson Welles and Luciano Pavarotti had and have a certain impressive
presence. Do you find any advantages at all...
No advantages whatsoever. Orson Welles would have been better off
if he'd lost weight. Pavarotti has lost a lot of weight. And I
would be better off if I lost weight.
Can you tell me what you weigh now?
No. I won't tell you how much money I have, and I won't tell you how
much I weigh. It's a weakness, my being heavy. Why are you
probing my weakness?
I can see this is not your favorite topic. And people like
Johnny Carson have been doing jokes...
I have been asked a number of times to do his show, and I won't do it.
Why not?
Because I like NBC. He's doing an NBC show. If I went on
I'd have some things to say, not just about the bad jokes he's done about
me, but bad jokes he does about everybody who can't fight back because
they aren't there. And that wouldn't be good for NBC.
Okay, let's talk about your career. When you started in films
you were playing a lot of--excuse the term--heavies.
Right, well in those early days I was mostly in B pictures. In
them the "heavy" was as black as those shoes. And I always
put gray in them. I used to get a lot of fan mail because I reminded
somebody of their uncle or brother. And here I had just killed 12
people.
You do a lot of acting with your eyes. Mason has those wonderful
inward moments where he suddenly understands.
That's one of the great things about film. Very few actors can do
that from the stage. Very few actors can register thinking.
When did you first know you wanted to do this work?
I was very young, in elementary school. I went to the theater and
thought it was the most marvelous thing I had ever seen.
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