Raymond Burr producer of the Perry Mason TV films, said in 2006, "I had always assumed that Raymond was gay, because he had a relationship with Robert Benevides for a very long time. Whether or not he had relationships with women, I had no idea. I did know that I had trouble keeping track of whether he was married or not in these stories. Raymond had the ability to mythologize himself, to some extent, and some of his stories about his past … tended to grow as time went by." Burr had many hobbies over the course of his life: cultivating orchids
Raymond Burr weight, always an issue for him in getting roles, became a public relations problem when Johnny Carson began making jokes about him during his "Tonight Show" monologues. Burr refused to appear as Carson's guest from then on, and told "Us Weekly" years later: "I have been asked a number of times to do his show and I won't do it. 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