Perry Mason (TV film series) Raymond Burr starred as Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer Perry Mason, a character created by American author and attorney Erle Stanley Gardner. Television producer Dean Hargrove resurrected the Perry Mason character in a series of television films for NBC beginning in 1985. Dean Hargrove was able to bring back the two then-surviving major stars, Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale (reprising their roles as Mason and Della Street) for the first telefilm, "Perry Mason Returns", in which Mason resigns his position as an appellate court judge to defend Street on a murder charge. William Katt, Hale's own son, was cast as
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,