More law talkin' with Perry Mason in Season 8 of the TV series with his name. Raymond Burr is Perry, Barbara Hale is Della Street, William Hopper as Paul Drake and William Talman as Hamilton Burger. Ray Collins still got a credit in the titles and credits for the season but he was still out sick from the 7th season and never returned to the show. He died in 1965 just after the season ended. Wesley Lau becomes a recurring cast member playing Lt Andy Anderson.
The cases are as varied as the settings. We meet so many people as they get into the sort of trouble that leads to death. Glad I don't know any of those sort of people. Perry has court on a ship in one episode. In another Perry is in Hawaii and later in the season he's in Switzerland where he gets involved with the death of an American Army Captain. That story involves Nazi treasure. Perry gets put on the witness stand in a case where he's the defense lawyer. It's odd but he's always getting into odd scraps. The Case Of The Grinning Gorilla involves a gorilla that lives in a house with the professor that studied him for years. I had read that book in the last year or so.
At this point in the series most of the episodes are original stories. Of the 30 episodes in the season there were only 4 based on a novel. After reading so many Perry Mason novels I'd gotten spoilt by the amount of detail in the stories. The TV episodes have little time to waste. They spend a good bit of the show setting up the murder, devote little to the investigation part of the story, and then they plow into the court room stuff. I often like the longer format, 90-120 minute episodes, where there is more time for detail. A lot of my favorite British mysteries are all 90-100 minutes per story.
Guests I recognized include Julie Adams, Ed Nelson, Richard Anderson, June Lockhart, Sue Ann Langdon, Hugh Marlowe, Guy Stockwell, Mike Conners, Milton Selzer, Gerald Mohr, Werner Klemperer, Richard Carlson. Mimsy Farmer, John Fiedler, Jeff Corey, Ben Johnson, Elisha Cook Jr, Ted De Corsia, Lloyd Bochner, Mary Ann Mobley, Michael Constantine, Grant Williams, Gary Crosby, Mark Goddard, Lee Meriwether, Barry Sullivan, Noah Berry Jr, Roland Winters, HM Wynant, Keye Luke, Fay Wray, Gary Collins, Anthony Caruso, Margo, Robert Quarry, Peter Breck, Ruta Lee, Steve Ihnat, Victor Buono, Gavin MacLeod, James Shigeta, Bobby Troop and Philip Abbott.
Another good season, sadly only the one season to go. Of course I have a DVD set of the 30 Perry Mason movies, longer format, yay, to watch some time. They started in 1985 and Raymond Burr was in 26 of them. I have a few other things to put on before those.
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