[3] In the beginning of 1945, during his World War II service with the United States Merchant Marine, Raisch's right arm was badly burned in a shipboard fire and had to be amputated at the elbow.

[3] Raisch appeared in The War of the Worlds (1953) as "an extra, stand-in, and occasional stuntman", and in Spartacus (1960), playing a character whose arm was hacked off in battle.

[4] The following year, Raisch became the "One-Armed Man"—a shadowy drifter implicated in a brutal murder—in the television series The Fugitive, which ran from 1963 to 1967.

However, his character was frequently mentioned, and beginning in season 2 "The One-Armed Man" was seen in the opening credits of every episode of The Fugitive, making Raisch's image a well-known pop culture figure.

[6] In the series' final episode, Raisch's character was proved to be the true killer of the wife of Dr. Richard Kimble, played by David Janssen.