Editing Raymond Burr (section)

===Film===
[[File:Burr-Rear-Window.jpg|thumb|right|Lars Thorwald realizes that he is being watched across the courtyard by telephoto lens in [[Alfred Hitchcock]]'s ''[[Rear Window]]'' (1954), which offered Burr his most notable film role.<ref name="Grimes" /><ref name="Thomas" />]]
Burr appeared in more than 50 feature films between 1946 and 1957,<ref name="AFI Burr"/> creating an array of villains that established him as an icon of [[film noir]].<ref name="Starr"/>{{Rp|34}} Film historian [[Alain Silver]] concluded that Burr's most significant work in the genre is in ten films: ''[[Desperate (film)|Desperate]]'' (1947), ''[[Sleep, My Love]]'' (1948), ''[[Raw Deal (1948 film)|Raw Deal]]'' (1948), ''[[Pitfall (1948 film)|Pitfall]]'' (1948), ''[[Abandoned (1949 film)|Abandoned]]'' (1949), ''[[Red Light (film)|Red Light]]'' (1949), ''[[M (1951 film)|M]]'' (1951), ''[[His Kind of Woman]]'' (1951), ''[[The Blue Gardenia]]'' (1953), and ''[[Crime of Passion (1957 film)|Crime of Passion]]'' (1957).<ref name="Silver">{{cite book |editor1-last=Silver |editor1-first=Alain |editor1-link=Alain Silver |editor2-last=Ward |editor2-first=Elizabeth |date=1979 |title=Film Noir: An Encyclopedic Reference to the American Style |location=Woodstock, New York |publisher=[[The Overlook Press]] |isbn=0-87951-055-2}}</ref>{{Rp|357}} Silver described Burr's private detective in ''Pitfall'' as "both reprehensible and pathetic,"<ref name="Silver"/>{{Rp|228}} a characterization also cited by film historian [[Richard Schickel]] as a prototype of film noir, in contrast with the appealing television characters for which Burr later became famous.<ref name="Schickel">{{cite journal |last=Schickel |first=Richard |author-link=Richard Schickel |date=Summer 2007 |title=Rerunning Film Noir |journal=[[The Wilson Quarterly]] |publisher=[[Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars]] |volume=31 |issue=3 |pages=36–43 |jstor=40262441 }}</ref>{{Rp|43}} "He tried to make you see the psychosis below the surface, even when the parts weren't huge," said film historian [[James Ursini]]. "He was able to bring such complexity and different levels to those characters, and create sympathy for his characters even though they were doing reprehensible things."<ref name="Starr"/>{{Rp|36}}

Other titles in Burr's film noir legacy include ''[[Walk a Crooked Mile]]'' (1948), ''[[Borderline (1950 film)|Borderline]]'' (1950), ''[[Unmasked (1950 film)|Unmasked]]'' (1950), ''[[The Whip Hand]]'' (1951), ''[[FBI Girl]]'' (1951), ''[[Meet Danny Wilson (film)|Meet Danny Wilson]]'' (1952), ''[[Rear Window]]'' (1954), ''[[They Were So Young]]'' (1954), ''[[A Cry in the Night (1956 film)|A Cry in the Night]]'' (1956), and ''[[Affair in Havana]]'' (1957). His villains were also seen in Westerns, period dramas, horror films, and adventure films.<ref name="Steward">{{cite magazine|last=Steward|first=Carl|date=Spring 2011|title=The Heaviest of Them All: The Film Noir Legacy of Raymond Burr|url=http://filmnoirfoundation.org/sentinel-article/RaymondBurr.pdf|magazine=Noir City|publisher=Film Noir Foundation|access-date=June 3, 2016|archive-date=September 17, 2012|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120917003556/http://www.filmnoirfoundation.org/sentinel-article/RaymondBurr.pdf|url-status=dead}}</ref>

"I was just a fat heavy," Burr told journalist James Bawden. "I split the heavy parts with [[William Conrad|Bill Conrad]]. We were both in our twenties playing much older men. I never got the girl but I once got the gorilla in a [[3D film|3-D picture]] called ''[[Gorilla at Large]]''. I menaced [[Claudette Colbert]], [[Lizabeth Scott]], [[Paulette Goddard]], [[Anne Baxter]], [[Barbara Stanwyck]]. Those girls would take one look at me and scream and can you blame them? I was drowned, beaten, stabbed and all for my art. But I knew I was horribly overweight. I lacked any kind of self esteem. At 25 I was playing the fathers of people older than me."<ref name="Bawden Burr">{{cite news|last=Bawden|first=Jim|date=September 14, 1993|title=TV gave Raymond Burr his 30 years of stardom|newspaper=[[Toronto Star]]}}</ref>

Burr's occasional roles on the right side of the law include the aggressive prosecutor in ''[[A Place in the Sun (1951 film)|A Place in the Sun]]'' (1951).<ref name="Steward"/> His courtroom performance in that film made an impression on [[Gail Patrick]]<ref name="Bawden"/> and her husband Cornwell Jackson, who had Burr in mind when they began casting the role of Los Angeles district attorney [[Hamilton Burger]] in the CBS-TV series ''[[Perry Mason (1957 TV series)|Perry Mason]]''.<ref name="Davidson First TV Series"/>{{Rp|8399}}