Perry Mason and Ironside
In 1956, Burr auditioned for the role of District Attorney Hamilton Burger in Perry Mason, a new courtroom drama based on the highly successful novels written and created by Erle Stanley Gardner that was to air on CBS. William Talman tried out for the title role. The producers of the show allowed Burr to try for the title role and when Gardner, who was present at the audition, saw him he declared, "He is Perry Mason." Burr eventually won the role with which he was most closely identified. The series ran from 1957 to 1966, and Burr won Emmy Awards in 1959 and 1961 for his performance as Perry Mason. The series has been re-run in syndication ever since. Beginning in 2006, the series has become available on DVD, with each calendar year seeing the release of one season as two separate volumes. Though Burr's character is often said never to have lost a case, he did lose two murder cases in early episodes of the series, once when his client misled him and another time when his client was later cleared.
In the early 1960s, Burr narrated one film and appeared in several others sponsored by the U.S. Public Health Service. They were designed to educate the public about accident prevention.
Burr moved from CBS to Universal Studios, where he played the title role in the television drama Ironside, which ran on NBC. In the pilot episode, San Francisco Chief of Detectives Robert T. Ironside is wounded by a sniper during an attempt on his life and is left an invalid in a wheelchair. This role gave Burr another hit series, the first crime drama show ever to star a disabled police officer. The show, which ran from 1967 to 1975, earned Burr six Emmy nominations and two Golden Globe nominations. Burr's 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 because they aren't there. And that wouldn't be good for NBC." In later life his distinctive physique and manner could be used as a reference that would be universally recognized. One journal for librarians published a writer's opinion that "asking persons without cataloging experience to design automated catalogs...is as practical as asking Raymond Burr to pole vault."
NBC failed in two attempts to launch Burr as the star of a new series. In a two-hour television movie format, Mallory: Circumstantial Evidence aired in February 1976 with Burr again in the role of the lawyer who outwits the district attorney. Despite good reviews for Burr, the critical reception was poor and NBC decided against developing it into a series. In 1977, Burr starred in the short-lived TV series Kingston: Confidential, a critical failure that was scheduled opposite the extraordinarily popular Charlie's Angels. It was cancelled after thirteen weeks. Burr took on a shorter project next, playing an underworld boss in a six-hour miniseries, 79 Park Avenue One last attempt to launch a series followed on CBS. The two-hour premiere of The Jourdan Chance aroused little interest.
In 1985, Burr was approached by producers Dean Hargrove and Fred Silverman to star in a made-for-TV movie Perry Mason Returns. Burr recalled in a 1986 interview, "They asked me to do a new "Godzilla" the same week they asked me to do another Perry Mason, so I did them both." 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 original cast had died, but Hale's real-life son William Katt played the role of Paul Drake, Jr. The movie was so successful Burr made 26 more before his death. Many episodes were filmed in and around Denver, Colorado.
By 1993, when Burr signed with NBC for another season of Mason films, he was using a wheelchair full-time because of his failing health. In his final Perry Mason movie, The Case of the Killer Kiss, he was shown either sitting or standing while leaning on a table, but only once standing unsupported for a few seconds. Twelve more Mason movies were scheduled before Burr's death, including one scheduled to film the month he died.
In 1993, as he had with the Perry Mason TV movies, Burr decided to do an Ironside reunion movie. In May of that year, The Return of Ironside aired, reuniting the entire original cast of the 1967-1975 series. Burr's illness precluded any further such reunions.
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