Raymond Burr Quotes

Try to live your life the way you wish other people would live theirs.

No other supporting player won three Academy Awards, and you would be hard-pressed to name another character actor whose performances frequently overwhelmed those of ostensible leads like Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck in Banjo on My Knee. “We’re supporting you. Be nice to us,” McCrea and Stanwyck joked with Brennan. Those stars had the fights of their lives trying to stay on equal terms with old Walter. Sure, other character actors have had their star turns—especially in television, which gave Ward Bond in Wagon Train, Raymond Burr in Perry Mason, and Harry Morgan in M.A.S.H. their respective moments of fame—but no character actor other than Brennan dominated the Hollywood century of popular entertainment, or attained the iconic status he achieved. To follow Brennan—beginning with his career as a seven-dollar-a-day extra—is to learn all you need to know about Hollywood and its mythologizing of the American dream. Walter Brennan became an archetype, not a stereotype.

FORT LARAMIE, western drama. BROADCAST HISTORY: Jan. 22–Oct. 28, 1956, CBS. 30m, Sundays at 5:30. CAST: Raymond Burr as Lee Quince, captain of cavalry at Fort Laramie, on the Wyoming frontier. Vic Perrin as Sgt. Gorce. Harry Bartell as Lt. Seiberts. Jack Moyles as Maj. Daggett.

Producer Norman Macdonnell saw Fort Laramie as “a monument to ordinary men who lived in extraordinary times”: their enemies were “the rugged, uncharted country, the heat, the cold, disease, boredom, and, perhaps last of all, hostile Indians.” Men died at Fort Laramie: some died of drowning, some of freezing, some of typhoid and smallpox. “But it’s a matter of record,” Macdonnell said on the opening, “that in all the years the cavalry was stationed at Fort Laramie, only four troopers died of gunshot wounds.” The series was less intense, and far less known, than Macdonnell’s major western, Guns-moke: the stories focused as much on atmosphere and mood as on violence and action. The run of 40 shows is complete on tape in excellent quality. The star, Raymond Burr, went from obscurity to national prominence a year later, taking on the title role in TV’s Perry Mason.