| A Brief Retirement The way Raymond Burr talked about feeling
trapped by the commitment to the Mason series, you would
have expected him to stay in Fiji forever. He didn't. He
was back a little more than a year later, starring as
"Ironside," a paralyzed detective who didn't
let his handicap get in the way of his ability to fight
crime. This NBC show, which premiered in 1967, ran nearly
as long as "Perry Mason." And, while it didn't
build the cult following that Mason developed (and it
lacked Mason's rich historical background),
"Ironside" was successful enough to stay around
until 1975, a run of seven seasons.
Burr was back on his feet again for a
brief time in 1977, this time as R. B. Kingston, a
high-level executive in a communication empire. Kingston
preferred behaving like an investigative reporter and
going out into the streets to get the story himself. Burr
first played the part in an NBC made-for-TV movie called
"Kingston" in the fall of 1976. The pilot was
turned into a television series the following year called
"Kingston: Confidential." It was a bomb. The
show lasted barely five months (March-August 1977) before
NBC pulled the plug. Although Burr showed up on specials,
more made-for-TV movies, and talk shows, "Kingston:
Confidential" marked the end of series TV for
Raymond Burr.
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