The third season of Perry Mason started airing October 3 1959 and the 26 episodes ran through June 10 1960. The number of episodes has been falling with each season, first there were 39, then 30 and now 26. Like all the DVD sets, they split the series into two separate sets. Five of the episodes were written by Jonathan Latimer. I read a couple of his books at one point.
The episodes are the usual sort of story, we meet some people, someone dies, someone gets arrested, and Perry comes to their rescue. It's formula but there's enough variety in the stories to keep me interested, especially if I watch one or two at a time and wait a day or two for the next lot.
There were some good guest stars. Some of the highlights for me were seeing Fay Wray in episode 2. She plays a faded movie star who abandoned her baby years ago. After the young woman makes contact, Fay is murdered and Lt Tragg arrests the young woman's father. in the third episode Dick Foran, whom I had been seeing in some Abbott and Costello movies, covers up his bother's involvement in a murder. He gets charged for the crime and Perry steps into help him. George Takei has a smallish part in the 4th episode and one of my favorite character actors, Trevor Bardette, plays the prosecutor in the 5th episode. He was the newspaper publisher in one of my favorite 50s SF movies, The Monolith Monsters.
Paul Drake gets in some trouble, the police think he killed Bruce Gordon, and he needs Perry to help him out of his jam. Simon Oakland gets killed in another episode. Marshall Thompson is a veteran who's war diary was taken by another soldier who published it under his own name. That guy turns up dead and his wife is charged with murder. Perry finds out who the real murderer is and helps Marshall get his recognition for the book. J Pat O'Malley is the defendant in an episode with Ruta Lee and Dabbs Greer. Remember Barbara Bain from Mission Impossible, she's in an episode. Beverly Garland is in the following episode, along with a very young looking Louise Fletcher and Norman Fell. Keep en eye out for HM Wynant, William J Campbell, Madlyn Rhue, Bert Convy, Edward Platt, Joe Maross, Hugh Marlow, Jeremy Slate, Denver Pyle and Francis X Bushman.
They mix things up a bit this season, one of the courtrooms is complete flipped 180 degrees from the courtroom where most of the previous episodes had been shot. One episode is set in the Sierra's where Perry is hunting with his old pal the town's Sheriff. In a later episode Perry is out duck hunting with Hamilton Burger. A man who saved Hamilton's life ten years earlier is in trouble and Hamilton asks Perry to help his friend out. Both those cases are tried in the local town courts. In another episode Perry helps a sailor from a submarine in a courts-martial.
William Tallman played district attorney Hamilton Burger for most of the programs run. He got fired in the third season and rehired in the fourth. All because he was at a Hollywood party that got raided. Here's a bit about his career from the Wikipedia.
Before his iconic television role, Talman worked on the Broadway stage and in movies. In the Collier Young-produced thriller, Beware, My Lovely (1952), about a war widow who is terrorized by a madman in her home, a photograph of Talman is used for the picture of her late, heroic husband.
Talman played a sadistic psychopathic killer in Ida Lupino's 1953 film noir, The Hitch-Hiker.The New York Times wrote, "William Talman, as the ruthless murderer, makes the most of one of the year's juiciest assignments."
His performance was also noted by Gail Patrick Jackson, executive producer of the CBS-TV series Perry Mason (1957–66). Raymond Burr had initially auditioned for the role of Hamilton Burger, but Patrick encouraged him to lose 60 pounds and read for the lead role — which Burr successfully did. Patrick already had an actor in mind for the Los Angeles district attorney: "I'd seen a brilliant little movie, The Hitch-Hiker, and had to have Bill Talman as Burger — and he never disappointed us," Patrick said.
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."
Talman, as Burger, would go on to lose all but three cases in the nine-year series, including a record two separate murder trials in the final episode. He called his record "the longest losing streak in history." Talman had the title role in the 1960 episode, "The Case of the Prudent Prosecutor," when Burger disqualified himself from prosecuting a long-time personal friend, Jefferson Pike, who was accused of murder. At the end of the episode after Pike was cleared by Mason, Burger said, "You know, I think I won this case."
Talman was fired from Perry Mason for a short period in 1960. Sheriff's deputies, suspicious of marijuana use, raided a party on March 13, 1960, in a private home in Beverly Hills at which Talman was a guest. The deputies reported finding Talman and seven other defendants either nude or semi-nude. All were arrested for possession of marijuana (which was later dropped) and lewd vagrancy, but municipal judge Adolph Alexander dismissed the lewd vagrancy charges against Talman and the others on June 17 for lack of proof. "I don’t approve of their conduct," the judge ruled, "but it is not for you and me to approve but to enforce the statutes." Despite this Talman was fired by CBS which refused to give a reason. Talman was later rehired after Perry Mason producer Gail Patrick Jackson made a request to CBS following a massive letter-writing campaign by viewers.
Aside from his major supporting role in Perry Mason, Talman also guest-starred in various television series. He appeared in a first season episode of The Invaders, "Quantity: Unknown". This would be his last on-screen acting role before his death.
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