Raymond Burr and everybody thought I was out of my mind," Burr told Tom Shales of "The Washington Post". "But it wasn't the large sum of money. It was the fact that, first of all, I kind of liked 'Godzilla,' and where do you get the opportunity to play yourself 30 years later? So I said yes to both of them." He agreed to do the Mason movie if Barbara Hale returned to reprise her role as Della Street. Hale agreed, and when "Perry Mason Returns" aired in December 1985, her character became the defendant. The rest of the principal cast had
Raymond Burr doctorate. He supported medical and education institutions in Denver, and in 1993, the University of Colorado awarded him an honorary doctorate for his acting work. Burr also founded and financed the American Fijian Foundation that funded academic research, including efforts to develop a dictionary of the language. Burr made repeated trips on behalf of the United Service Organizations (USO). He toured both Korea and Vietnam during wartime and once spent six months touring Korea, Japan, and the Philippines. He sometimes organized his own troupe and toured bases both in the U.S. and overseas, often small installations that the USO did