Best. Gay. Week. Ever. (June 20, 2008)

THE DEFENSE RESTS: PERRY MASON WAS A ‘MO
Last month saw the release of Hiding in Plain Site: The Secret Life of Raymond Burr, a new biography of the Perry Mason star, by Michael Seth Starr (Applause Books, $24.95). Burr had a very successful acting career in the 50s playing movie-heavies like the villain in Rear Window (1958), before turning to television in the 1960s where he found success as uber-defense attorney Perry Mason, which had a nine-season run (during which Perry never lost a case). Burr scored again in the 70s with another successful series, Ironside, and a string of phenomenally successful Perry Mason television movies in the 80s and 90s.

Raymond Burr in Perry Mason, Ironsides, and Rear Window

But despite being one the of the biggest television stars of all time, Burr was, of course, secretly gay. He constructed an elaborate fantasy biography, with wives dead from a plane crash and cancer, and a son dead from leukemia, which the media dutifully repeated until Burr’s death in 1993, when it finally came out that he was gay. At the time I remember being blown away, thinking there couldn’t have been a more unlikely, less stereotypically “gay” person. So when I heard about the new book, I was quick to get my hands on a copy.

Truthfully, I found the book written more for fans of Burr’s acting work, and not so much for those curious about the life of a closeted gay celebrity in the previous century, especially the emotional costs. The book includes very little information from the point-of-view of Burr, his partner, or anyone really close to him. It’s a very just-the-facts-ma’am presentation of the life of Raymond Burr, which, ironically, is probably the way Perry Mason would have wanted it.

I recently got a chance to ask the author a few questions:

AfterElton.com: What attracted you to the subject matter in the first place?
Michael Seth Starr: It was Burr's back-story that really caught my attention, particularly the fabrications about his dead wives and his dead son. I sort of had a vague recollection of having heard he was gay, and that interested me only in the extent that he managed to conceal his lifestyle while being such a huge TV star for over 30 years. But I didn't realize the extent of his fabrications until I started doing some research and connecting the dots. It's really a terrific, and somewhat sad, story of a man who went overboard in creating a public persona of a tragic husband and father out of sheer panic he'd be "found out." I can't imagine why else he would've done that.

AE: One of the frustrating elements of the book is the complete lack of Burr's perspective (which is kind of the point of the title, I know). Did you attempt to learn what Burr or his partner thought about things?
MSS: I approached [Raymond Burr’s partner] Robert Benevides for an interview, twice, but he declined to speak to me. I used other published sources for Robert's quotes. In this book, as in other biographies that I've written, I've tried to stay away from the "armchair psychoanalysis," since I didn't know Raymond Burr and can't claim to have some divine insight into what made him tick. The best I can do is lay out the facts and — hopefully — weave together the elements of his life into a linear narrative — and let readers draw their own conclusions.

AE: Burr seems like a true cipher. Truthfully, how well do you think you understand him even now? MSS: I agree with your assessment of Burr as a "true cipher" and, yes, he was more difficult to understand, emotionally, [than the other celebrities I’ve written about] since he kept a very low profile and never divulged much in the thousands of interviews he gave over the years. Even some of his close friends I interviewed for the book said they felt they didn't really know him, or at least know much about his private life outside of the workplace. His story isn't as easy to sum up as, say Bobby Darin or Art Carney, who were both very public with their struggles — Darin's bad heart and Carney's alcoholism, for example — which allows us a window, however small, into their psyches. I didn't have that with Raymond Burr, who was a master of giving interviews and saying nothing, particularly about his personal life.