104. Perry Mason (1957-1966)

by Sam Juliano

I first came across and became subsequently hooked on Perry Mason as an impressionable teenager in the late 60’s.  The syndicated show aired on the New York City-based WPIX-TV once a day including weekends, barely a year after a celebrated nine-year run on CBS when 271 one-hour episodes made their debut.  With a package that extensive the likelihood of watching the same show multiple times over a short period was low, though at the rate of once a day even a lower grade students could figure out the entire run could fit comfortable into one calendar year with a few months left over.  However, all of the episodes did not run until the mid-80s when TBS finally obtained the rights after the long period when 195 (through the first six seasons) comprised the available cache.  A typical episode begins by setting up the conflict in the life of Perry’s future client.  More often than not it was blackmail, marital disintegration, embezzlement, stalking or a threat of bodily harm, but the mise en scene was even more varied.  Mason was played by Raymond Burr, a gravely-voiced, burly and impassive actor whose demeanor was unrelentingly stern.  He was predisposed to exhale through his nostrils, and he was always seemingly way behind the eight ball until suddenly everything came together in marked Hercule Poirot fashion.  Mason solved an unending line-up of baffling mysteries on each show with the help from the private investigator Paul Drake (played by William Hopper) and his faithful secretary, Della Street (Barbara Hale) to ultimately register victory after victory over hapless prosecutor Hamilton Burger (William Tallman).  To pull off his last-minute courtroom triumphs Mason often broke down witnesses on the stand or produced surprise witnesses that left the prosecution’s case in shambles.

What I never quite understood or questioned back in those days when acceptance was rarely challenged was that Mason not only exonerated his clients without an apparent exception but more often than not he tricked the actual murderer to confessing during cross-examination on the witness stand!  I never asked myself how or why every killer was present in the courtroom for virtually every case or how every supposedly air tight alibi was exploited and negated by a a super-human lawyer whose success ratio was as stellar as that of the Dynamic Duo, the Man of Steel, that inveterate pipe-smoker from Downing Street and the previously-alluded-to Belgian with the manicured mustache and the little grey cells.  Anyway, near the start nearly all clients would consult with Mason before anything vital had gone down, but then would quickly require the lawyer’s criminal defense expertise when someone ended up dead about twenty minutes in.  In most episodes crusty Police Lieutenant Arthur Tragg (Ray Collins of Citizen Kane notoriety) would arrest the client with some damning evidence and a laughable bravado that that in the end never stands up.  Inevitably Mason with the resourceful Drake and efficient Della piece together mitigating counter-evidence to trap and expose in grand fashion the real culprit.  One of the consistent pleasures of the show for viewers occasionally flummoxed by the unchanging formula is to observe the unsuspecting criminal stutter and stumble on the witness stand, the place where truth is always uncovered.

Of course this is a far cry from how the legal system works, not to mention a fraudulent conscription of a barrister’s success ratio.  But one would be hard-pressed to imagine what viewer wouldn’t derive glorious satisfaction watching the reserved Mason win out in the end over the most sour-pussed District Attorney who arrogantly never sees the writing on the wall until a confession is given in the courtroom.  The show’s success, despite the rarity of deviation is assuredly in spectacular terms.  Not only was it television’s longest running lawyer series, but it is still seen as the best detective series ever made for television.  Much of the credit of course goes to Burr, who began his career playing Hollywood heavies, most notably in Hitchcock’s 1954 masterpiece Rear Window.  He previously made a strong impression in 1948’s Pitfall, a suspense noir starring Dick Powell and won critical praise as the district attorney who hounds Montgomery Clift in the classic A Place in the Sun (1951).  One of his most unusual though more recognizable role was as a journalist who relays an account of Godzilla’s Tokyo rampage in the wildly popular Japanese film of the same title that spawned a franchise and endless imitations.  In any case Burr lost 120 pounds to play Mason, though through the series he weight fluctuated and he gained most of it back.

Trivia fans always delighted that the famed mystery writer of the books that Perry Mason were based on, Erle Stanley Gardner appeared in the show’s finest episode as a judge who resides over the second trial.  That show “The Case of the Final Fade-Out” was the only one filmed in color.  And the notion that Mason was unilaterally successful isn’t exactly right.  He did lose one case, the sixth season’s “The Case of the Witless Witness” in which a jury hands down a guilty verdict in case where Mason was unable to forge a reversal.  In two other cases the skilled attorney was able by the hour’s end to circumvent jury verdicts, thereby turning losses into triumphs.

The show’s theme music is one of the most recognized and remembered in television.  Composer Fred Steiner craftily aims to incorporate the lawyer hero’s sophistication and tactical brawn with his symphonic R & B “Park Avenue Beat” which even people who never watched the actual show can successfully sound out.

Many years after the earlier obsession Perry Mason remains delightful if not quite in discovery mode.  Though one knows how each show will end and the road it travels to get there, Burr’s formidable presence and quiet fortitude and satisfying courtroom turnarounds keep it captivating, and many of Gardner’s stories still hold a nine on a scale of 10 in the intrigue department.  A bonafide television classic, and with as much written about it as any other ever aired on the tube.