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 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