Raymond Burr Burr went on a crash diet. When he returned, he tested as Perry Mason and won the role. While Burr's test was running, Gardner reportedly stood up, pointed at the screen and said, "That's Perry Mason." William Hopper also auditioned as Mason, but was cast instead as private detective Paul Drake. Also starring were Barbara Hale as Della Street, Mason's secretary; William Talman as Hamilton Burger, the district attorney who loses nearly every case to Mason; and Ray Collins as homicide detective Lieutenant Arthur Tragg. The series ran from 1957-66. Burr received three consecutive Emmy Award nominations and won the
Raymond Burr actor Leslie Howard. However, multiple sources have reported that no one by that name appears on any of the published passenger manifests from the flight. A son supposedly born during this marriage, Michael Evan, was said to have died of leukemia in 1953 at the age of ten. Another marriage purportedly took place in the early 1950s to a Laura Andrina Morgan—who died of cancer, Burr said, in 1955. Yet no evidence exists of either marriage, nor of a son's birth, other than Burr's own claims. As late as 1991, Burr stood by the account of having had a son