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 Navy cannot be confirmed, nor can his statements that he sustained battle injuries at Okinawa. Other invented biographical details include years of college education at a variety of institutions, being widowed twice, a son who died young, world travel and success in high school athletics. Most of these claims were accepted as fact by the press at the time of Burr's death and by his first biographer, Ona Hill. Burr was reportedly married at the beginning of World War II to a Scottish actress named Annette Sutherland—killed, Burr said, in the same 1943 plane crash that claimed the life of