The Welcome to down these mean streets where today we're saluting a legend of

television and one of my favorite actors Emmy Award winner Raymond Burr. To generations of TV viewers he's Perry Mason, the most

famous lawyer in fiction who for nine years kept audiences entertained with engrossing

mysteries and courtroom theatrics. kept audiences is a paraplegic cop who dispense justice from his wheelchair in Ironside.

And he had a long impressive list of big screen credits too, with his most famous role probably

being that of Lars Thorwald, Jimmy Stewart's

neighbor with a secret in Hitchcock's rear window. But before all of that, Burr was a

busy radio actor and today we'll celebrate what would have been

his 100th birthday with three of his old-time radio performances.

First, we'll hear him co-starring with Jack Webb in an episode of Pat Novak for hire. Burr plays Inspector Helmin, the bull-headed San Francisco homicide cop and perpetual thorn in the side of Novak.

It was one of many collaborations between Burr and Webb.

A few months after this episode aired, Burr would appear as Captain Ed Backstrand in the early

episodes of the Dragnet radio series.

Audiences used to Burr as the upstanding Perry Mason may be surprised by his performance here as Helmin,

a tough cop who isn't above beating a confession or two out of a suspect.

He and Webb have great chemistry, snarling purple dialogue back and forth at each other in this episode that originally aired on ABC on February 27th, 1949.

Through the early 1950s, along with his appearances on Dragnet,

Burm made the rounds on other dramas,

including suspense, the lineup, Richard Diamond, and Yours Truly Johnny Dollar.

That's our next stop on our Raymond Burr retrospective, with an episode from July 20, 1950 called the Henry J Unger Matter.

Burr is the title character,

an old enemy out for revenge against Edmund O'Brien's

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