Court Is Now in Session

As I’ve noted before on this page, my maternal grandfather, Ewart E. Sprinkling, introduced me to Perry Mason--the television version, anyway, played by Canadian-born actor Raymond Burr. (It wouldn’t be until years later that I actually read one of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Mason novels.) My grandfather was a big fan of the 1957-1966 CBS series Perry Mason, and like many others he followed Burr when the actor made his comfortable transition in 1967 to playing a wheelchair-bound former San Francisco chief of police detectives in Ironside, introducing me to that show as well.

I remained a Burr watcher until the end of his life, back in 1993. I tuned in to his failed pilots (Mallory and The Jordan Chance), and was apparently among a minority of TV viewers who liked his 1977 series Kingston: Confidential, in which he played a media magnate with a penchant for solving crimes. Oh, and of course I saw almost all--if not all--of the Perry Mason movies he made during the 1980s and ’90s, as well as The Return of Ironside (1993). Burr was a guy you couldn’t watch casually; he commanded the scenes in which he appeared. I never thought much about the actor’s personal life, so was surprised to learn after his death that he’d enjoyed a 30-year gay relationship with a former actor named Robert Benevides.

Recently, thanks to the wonders of DVD, I have been rewatching the first two seasons of Ironside. Surprisingly, the show has not suffered tremendously with age, though a number of references to the youth culture of the late ’60s do seem a bit dated. I look forward to picking up the remaining six seasons of that series whenever they’re released on DVD. Like Perry Mason, Ironside reminds me of my grandfather, which is always a good thing.

Meanwhile, TV historian Ed Robertson has dropped me a note, saying that Raymond Burr will be the subject of tonight’s Web radio show Talking Television with Dave White, which begins at 10:30 p.m. ET, 7:30 p.m. PT on KSAV.org.

Whether you knew him as Perry Mason, Robert Ironside or the many movie villains he played (including Lars Thorwald in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window), Raymond Burr was a powerful presence on television for over 40 years. But offscreen, he was something of an enigma. We’ll unwrap the mystery that was Burr with our guest Michael Seth Starr, author of Hiding in Plain Sight: The Secret Life of Raymond Burr, a compassionate look at the life and career of this TV icon. If you’re a fan of Raymond Burr, if you grew up watching Perry Mason and/or Ironside, we invite you to join guest hosts Ed Robertson and Frankie Montiforte ... What’s your favorite Raymond Burr movie role or TV series? Let us know and tell us why. Phone number is (800) 407-KSAV (5728), e-mail address is talk@ksav.org or ed@talkingtelevision.org.

To hear tonight’s show, simply log on to KSAV.org and click the “Listen Live” button.