The Perry Mason Appreciation Thread

I can remember watching the TV show in reruns after school in the late 60s and it was a big part of my childhood. I recently started watching it on Amazon Prime and have been thoroughly enjoying it. It has become almost an obsession. The cast is perfect: Raymond Burr and the lovely and elegant Barbara Hale as Mason and Della Street are perfect for their roles and their real life friendship really comes through. William Hopper as Paul Drake is enjoyable and often provides a little comic relief.

William Talman is perfect as Hamilton Burger whos relationship with Mason can be adversarial, but also cordial at times. I noticed he was absent from a number of episodes in, I think the fourth season. Researching this, I discovered that he was arrested along with other guests at a house party in Beverly Hills where there was supposedly nudity and pot smoking, and was fired from the series. The judge threw out the charges for lack of evidence and Talman was eventually rehired after a massive letter writing campaign by viewers.

Talman always portrayed the DA as being more interested in justice than winning trials. In 1958, a journalist asked Talman how he felt about Burger losing to Mason week after week. Talman said, "Burger doesn't lose. How can a district attorney lose when he fails to convict an innocent person? Unlike a fist or gun fight, in court you can have a winner without having a loser. As a matter of fact, Burger in a good many instances has joined Mason in action against unethical attorneys, lying witnesses, or any one else obstructing justice. Like any real-life district attorney, justice is Burger's main interest."

Besides the good stories and great cast, I love portrayal of that time period- the stylish cars, the elegantly dressed ladies (especially Hale), the cocktail parties and stylishly decorated homes and apartments. One episode showed a very cool electric alarm clock with art deco looking numerals. I immediately jumped on eBay to look for a cool vintage clock and found the exact same one that was on the show:



Since Prime did not have every episode, I ended up buying the complete series DVD set. I also got the box with all 32 made for TV movies and the 50th anniversary set of extras, interviews and documentaries.

I might have to give some of the books a try

Anybody else a big fan of the show or books? I know there have been other threads about Perry Mason, but most were pretty old, so I thought I'd start a new one.

 

one of great TV shows for sure

 

Where Dragnet gave you endless detail instead of characterization, PM gave you endless plot. As the continuing success of franchises like Law & Order and CSI show, there will apparently always be an audience for this approach.

Some writers of the time preferred writing westerns to PM. With westerns you had to provide a couple of action scenes before the action climax. Otherwise you could devote the rest of the script to exploring character.

This was not allowed on PM. Everything served the plottting. Matt Dillon might quit marshaling, or Flint McCullough might threaten to leave the wagon train for good, but Perry Mason never faced such crises of conscience.

 

Perry Mason screen tests



The most interesting thing here is seeing Burr play a rather effete Hamilton Burger.

 

Park Avenue Beat, the theme song was pretty great. Perry in the original novels and movies was a bit of a cad.

 

I still watch it on occasion. I do note some drop off in quality in the later seasons. Perry Mason always drove an impressive car. Della Street was quite attractive.

I've read about 10 of the books. They're good and move fast. There are dozens and dozens of them. Erle Stanley Gardner could really crank them out and did so for decades. From what I've read, Gardner was a real stickler for making sure that the series was as good as it was. He was very miffed about how bad the movies were and didn't want a repeat of that experience with the TV show.

 

Always enjoyed the show great cast and always many guest stars on each episode, some of them were not even stars until later.

 

When I was a little kid my grandma used to love to watch Perry Mason. I didn't bother with it then because as a kid it was too 'adult' for me -- I preferred cartoons and kid shows. But I happened to come across the very first episode from 1957 recently on METV, and decided to record the entire series from the start. So I've been watching the show my grandma loved back then, and now I love it too!

I really get a kick out of Ray Collins "Lt. Tragg" portrayal. He always thinks he's one up on Perry when they arrive at the crime scene together, giving him a smart remark and smug sly smile before leaving the scene, only to have Perry expose his missed case details on the witness stand once in the courtroom. Too bad he couldn't last for the series entire run.

It seems also that Perry and DA Hamilton Burger respected each other professionally on the show, and even got together socially on occasion outside the courtroom. Here's a clip from an episode I saw just recently as Perry had just successfully defended a friend of Hamilton Burger, and the two were at a hunting club together, each with a shotgun!

 

Saw an early episode the other day with a pre-Rio Bravo Angie Dickinson on board. Bravo!

 

Ray Collins was great. Glad he later got to be lead singer
of The Mothers Of Invention...ooops!

 

As a kid I thought that name was hilarious: "Hey dad, is that guy's name really Ham Burger?!?"

 

I watch it on MeTV if I happen to catch it on. I like it a lot more than modern courtroom drama shows.

 

The first season has the best version of the song. It had a prominent drum that disappeared by season 2. Also some of the more noir-ish incidental music (one had a dissonant piano) faded away over the course of the series.

 

The books are radically different from the TV series and very enjoyable. Perry, for instance, is more youthful and dashing, and he and Della are clearly in love but reluctant to marry. Highly recommended.

 

I wondered about their relationship on the show as there are some scenes where there appears to be something between them. Nothing too obvious but, for example, they are walking into a bar and he has his hand on her lower back. I Googled "Perry Mason Della Street relationship" and there were a lot of hits with contradictory information. One writer hypothesized that Gardner intended there to be a romance in the book but was not good at writing romantic scenes and that Burr was not good as a romantic lead so they downplayed it in the show.

Apparently, fans of the show love to speculate about it. Gardner was pretty coy about it. Here are some quotes:

"If [Perry] married Della, he would lose his sex appeal."

"Those who want Della to sleep with Perry are the ones who are afraid she isn't," Erle Stanley Gardner once wrote his editor at Morrow. "[And] those who think she shouldn't are the ones who are certain she is."

"If Perry and Della ever have a romance, I'd write about it."

Reportedly Gardner closely supervised the filming of the show and protested if they thought Perry and Della were appearing to be too romantic. However, from what you and other accounts say, there was definitely romance in the books. I suspect that Gardner felt that an overt romance would have hurt the popularity of the show.

 

For those who have the Hallmark Movies and Mysteries channel, the Perry Mason movies air a lot on there.

 

And smoking! Almost everyone smoked cigarettes then, casually lighting up on screen without a second thought. This was how it was in real life back then in the fifties as well. Smokers were everywhere, it was just an unquestioned fact of life.

 

Ehhhh... I somehow got the impression that Perry Mason was not interested in women in the show.

 

But seriously, the best years of the show were when Ray Collins was present. His character Lt. Tragg was never adequately replaced.

 

Yeah, it seems so strange watching old shows or movies people are smoking everywhere- offices, restaurants and bars, planes- even hospitals.

 

There used to be these things known as "adults" around. Some bars, restaurants and businesses even catered to them!
I surely do miss 'em. Imagine going to a nice restaurant, having a fantastic steak dinner...then being able to smoke a
fine cigar with your fine Port for dessert right at your table. And since everybody there was an "adult"...nobody cared.

 

Smoking took a terrible toll on cast members. Ray Collins died of emphysema, William Hopper (Paul Drake) died of a stroke, and, most notably, William Talman died of lung cancer and did anti-smoking PSAs as he had only weeks to live