By Ray Bennett
LONDON – Nostalgia was very much in the air in 1986 when I met Raymond Burr, who was born 105 years ago today. He was in the thick of it. His two long-running series from the Fifties and Sixties – ‘Perry Mason’ and ‘Ironside’ – ran in syndication. ‘Perry Mason Returns’ had been the highest rated TV-movie of the previous year and a sequel did just as well.
After he died aged 78 in 1993, stories emerged of how Burr had fabricated many details of his private life largely to shield the fact that he was gay. When I spent a couple of hours with him in the piano bar of the Mondrian Hotel in Los Angeles, that was not an issue. It was true that he was a world traveler, a gardener, a gourmet and a philanthropist. He was a wine expert, an authority on forestry, a grower of orchids and principal owner of a newspaper. Also, he was one of the most recognisable actors in the world. Continue reading
When Warren Beatty changed Hollywood forever
By Ray Bennett
LONDON – One afternoon early in September 1967, the film writers and critics of London gathered in a West End cinema for a screening of a gangster movie starring a pretty-boy Hollywood actor. The cinema was packed although few there believed the Warner Bros. crime picture would have any merit.
The general mood was not helped when there was a problem with the projector. We were beginning to voice our impatience when on the screen suddenly came a series of snapshots of men and women in Thirties attire. Continue reading →