PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

What I Read In August 2016

I'm not getting caught up too well yet, though I've gotten to about a year behind. I got one more book read than last month, 17 total, and 11 are keepers at this time. I finished the year with 150 book read and as I write this in 2017 I've got 126 read so far. A couple of days per book on average. I could devote more time to reading but I don't want to push it so hard I get tired of reading.

The Case Of The Calendar Girl by Erle Stanley Gardner - Perry helps out a contractor accused of murder. I'm still progressing on reading all the Perry Mason novels. I have about 50 of the 82 novels Erle wrote. I'm also looking forward to reading the Bertha Cool and Donald Lam series that he penned. I read those in the 60's and 70's and then got rid of the books when I moved to the US. I reassembled a set about 25 years ago, that was when I read them last.

Skink - No Surrender by Carl Hiaasen - This is the fifth of Carl's young adult novels. It's about a young guy named Richard who goes on a trek to find his missing cousin Malley. She's run off with some guy, who turns out to be pretty shady. Richard meets Skink, who has appeared in other Carl novels, and the two team up to find Malley. They have some adventures and that boyfriend doesn't fare too well in the fight. Carl usually turns in a good read and this is no different. I usually recommend his books to people

The Clue In The Crumbling Walls by Carolyn Keene - Here's the 22nd volume of the Nancy Drew series. This one is written by Mildred Wirt Benson. I'm still finding them and probably have near the whole series as I write this. I still haven;t read the whole lot but someday. There are only a finite number of the original novels and that's what I' concentrating on first. Here Nancy helps a young woman keep her inheritance. That Nancy is such a nice gal.

Strange Museum 4 - The Royal Switch by Jahnna N Malcolm - Bit of a Prince And The Pauper story that isn't worth keeping.

Roy Rogers And The Rimrod Renegades by Snowdon Miller - Here's a book that came out in 1952. The cover up there is the later edition where the cover is printed on the book itself. Roy's after some baddies in this Whitman edition. I found it entertaining and have been picking up of the Roy Rogers books that I see. 

The Case Of The Beautiful Beggar by Erle Stanley Gardner - This is the 76th book of the Perry Mason series and it came out in 1965. The series started in 1933 and the last book came out in 1972. The story is about a young woman who's wealthy uncle disappears. When he turns up poisoned it's off to the pokey for her. Perry, Paul and Della dig into the case and save her bacon from getting sizzled in the electric chair.

Readings On J K Rowling by Gary Weiner, Editor - A collection of essays from 2003 that weren't at all memorable. They were written just after the third book came out and the assumptions on the trilogy were often pretty far off. A slight thing, hardly worth reading or keeping, but it's gone on the shelf of HP reference books, which now total 43 in number.

Darby O'Gill And The Little People by Lawrence Edward Watkin - Watkins wrote the novel Marty Markham in 1942 and it was adapted into the Disney series Spin And Marty. Watkins wrote several screenplays for Disney, starting with the 1950 Treasure Island. He adapted two of Herminie Templeton Kavanagh's Darby O'Gill novels, Darby O'Gill and the Good People and The Ashes of Old Wishes And Other Darby O'Gill Tales, for the movie. The novel was good, a nice quick read, good number of laughs.

Sammy Feral's Diaries Of Weird - Vampire Attack by Eleanor Hawkins - An average book that is described as hilarious in the Amazon description. It isn't hilarious, it's just about average in the jokes department. I liked the characters and though it was good enough to finish but not to keep.

Mrs Piggle-Wiggle's Farm by Betty MacDonald - Here's the last of the series. I had read the other three Mrs P-W books, published in a single edition, a while before this book. I found I didn't like them and barely read this one. I would recommend MacDonald's Nancy And Plum as a superior book, especially when compared to the Mrs P-W series. Sadly I found the stupid parents and obnoxious kids in the series to be tedious. See ya, wouldn't want to read ya.

The Shadow Of Dr Syn by Russell Thorndike - Here's the last of the series, published in 1944, and it's set during the French Revolution. Dr Syn rescues people from the Reign of Terror. Kind of like The Scarlet Pimpernel. The death of a woman he loves causes Dr Syn to go insane. It was an entertaining read and the story would conclude in the first Dr Syn book, published back in 1915. After the first book, Doctor Syn: A Tale Of The Romney Marsh, Thorndike wrote 6 prequels that told the story of how Dr Syn became the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, the greatest smuggler what ever lived. I'd recommend the series highly. I got them for my Kindle for about a buck. You can't beat that for cheap entertainment.

A Figure In Hiding by Franklin W Dixon - The 16th of the Hardy Boy series starts with a robbery at the local movie theater. The Hardy brothers and their pal Chet Morgan go to see the movie, A Figure In Hiding, and then go see Mr Hardy at the Bayport Hotel. They see some members of an evil gang and the chase is on. It gets pretty complicated by the time they get to the end of the book. A good read, written by Leslie McFarlane in 1937. The revised edition changes the story quite a bit.

The Mark On The Door by Franklin W Dixon - The 13 volume is credited to Leslie McFarlane but some say that the style isn't like his. I don't know myself. In this book the Hardy brothers are in Mexico on the trail of some oil stock swindlers. With the help of their pal Chet Morton the trio catches the gang.

Sammy Feral's Diaries Of Weird - Hell Hound Curse by Eleanor Hawkins - About the same as the first book I read in the series. I'm not going to keep it either.

Attack Of The Fluffy Bunnies by Andrea Beaty - A couple of kids go to camp and then get attacked by 7 foot tall alien rabbits. It was heavily illustrated and a bit funny. Not a keeper.

The Case Of The Cautious Coquette by Erle Stanley Gardner - The 34th book in the Perry Mason series has Perry getting mixed up with a hit and run case. Paul Drake runs an ad in the paper looking for witnesses and two different drivers are identified. Good quick read, as usual.

The Case Of The Lazy Lover by Erle Stanley Gardner - The 30th book in the Perry Mason series has Perry defending a murderer. The usual sort of entertaining story.

That's the lot. More next month.

Perry Mason Season 9

The last season of Perry Mason, number 9, started airing in the fall of 1965. That was back in the day when you knew that the return to school heralded the return of your favorite shows. Some might be gone but there would be some new ones too. That was the year that Star Trek started. We only got to watch the 2nd half of the episode of Star Trek, there was a Mom related scheduling conflict and only one TV. It wasn't until the reruns started that we got to see how the story begin. What a hardship, huh. It's one of the reasons I like self programming what I watch.

Raymond Burr, Barbara Hale and William Hopper return as Perry Mason, Della Street and Paul Drake. Hamilton Burger continues to appear in some episodes as the DA. The season was still shot in black and white, all except for one episode which was in color. That episode didn't get broadcast in color until after the series went off the air. The color looks all pumped up and vivid but it was nice seeing it. Total surprise to me.

The 30 episodes had a lot of great guest stars: Bernard Fox, Julie Adams, Jesse White, Ford Rainey, Whit Bissell, Noah Beery Jr, Hugh Marlowe, Anthony Caruso, Michael Constantine, Gavin MacLoed, Grant Williams, Daniel J Travanti, Victor Buono, Richard Carlson, Sue Ann Langdon, Pippa Scott, Wendell Corey, Les Tremayne, James Best, Mary Ann Mobley, Brian Donlevy, Ted De Corsia, Gary Collin, Cloris Leachman, Jay Novello, Dick Clark, James Stacy, Denver Pyle, and Jackie Coogan. Earl Stanley Gardner, Perry Mason's creator and novelist, makes an appearance and Raymond Burr plays a duel role in one episode.

I enjoyed the series and was glad that I got to pick up a set so cheap. I hope to watch them again some day. Who know when. It won't be for a while. Now that the series is completely done I can take a break and watch some other stuff before I get to the huge Perry Mason TV movie set. There's a good number of them. I've some interest in seeing Raymond Burr's Ironside series but the DVD are pretty pricey right now and Netflix only has the first season.

Perry Mason Season 8

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.

Perry Mason Season 6

The 6th season of Perry Mason has an interesting thing happen in the second DVD set. The season has 28 episodes and there are 14 episodes in each set. The sets are sold separately. Perry Mason only appears in a couple of brief scenes in each of the four episodes starting with The Case Of Constant Doyle. Perry's supposed to be on the mend from an operation and he can't take the cases that come up in the office. In real life Raymond Burr was also recovering from an operation. Guest stars appear as lawyers and Della Street and Paul Drake lend a hand. Bette Davis heads the group of guest stars, the other three are Michael Rennie, Hugh O'Brian and Walter Pidgeon. They aren't Perry Masons but I did like Bette as the feisty widow. Her lawyer hubby had died fairly recently and she wants to continue to work. She helps Michael Parks, playing a troubled teen, out of a spot of murder.

Because it's got a new group of victims and criminals each week we have a lot of other guest stars to enjoy. Here's a few that I knew: Adam West, John Morley, Gary Lockwood, Robert Armstrong, Leonard Stone, Jeannette Nolan, Ellen Burstyn, David Hedison, Harvey Korman, R G Armstong, Mala Powers, Edgar Buchanan, Strother Martin, Jesse White, Leonard Nimoy, Peter Breck, Antoinette Bower, Joyce Van Patten, Michael Parks, Trevor Bardette, Lee Van Cleef, Richard Jaeckel, Julie Adams, Gerald Mohr, John Larkin, Faith Domergue, John Anderson, George Kennedy, Harry Lauter, David White and Jackie Coogan. There's plenty more that I didn't remember.

The stories are about the same as the previous seasons and I enjoyed them just fine. I was glad to have picked up the series so cheap on one of those Amazon Deals of the Week or Day. This year they don't seem to have anywhere near as good a selection as they did in the past. I see that the Collected Perry Mason TV series was issued last October and it's a fairly reasonable $107.99 for the whole 271 episodes. That comes out to 233 hours on 72 DVDs.

Perry Mason Season 5

I'm still chipping away at the stack of Perry Mason DVDs. There were 9 seasons and they each were packed with episodes. I just got the DVD set of the 30 movies but no idea when I'll have time to get around to them. I'm enjoying them when they are on and still plan to finish of the series at some point. At the rate I'm going it should take a year or three.

The fifth season of Perry Mason started in September 1961 and there were 30 episodes. Those were the days, huh, large numbers of episodes each season. Raymond Burr, Barbara Hale and William Hopper are Perry Mason, his secretary Della Street and PI Paul Drake. There the usual stuff going on in each episode. We meet some people, one of them gets murdered, Mason's client gets charged with murder.

There's plenty of good guest stars. You might remember Ben Cooper, James Dury, Tommy Noonan, Jackie Coogan, Sue Ann Langdon, Alejandro Rey, Dick Foran, Paul Lambert, DeForest Kelly, Alan Hale Jr, J Pat O'Malley, Harry Carey Jr, Jay Novello, ZaSu Pitts, Mark Roberts, Victor Buono, Jesse White, James Coburn, John Marley, Otto Kruger, Burt Reynolds, Jeff Morrow, Rex Reason, Robert Cornthwaite, Ivan Dixon and Geraldine Brooks.

Perry Mason - The Original Warner Bros. Movies Collection

I'm a big fan of 1930s crime films, I like the serious ones, the noir ones, and the comedic ones. I picked up the 6 movie set because of my recent interest in Perry Mason. I've been watching the Raymond Burr series a season at a time and I was interested in this early series of films. I'd seen all but two of them a few years back, most likely from Turner Classic Movies back when I had cable. I gave up cable more than a year ago but cable had taken the Turner channel away some time before that, it happened when things when digital. I could have nearly doubled my cable bill but I didn't see the point of spending more money on a product that I was watching less and less, eventually that ever increasing monthly charge and my waning interest in the content caused me to give cable the old heave ho.

The Warner Archives are usually made on demand, with the movies burned onto a DVDR, but this three disc set is actual DVDs. The movies look pretty good.

The Case Of The Howling Dog 1934

Written by Ben Markson, based on the Earl Stanley Gardner, directed by Alan Crosland. I really liked the way they used to show pictures of the actors with titles telling you who they played in the film. You can click on the screen caps for a large version of the picture.

Warren William plays Perry Mason in the first of the Warner Bros Pictures films. Millionaire Arthur Cartwright comes to see him and he asks about making a will. He tells Mason his neighbor has a howling dog that is keeping him up all night. Soon there's murder and Perry's right in the middle of it. Perry gets working on the case and he manipulates the evidence to keep a head of the police. The story is familiar to those that have seen the TV show with Raymond Burr. Introduction of the characters, the murder, some detecting and the trial.

I liked some of the actors in the movie. That's Lightning the dog in the picture on the left. He's a good actor. Warren William has 66 films listed on the IMDb, all in the 30s and 40s. He played Philo Vance in a couple of films and The Lone Wolf in 9 films. He died at age 53 in 1948. The local library has a William's bio that I put on my request list. I'm not a big Mary Astor fan but she's usually good in her films. She had quite the life. I am a big fan of Alan Jenkins but not the mustache he wears in the film. Here he plays a tough cop that is always that one step behind Perry. Allan's career started in 1931 and ended when he passed away in 1974. Grant Mitchell is a really good character actor who's been in 125 films. I've seen quite a few of his films over the years.

There's plenty of snappy dialog and interesting characters. The mystery is complex enough and it kept me guessing. I'd already forgotten the story in the several years since seeing the movie for the first time. The movie gets a well deserved 6.9 on the IMDb.

The Case Of The Curious Bride 1935

The Gardner novel was adapted by Tom Reed with additional dialog by Brown Holmes. The movie is directed by Michael Curtiz.

Warren William is still Perry but this time Allen Jenkins is Spudsy Drake. He's a louder and goofier version of the Paul Drake that appears in the novels and TV show. Olin Howland plays the highly entertaining Coroner Wilbur Strong and Errol Flynn, in his first film, plays the dead guy. He gets a scene where he's alive in a flashback.

Perry's ex-girlfriend has a problem, her dead husband shows up demanding money or he'll tell her new husband she never got a divorce. The dead husband turns up dead and the ex gets arrested for murder. Perry gets to work to figure out the mystery. There's no courtroom drama in this movie but the solution works out well.

The Case Of The Lucky Legs 1935

The third of the series was adapted by Jerome Chodorov and the screenplay was written by Brown Holmes and Ben Markson. It's directed by Archie Mayo. Warren Williams returns to play Perry Mason and Allen Jenkins is up to his old tricks as Spudsy Drake. Olin Howland returns as the highly entertaining coroner. He manages to steal more scenes he's in. There's a new Della Street, this time it's Genevieve Tobin. Lyle Talbot plays a doctor and Barton MacLane plays a cop.

This time Perry gets in the middle of a con man and his victims. Perry finds his dead body and has to bring out his big bag of tricks to keep ahead of the police. Again there's no courtroom scene in this movie. Still, there's a good script and plenty of good actors to read the parts. There's even more humor in this film than the previous ones. 

The Case Of The Velvet Claws 1936

It's the last of the Perry Mason films for Warren William. This movie is based on the first novel, Tom Reed wrote the screenplay, William Clemens is the director. Two of Clemens' earlier films were the delightful Nancy Drew...Reporter and Nancy Drew...Detective. Claire Dodd once again plays Della Street but sadly Allen Jenkins is gone and Eddie Acuff is playing Spudsy Drake. He's even goofier than Allen.

Olin Howland plays a different coroner but he's still as much fun as his previous appearances in Perry's world. There's marriage in the air as Perry and Della tie the knot. A woman with a gun and $5000 keeps interrupting the nuptials. It's probably the silliest of the films and least like the novel. Still it was fun to watch even though there's no courtroom scene. Funny how they wrote out all the courtroom scenes in these movies. What kind of thinking was that. Popular crime novels with plenty of high powered courtroom scenes and they toss that away. I wonder if that affected the popularity of the series.

The Case Of The Black Cat 1936

Ricardo Cortez is now playing Perry Mason. According to the Wikipedia Earl Stanley Gardner didn't care for Cortez and he was replaced in the last film. Too bad, he's not a fun Perry, as Warren was, but I liked Ricardo who was a great no nonsense Perry Mason. Certainly he's more like the character in the book and the version by Raymond Burr. Ricardo's career started in 1917 and he worked until he retired in 1960.

The movie was written by F Hugh Herbert and directed by William C McGann and an uncredited Alan Crosland. Alan died while directing the film and William finished the work. The story has less humor than the previous films and they finally return to the courtroom. Spudsy Drake is gone and Paul Drake is on the case.

Perry is called out of bed to write a new will for a man. Soon after the man dies in a fire in his bedroom. Then someone else got dead and Perry's got his hands full. It was good enjoyable mystery. I liked it quite a bit.

This film and the last in the series are 15 minute shorter and I read that it might mean that the series hadn't done as well as they might have wanted at Warner Bros so the budgets got cut and the series was moved to the B-movie unit. You can read more about the B-movie on the Wikipedia. The shorter running time means that there isn't much time for anything but story. It moves briskly along and there's usually something interesting in most scenes.

The Case Of The Stuttering Bishop 1937

Donald Woods is now Perry Mason and Ann Dvorak is Della Street. Don's the least interesting Perry of the trio but he's not awful or anything. Ann does OK for the most part. The screenplay is by Kenneth Gamet and Don Ryan with William Clemens directing. Tom Kennedy and Frank Faylen have parts in the film.

A Bishop from Australia comes to Perry to ask him to take on the case of wrongly accused woman. That leads to murder and that poor woman is arrested for that. Perry and Paul Drake, played by Joseph Crehan, get to work investigating. There's a good mystery and some entertaining scenes. It might be my least favorite of the 6 but it's still a fairly good film.

All in all I was quite pleased to see all these films again. I'm glad to have picked up that set and I'll watch them again someday.

Perry Mason Season 4

 

I'm still watching episodes of Perry Mason. I finished season 4 today. The season started airing in September 1960. This season has 28 episodes which is 2 up over season 3. Season 1 had 39 episodes, which dropped to 30 the following year.

There's the usual Perry Mason law talking. He's always got plenty of help from his secretary Della Street (Barbara Hale) and PI Paul Drake (William Hopper). They all seem to work day and night so I guess the pay must be great. William Talman returns to play Hamilton Burger in a few episodes. He'd been let go because of a naughty party he'd been at that got raided. He was cleared of any wrong doing and the cast and crew of Perry Mason lobbied for his return. Ray Collins plays Lt Tragg in most episodes.

Like the other season's we meet some people, there's a murder and Perry gets called into to help. They change it up a bit and have the murders take place at different points in the story but they follow that pattern pretty much. All the cases have some investigating and some court room action.

The occasional episode takes Perry and the gang out of town. In one episode they visit a town having  days and Paul gets arrested for not wearing a beard. The fact that they took mug shots comes in handy later. Another episode has locations shot at Vandenberg Air Force Base in a story about missile testing and murder.  

There's plenty of good actors who stop in to play the guest cast: Robert Redford, Whit Bissell, Dabbs Greer, Francis X Bushman, Regis Toomey, Louise Fletcher, Edward Platt, Phillip Abbott, Faith Domergue, James Coburn, John Hoyt, Adam West, Simon Oakland, Dub Taylor, William Schallert and Otto Kruger. And those are the ones that I knew the names of, there's plenty more I didn't know that do a good job.

Now that I've seen that season it's onto something else. But what?

Perry Mason Season 3

 

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.

Perry Mason Season 2

The second season of Perry Mason started airing September 20 1958 and there were 30 episodes. There were the usual murders, snooping about, law talkin' and Perry's putting the fear into the witness on the stand. He can sure suck the guilty out of them. They pretty much stick to a formula, we meet some people, someone gets bumped off, Perry has a client, there's more detecting and a long bit of courtroom activity. They change it up once in a while and have the guilty person confess in another location. Sometimes Perry travels out of town, both to investigate and to appear in court, it makes a nice change and DA Hamilton Berger doesn't always have to lose. There's enough difference in the stories that they don't get too boring.

There's a few guests I recognized, William Ching, Elisha Cook Jr, John Denher, Arthur Franz, Jesse White, Edgar Buchanan, Cecil Kellaway, Hugh Marlowe, Marion Ross, Frankie Laine, Bobby Troup, Benson Fong, John Agar, Dick Foran and Biff Eliott. The last guy, Biff, played Mike Hammer in a 3D version of I, The Jury. He's not a good actor but the movie is highly entertaining.

I'm still enjoying the series but will take a break for another season of something else.

Perry Mason Season 1

 

Right from the wonderful Perry Mason opening theme by Fred Steiner I was hooked. I hadn't seen these shows in many years. I watched Perry Mason when I was a kid and enjoyed them. I think I saw some of them in the 1980's but that might have been the series of TV movies that started in 1985. I had read some of the Perry Mason books by Earl Stanley Gardner. My mother used to read them and they were around the house. I liked Gardner's Donald Lam and Bertha Cool series better than the Mason books. I have a whole set of the 29 books somewhere and I've been thinking about re-reading them again. If only I knew where they are. Oh, well, sometimes the search is half the fun. You never know what you'll find.

 

Raymond Burr plays Perry Mason and he's a lot better in this series than he was in Godzilla. The 1st series started September 21 1957 and there were 39 episodes. All but three were taken from one of the 82 Perry Mason novels and 5 short stories. The production company optioned the whole of Earl Stanley Gardner's fiction, 272 novels and stories. Looking at the credits on the whole series they used 74 novels and 1 short story in the 9 years. After the first couple of years the number of adaptations decline to two or three a year.

Barbra Hale plays Secretary Della Street, William Hopper plays Investigator Paul Drake, William Talman plays District Attorney Hamilton Burger and Ray Collins plays Police Lieutenant Arthur Tragg. They all do their jobs well but Perry is always one step ahead of everyone. He gets caught off guard or in the act but manages to wiggle his way out of his trouble. The shows follow a pretty solid formula. We meet some people, they get their asses in trouble, Perry gets involved, Paul investigates as Perry directs and the last 30-40% of the show is spent in the courtroom. Perry usually gets people to give up by sheer yakking at them. Of course, he's got some good proof to rub their faces in. He knows the law, he works the law and he plays fast and loose with the law. Tragg and Burger want to catch him up to something.

There were plenty of guest stars that I remembered: John Archer, Margaret Hayes, Frances Bavier, Whit Bissell, L Q Jones, Angie Dickinson, Denver Pyle, Werner Klemperer, Jack Weston, H M Wynant, Les Tremayne, Yvonne Craig, Fay Ray and John Hoyt. There were plenty of other good actors that were familiar but I didn't recognize their names. 

The murders vary and the settings vary. Someone is up to something and people need to die. Most often Perry's client has been charged with murder. Perry thinks quickly and comes up with a plan for the defense. Della and Paul assist where they can and they all spend a lot of time together. They get sandwiches a lot and occasionally they eat out at a restaurant. A couple of episodes had the trial out of Los Angeles, and a couple had Perry trip up the murder out of courtroom, usually while the trial was in recess. The stories aren't overly complex, the crimes interesting, and the deduction and investigation top notch. Gardner practiced law but gave it up for writing. He was very strict about accuracy of the law on the program. I really enjoyed the first series and will get around to more of them before too long.