I feel like you’re the expert I would trust with this question. Did Raymond Burr truly invent two fictitious wives and a young son that died as a child? While he was actually in a long-term, happy relationship with his partner? And these men gardened together? Iconic if true.
OK THIS ASK HAS BEEN SITTING IN MY INBOX SINCE MAY & honestly i thought it was longer than that, but anyway, i'm sorry i'm so lazy. i'll respond quick if it's to talk about something i hate, but if it's fun, apparently i just put it off forever.
anyway! i'm not really an expert, i've only read the same wikipedia page you've likely read. but i've also collected movie fan magazines for about 15 years - i'm not as into it now (i find them difficult to display & store), but i do have a decent collection of movie magazines from the 1930s-1960s. & what i know is, like 90% of "interviews" with stars in those days were just made up. they never talked to anybody, not even a publicist necessarily. interviews were just little fiction pieces made up by writers to appease the hungry public. & they'd say anything, because it's not like it mattered - this wasn't the news, & you didn't have to prove you had sources. it wasn't slanderous or salacious things (at least not until later on with mags like confidential), because they weren't trying to get sued. it was fluff. it made women & girls feel like they had inside knowledge & feel closer to their favorite stars.
but the very specific stories related to raymond burr - like that he had a wife who died in 1943 in the same plane crash as leslie howard, & another wife who died of cancer in 1955, & a 12-year-old son who died of leukemia in 1953 - seem a little dark for fluff pieces. i don't know why he told those lies, or if a publicist made up those details to answer questions about his personal life. my explanation is: he knew he couldn't be honest about his real life, so why not make up something fantastical? he claims he took his dying son on a cross-country tour of the US in 1952, when we know he was working steadily in hollywood during that year & couldn't have been in two places at once. but it paints a poignant & tragic picture. it's dramatic, & he was an actor, an artist. he lied about being in the navy, & about being injured at okinawa. to me it seems that, since he couldn't tell the truth, he decided to invent a heroic life.
but i would argue that his REAL life was also heroic! or at least beautiful. he was with his husband robert benevides from 1960 until burr's death in 1993. they ran their own winery & grew rare orchids. they ran nurseries in california, fiji, hawaii, & the azores, & were responsible for adding over 1,500 new orchids to the world catalog. in 1982 he donated his collection of 3,000 hybrid orchids to cal poly pomona to help students there learn how to propagate & hybridize orchids, & also for the students to make spending money by selling them through the school's nursery.
(burr in his greenhouse in 1957)
(burr with his "perry mason" co-star barbara hale & his husband robert benevides, & the orchid named after burr)
he owned a private island in fiji & collected seashells, which he donated to the bailey-matthews national shell museum in sanibel, florida. he founded & financed the american fijian foundation. he was big on education, & donated some of his "perry mason" scripts to mcgeorge school of law in sacramento. he made 26 "perry mason" tv movies & for each of those films, he donated his WHOLE salary to charity.
his 12-year-old son with leukemia may or may not be imaginary. but in real life, through plan international & save the children, he donated funds to sponsor international foster children with advanced medical needs. he did that 26 times. he sponsored 26 foster children, specifically disabled & sick ones.
i just think he was neat & he did so much in his life. i couldn't care less about what he made up for the press; he was probably just telling them what he thought they wanted to hear. often closeted gay actors like burr & anthony perkins are retroactively painted as having led a "double life," or somehow being deceitful by concealing the truth about themselves. i think that's so wildly unfair, because they did not live in a world where they COULD be truthful. it's extremely cruel to force these men to live in the closet & then portray them as liars for living there. in real life, raymond burr was raising flowers with his husband on his private island & giving all his money to charity & his friends. it's so beautiful i want to cry when i think about it. he was generous & gay & fat, all things i aspire to be.
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