Raymond
Burr was a handsome second-string actor who started his career in the late
1940s. He evolved into a movie villain (as in “Rear Window"), and then a heroic TV actor
(as in “Perry
Mason,” and later “Ironside”). He was handsome and broad-shouldered, with a deep gruff
voice. He gained weight in the 1950s and 1960s, but it gave him gravity.
Also, he was gay.
He met an actor named Robert
Benvenides while working on the “Perry Mason” show. They fell in love,
and spent the rest of their lives together. Hollywood couldn’t endure this, of
course, so the studios created a fiction about marriages and children. (Raymond
was married to a woman for a while, back in the 1940s, but it ended in divorce
and no children.)
He was reputed to be very generous. IMDB reports the story
that Errol Flynn told him that, if he died with ten dollars in his pocket, he
wouldn’t have done his job. It inspired him to be philanthropic, and he always helped his friends.
He died in 1992, and Benvenides was his sole heir, but
Raymond’s family contested this. They failed, thank goodness.
How times have changed! Look at George Takei! And Neil
Patrick Harris! And Ellen de Generes!
Partner and I have talked about marriage. Sadly, we’d end up
paying more income tax married than we would as two “single” people. But our
mutual employer, Brown University, regards us as Domestic Partners, so we enjoy
some advantages that way. Also, we have not found any local institutions that
discriminate against us. Lately (with all my health-related adventures) I
simply introduce Partner to my doctors and nurses as “my life partner,” and he’s welcomed immediately.
How easy we have it, and how difficult Raymond Burr and his
partner Robert Benvenides had it, only twenty years ago.
The world is moving in the right direction.
Slowly.
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