The Best of Television
Perry Mason is as much a part of American culture as apple pie and mom. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone of any age who doesn't at least recognize the name. Erle Stanley Gardner's books have millions of devoted fans. The television show it spawned was fabulous as entertainment, and today is widely regarded as one of the best shows television ever produced. Perry was the attorney you wanted on your side in a jam.
It was Gardner himself who picked Raymond Burr, even though the studio only agreed to let him test for Perry if he would test for Burger too! Barbara Hale was his pretty secretary, Della Street, who kept Perry human and was in love with him. William Hopper was the dapper detective, Paul Drake. He had a playful and flirtatious relationship with Della but every viewer knew that secretly her heart belonged to Perry. And we liked it that way.
William Talman as D.A. Hamilton Burger would almost be ready to gloat, Lt. Tragg (Ray Collins) not far behind,...
Worth the wait
The second half of the fourth season suffers from the sporadic appearance of Bill Talman's masterful portrayal of Hamilton Burger, the unluckiest district attorney in history. Talman was exiled for a morals clause violation the previous season but brought back by popular demand. CBS seems to have looked for ways to keep the actor off the show. One of the few positive effects of this experimentation is found in an episode entitled "the Case of the Cowardly Lion" which is shot extensively on location at the San Diego Zoo and the Kona Kai resort. The zoo in 1961 was indeed a wondrous place, and quite unlike zoos of its era.
Another sixties wonder was the space race. "The Case of the Misguided Missile" was shot extensively at Vandenberg Air Force Base, the Pacific missile launch site. Among the cast was William Schallert, later of the Patty Duke Show and the mayor in the Best Picture Oscar winning fim "In the Heat of the Night". Also in the cast of that episode was James B...
The Original Courtroom Drama
Perry Mason Season 4 Volume 2
These twelve TV films from 1961 are mostly stories based on the novels of Erle Stanley Gardner. The books are more complete and informative and tell stories about life that is not experienced by most people. The books can tell you why certain things are done, the films only show you what happened. The books tell you about "ropers", rough or smooth shadows, and how to evade surveillance and avoid leaving a back trail. Some may question the legality and ethics of Perry Mason's tactics but most stories were written before the modern legal rules of the 1960s. The backgrounds tell about life in Los Angeles. It is difficult to film a scene at night but easy to describe it in a book. Erle Stanley Gardner was the founder of the "Court of Last Resort" which sought to free many unjustly convicted persons. Gardner, among others, sought to use scientific means to find the guilty, rather than using hunches or guesses alone.
The seeming reality of...
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