Editing Raymond Burr (section)

==Early life==
Raymond William Stacy Burr<ref name="Podolsky">{{cite magazine|last=Podolsky|first=J.D.|date=September 27, 1993 |title=The Defense Rests|url=http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20106327,00.html|magazine=[[People (magazine)|People]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150913060301/http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0%2C%2C20106327%2C00.html|archive-date=September 13, 2015|access-date=May 20, 2016|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref name="LAT Obit">{{cite news |author=Staff |date=September 13, 1993 |title=Raymond Burr Dies |newspaper=[[Los Angeles Times]] |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-09-13-mn-34829-story.html |access-date=May 20, 2016 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230308023323/https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-09-13-mn-34829-story.html |archive-date=March 8, 2023}}</ref><ref name="Ona Hill"/>{{Rp|1}} was born May 21, 1917, in [[New Westminster]], British Columbia.<ref name="Grimes"/> His father, William Johnston Burr (1889–1985) was a hardware salesman;<ref name="DailyNewsObit">Obituary. ''[[Los Angeles Daily News]]''. September 14, 1993. Retrieved March 25, 2010.</ref> his mother, Minerva Annette (née Smith, 1892–1974) was a pianist and music teacher.<ref name="Starr">{{cite book|last=Starr|first=Michael Seth|date=2008|title=Hiding in Plain Sight: The Secret Life of Raymond Burr|location=New York|publisher=[[Hal Leonard Corporation|Applause Theatre & Cinema Books]]|isbn=978-1-55783-694-6}}</ref>{{Rp|4–5, 13}}

When Burr was six, his parents divorced. He moved to [[Vallejo, California]], with his mother and younger siblings Geraldine and James,<ref name="Grimes"/> while his father remained in New Westminster. Burr briefly attended San Rafael Military Academy in [[San Rafael, California]], and graduated from [[Berkeley High School (Berkeley, California)|Berkeley High School]].<ref name="Starr"/>{{Rp|10–13}}

In 1986, he told journalist Jane Ardmore that, when he was 12 years old, his mother sent him to [[New Mexico]] for a year to work as a ranch hand. (As with many of Burr's self-reported autobiographical details about his early life, this is unverified and open to question). According to Burr's story, he was already his full adult height and rather large and "had fallen in with a group of college-aged kids who didn't realize how young Raymond was, and they let him tag along with them in activities and situations far too sophisticated for him to handle." In the same article, Burr also stated he developed a passion for growing things and joined the [[Civilian Conservation Corps]] for a year in his teens.<ref name="Ardmore">{{cite news|last=Ardmore|first=Jane|date=June 3, 1986|title=Welcome Home, Perry Mason|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1314&dat=19860603&id=CFtWAAAAIBAJ&pg=6875,2759730&hl=en|newspaper=[[The Spokesman-Review]]|location=King Features Syndicate|access-date=May 22, 2016}}</ref> He did some acting in his teen years, making his stage debut at age 12 in a [[Vancouver BC]] stock company.<ref name="Grimes"/> The experiences Burr described when he was the age of 12 (working in radio in San Francisco, spending a year in New Mexico, appearing in Vancouver theatre, working for the Civilian Conservation Corps) are sometimes mutually contradictory; this would be a pattern that would recur in Burr's autobiographical reminiscences about his pre-[[Perry Mason]] personal life. {{Citation needed|date=December 2024|reason=Source for claim of unreliability}}