Raymond Burr award in 1959 and 1961 for his performance as Perry Mason. The series has been rerun in syndication ever since, and was released on DVD between 2006 and 2013. Though Burr's character is often said never to have lost a case, he did lose two murder cases -- offscreen -- in early episodes of the series. Burr moved from CBS to Universal Studios, where he played the title role in the television drama "Ironside", which ran on NBC from 1967 to 1975. In the pilot episode, San Francisco Chief of Detectives Robert T. Ironside is wounded by a sniper during
Raymond Burr May 21, 1917, in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. His father, William Johnston Burr (1889–1985), was a hardware salesman; his mother, Minerva Annette (née Smith, 1892–1974), was a pianist and music teacher. When Burr was six, his parents divorced. Burr's mother moved to Vallejo, California, with him and his younger siblings, Geraldine and James. His father remained in New Westminster. Burr briefly attended San Rafael Military Academy in San Rafael, California and graduated from Berkeley High School. In later years, Burr freely invented stories of a happy childhood. In 1986 he told journalist Jane Ardmore that when he was 12