Raymond Burr He was 76 years old. The day after Burr's death, American Bar Association president R. William Ide III released a statement: "Raymond Burr's portrayals of Perry Mason represented lawyers in a professional and dignified manner. ... Mr. Burr strove for such authenticity in his courtroom characterizations that we regard his passing as though we lost one of our own." "The New York Times" reported that Perry Mason had been named second—after F. Lee Bailey, and before Abraham Lincoln, Thurgood Marshall, Janet Reno, Ben Matlock and Hillary Clinton—in a recent "National Law Journal" poll that asked Americans to name the attorney,
Raymond Burr "The Whip Hand" (1951), "FBI Girl" (1951), "Meet Danny Wilson" (1952), "Rear Window" (1954), "They Were So Young" (1954), "A Cry in the Night" (1956) and "Affair in Havana" (1957). Beyond noir, Burr's villains were also seen in Westerns, period dramas, horror films and adventure films. "I was just a fat heavy," Burr told journalist James Bawden. "I split the heavy parts with Bill Conrad. We were both in our twenties playing much older men. I never got the girl but I once got the gorilla in a 3-D picture called "Gorilla at Large". I menaced Claudette Colbert, Lizabeth Scott,