Early Life
Burr was born Raymond William Stacey Burr in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada, to William Johnston Burr (1889–1985), an Irish hardware salesman, and his wife, Minerva (née Smith, 1892–1974), a concert pianist and music teacher, who was of English and Scottish descent. After his parents divorced, Burr moved to Vallejo, California with his mother and younger siblings, Geraldine and James Edmond. He attended a military academy for a while and graduated from Berkeley High School.
In later years Burr freely invented stories of a happy childhood. He told the Modesto Bee in 1986, for example, that when he was twelve and a half years old, his mother sent him to New Mexico for a year to work as a ranch hand. He was already his full adult height and rather large and "had fallen in with a group of college-aged kids who didn't realize how young Raymond was, and they let him tag along with them in activities and situations far too sophisticated for him to handle." He developed a passion for growing things and, while still a teenager, joined the Civilian Conservation Corps for a year. Throughout his teenage years he had some acting work, making his stage debut at age 12 with a Vancouver stock company.
Burr may have served in the Coast Guard, but never in the United States Navy as he and his publicists later claimed. Nor was he seriously wounded in the stomach during the Battle of Okinawa in the latter stages of World War II. Other invented biographical details include years of college education at a variety of institutions, world travel, an acting tour of the United Kingdom, and success in high school athletics. Such claims were accepted as fact by the press during his lifetime and by his first biographer.
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