and it takes you six or seven days to shoot a show and you have how many shows a year in P Mason in the season well we average now about 30 or 32 shows a year how much time do you get off in uh any given period of work that would vary depending upon the problems that have ensued during the season you're a great man for semantics how many hours a day do you have to yourself uh I have four usually during the four or five and I usually use goes for sleep it's an incredibly
heavy workload for this it's almost an impossible workload well how long will py Mason keep going uh I mean it must be your choice surely you well we we this is the uh uh my final year as far as my contract is concerned I have no idea what I'm going to be offered as far as another year if any no one said anything about it yet and we're into the middle of the if the towns are right not I would dare to intrude in your private business but if the TS were right would you keep
ping going going another 7 years uh I I would say no wouldn't it drive you out your mind no not necessarily it would have if it was going to drive me out of my mind it would have driven me out of my mind in the second year uhhuh uh now no tell me this though do you have the right of veto and scripts if you don't happen to like it if it's kind of illogical or seems a bit silly I have uh certain rights which are not contra factual as far as being written down in
black and white um but after you become involved in a project as long as I've been involved in it why uh there are certain things which you must know as well as anyone else and um if you can argue the point successfully you win the point so you have the right then let's talk personally what has Perry Mason done to Raymond Burr's private life have you found that you've become a little bit may not be the right psychiatric term you know psychiatric I mean if you if you take another personality in your private life you
me I see what you mean no has it changed you uh well I'm apt to uh come home at one time or another perhaps and say has anyone been here today and uh they have maybe say would say no and I'd say well what are those car tracks doing uh in the driveway you know no but um by and large I've had the opportunity of playing uh many roles in a great variety of roles but there are many people through the years but I've fortunately been able to dropped the role at the end of the
time it was being played and uh return to whatever life I was uh I enjoy how many people come up to you like I might do just now and see a little bit Snidely we think you're wonderful as P Mason but gee we used to hate you more and like you better when you were the heavy the murderer in the movies and rear window well you see we have a fortunate thing called television today I made 90 Motion Pictures between 1946 and 1956 and they're all playing on television so my career in those things still
continues 90 Motion Pictures 90 yes the rear window was one of your big ones wasn't it rear window Place in the Sun Pitfall quite there was to make 90 pictures in 10 years is a a a great many pictures which means that all of them were not rear window and Place in the Sun and those kind of pictures but there were some good ones among them but were you not invariably the heavy oh invariably did you like that heavy business it gave well I began to run out of ways of being bad yeah but you
don't get a chance at all now you're you're a gracious gentleman at all on All Occasions in you can you can still be bad back to the Raymond bur of whom we're very proud cuz I work for the radio station in New Westminster and we claim you as a New Westminster boy you still have strong family connections there don't you very much so I was born on Queens Avenue and my grandparents had one of the oldest houses in in uh New Westminster on Royal which is still standing in which my parents live now and uh
I love New Westminster and know more about it I suppose than any part other part of Canada although I left when I was very young I keep returning and uh um I am the the kind of ties you have the same with yours in Scotland F did you guess I came from Scotland because I asked you before we went on the air uh but um I know many people from Glasgow so you almost can't fool me there now part about Canada large though you first developed your acting career if I remember correctly in the United
States you not well I yes I did give us a little bit of the start of Raymond bur actor well Raymond bur actor is the same as any other actor uh you start in school and in church uh doing the church Productions and the uh grammar school productions or the primary school productions and the secondary school Productions and uh and in church I was always very much involved in church and school productions went on from there was your first professional part oh I think I played KF is the high priest in a church production uh
which was professional because we were paid uh for all our own expenses I had to buy my own beard for that and I was I think 11 years old at the time and beard amounted to a great deal of money but before you became established as an actor what kind of jobs did you actually work at I've done uh great many things I uh uh was a forest ranger in the United States or worked in with the forest service for 2 years digging ditches and uh building roads and dams and fighting fire I work worked
as a a sheep and cattle ranch in New Mexico M uh hering sheep and cattle and fence building fences uh I was a teacher at one time I uh have done just about everything you can do well now we know you're going into your seventh season of fairy Mason and you're not sure if it'll last another seven or another one or another 10 but you must have plans of your own for your own company you have a company I've had plans of my own Jack since the first season of per Mason you can start a
successful uh television show or a show and shoot uh for success in that show you don't know whether it's going to be taken up uh by the public at that particular time uh however uh those plans have remained I have my own production company now it's called Harbor Productions we'll be producing uh shows uh and series Motion Pictures plays uh anything specific in mind albums there are a great many things specific in mind but until we are able to uh decide and what is going to be the next season uh I'm not able to really
discuss what might be specific as one of the prominent actors with roots in Canada do you think it's possible for us we keep dreaming that we can develop a live film or live independent tele filming organizations in Canada but nobody ever seems to be able to do it have you ever explored this field yes from the time I was a very young man I um very young I suppose I was too young to even contemplate this kind of attitude uh I have thought that a uh industry here could be started and could be very successful
but the studios were first built in Vancouver here in the motion picture days I was very hopeful of being part of that effort um I have tried many times uh in as far as Motion Pictures are concerned with some very good stories we thought at the time to interest groups of people here in Canada where we can make it a Canadian production you mean get them to put up some money well money and uh interest interest is the most important thing uh so that you wouldn't make it a production company that uh superimposed itself on
a Canadian group any results results were always very dim why do you think such a lack of response in your efforts in that direction well I don't know whether there were a lack of my U lack of response to my efforts I think perhaps uh we might arrive today at a time where the confidence of the Canadians and their own product could be assumed uh I would be delighted to be any part of any such project if enough interest could be generated here in this country
