Incredibly, we're creeping up on the 70th anniversary of the first season of the classic Perry Mason television series. The initial episode, 'The Case of the Restless Redhead', was broadcast on Sept 21, 1957, though astute Perryphiles will note that this wasn't the first filmed episode. That honor traditionally is given to 'The Moth Eaten Mink', which was filmed in October 1956, nearly a year before the series premiered. Speaking of dates, an admission: your humble servant is of sufficient certain years to actually have watched some episodes when they originally appeared (though if memory serves me, I didn't, at least I don't recall if I did). The fondness for the Perry show came many years, even decades, later. In any event the use of the word incredibly above refers to the program's timelessly modern look and feel nearly seven decades on, along with its exploring issues that still resonate today. Thus, some reflections on, and much appreciation of, the show may be in order.
Being a product of the baby boom generation you could say I’m a child of the television era. Some of my earliest and most indelible memories are of watching TV with my two brothers and parents in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Which probably explains my preference for black and white TV programs, movies too. By the way, I watch old movies and classic television almost exclusively at night, for whatever reason. It must have something to do with the magic and other-ness (creepiness too) of black & white, which just doesn’t work as well in the daytime. The commentary tracks on classic film DVDs are another matter. I prefer watching them in the daytime.
Whatever the case, my favorites were and still are the crime, mystery and cop shows from that era, which might also be deemed the golden age of the private eye television series. My other happy memories were of watching sports on TV. One of my first recollections was watching ‘the greatest (football) game ever played’ at my grandparents’ house. My grandfather wanted the Giants to win (he pronounced them the ‘gEYEnts’). As for me I exulted in the Colts’ victory. Other sports I enjoyed watching were basketball, baseball, boxing, the Olympic games, and even, I’m ashamed to say, professional wrestling, the latter two not so much these days, though, in my defense, I’m told the wrestling matches in them days weren’t choreographed quite so much as they are today, and certainly weren’t as wildly theatrical, the spectacle of which would make the sleaziest Roman emperor blush. Thus the power of television certainly influenced my early life and probably still does in some mysterious, subterranean way in the catacombs of my creative imagination.
Progressing forward in time, the Seventies, Eighties and Nineties are a bit of a blur as to my television preferences, as are many details of life in general per those decades. But I never lost my taste for crime, melodrama and mystery. Today I’ve developed a fondness for what’s dubbed true crime, the TV version. These programs portray law enforcement as benevolent, competent and well-intended, with only an occasional token bad apple or bungled investigation thrown in for contrast. Many would agree with this portrayal, but then again many would not.
Whatever the reality, I delude myself that watching such fare is ‘research’, but the truth is that true crime, at least as purveyed by the medium of television, has little, if anything in the way of influence on my creative literary endeavors. Maybe I’m being snobbish, but the television version of ‘true crime’ is really pop crime at its best (or worst, depending upon one’s point of view), a reductive, if admittedly entertaining, exemplar of pop culture’s lowest common denominator principle, buttressed by a large helping of psychology delivered by talking heads, packaged and designed to appeal to an unsophisticated mass audience – how’s that for elitist? One thing I will say for pop crime, as well as crime dramas, is that the stories move along, in contrast to real life. The snail’s paced real-life trials depicted on TV in particular seem to me more about minutiae and ritual than actually dispensing justice.
In any case, as hinted at elsewhere in these pages, the genuine influences on my writing are: the British cozy mystery; Raymond Chandler; film noir; and the pre-Code movies of the early Thirties, the latter of which I took to in a big way, so much so that in my stories I try to imitate the cadence, pacing and attitude that appears in these early classics, not totally inappropriate, especially in the case of my sleuth heroine Kay Francis, a quintessential pre-Code actress though largely forgotten today.
On the subject of influence and imitation, perhaps it's instructive to recall some thoughts penned by the irrepressible Oscar Wilde: “Of course I plagiarize. It is the privilege of the appreciative man.” Then there's: "It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes, and he annexes everything." And: "There is an element of imitation in all the arts ... the danger of valuing it too little is almost as great as the danger of setting too high a value on it."
Getting back to television, and specifically Perry Mason, my all time favorite shows, not counting things like documentaries, sports, etc., seem to be the Perry show and The Twilight Zone. Both are from the same era, the same network, and have stylistic, and even thematic, similarities. Moreover, actors crisscross from one to the other seamlessly. Other favorites along the way have been The Fugitive, Law & Order, Columbo, The Americans, Dexter and Poirot. And it doesn’t escape me that all of the above, Twilight Zone possibly excepted, deal with crime and criminals. Curiously, having lived in Albuquerque for the better part of three decades, I never warmed to Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul. Go figure.
I’ve read comments online and elsewhere that Perry Mason has lots of film noirish elements, and to some extent I agree: same era (at least in part); crime and mystery content; murder; (mostly) urban setting; femmes fatales; and most of all, the black & white look. There’s also a certain congruence in that the traditional film noir bookend year was 1958, or thereabouts, just as television was hitting its stride and appropriating the noir ethos for the small screen, especially in shows like Perry, Route 66, the various jazz detectives, and police dramas like Naked City. Elements of noir also appeared in other genres like straight drama, westerns, and even sci fi/paranormal (Twilight Zone, One Step Beyond and Outer Limits being the best examples).
As for the character of Perry Mason, he has delighted fans and devotees in several mediums for nearly a century: movies, novels, magazines, board games, theater, comic books, TV, and radiohave surged forth. Probably graphic novels too, but I’m not familiar with any. A recent, and to me, successful take on the old formula has been the two seasons of the HBO cable series Perry Mason (2020-2023), which offers its own, decidedly peculiar and frequently surprising, variations on the old themes. By the way, for clarification, unless otherwise noted, when I talk about Perry Mason and use terms like Perry-verse, Perry canon, Perry universe, Perry oeuvre and the like, I’m referring to the classic CBS series that ran from 1957 to 1966.
But was Perry truly a noir? While I’ll grant there are some similarities, at heart I see Perry Mason as closer in spirit, and content, to the classic British cozy mystery. Perry takes the role of the eccentric sleuth (ably assisted by Paul Drake), Della is an American version of Miss Lemmon, there’s a murder, almost always committed off-screen (thus little visible violence), several equally suspicious suspects, and a final reckoning, in this case the gathering of suspects in the courtroom, and, crucially, it’s the little details that catch the bad guy, and often the murderer is the least likely suspect. Despite the brutal acts that get the ball rolling, the tone is generally polite and civil (Perry’s back and forths with Hamilton Burger notwithstanding), and when the dust settles order is restored and all is well with the world.
More to the point, why is Perry Mason so popular? All nine seasons have been released on DVD, and it seems to have been in syndication forever. In our neck of the woods I can catch it – and often do – weekdays twice a day, different episodes, on MeTV, at 8:00 a.m. and then at 10:30 p.m. Alas the morning version runs an hour and as a result there are cuts to fit in the commercials. As far as I can tell the late night entry, at sixty-five minutes, broadcasts the full episode.
But as for Perry’s popularity, the most facile explanation is that in the Perry universe truth, right, and justice, buttressed by indisputable evidence, and delivered in quintessentially American style, always win out – frequently they do not in real life – and this illusory take on reality is reassuring in our not so reassuring times. But the explanation for the show’s popularity, at least for me, may be more subtle, even mysterious (sometimes not so mysterious), and decidedly personal. Something has to do with the black and white look, which I find very comforting (color images, be they television, cinematic, or on a computer screen, are like a window to reality, which we certainly get enough of in, well, real life). Perhaps the formula. It’s satisfying to watch how it plays out and the way they tinker with the template a bit.1
But before getting to the additional, more obvious, joys of the Perry show, we might be allowed a sociological detour. To be precise, some Perryphiles have commented that the show has a leftist vibe, and while I appreciate this point of view I think the truth is a bit more complicated. If we do a broad brushstroke interpretation, Perry actually endorses the American legal, and by implication, political, system, with its true-justice-triumphs-in-the-end and the American-system-is-fair-after-all message. Of course a program whose entire raison d'être is at least one murder per week, frequently accompanied by attendant, lesser crimes, can’t lay claim to depicting a perfect society. However, the Perry folks finesse this contradiction by implying that the bad things that happen are the work of depraved, misguided individuals and not the system itself, which is benevolent and just. And whatever Hamilton Burger’s faults, he’s not totally illogical or especially malevolent in his assumptions. In short, he sincerely wants to dispense justice. It’s just that ultimately Perry gets the job done a little better. Among other things, he uncovers hitherto unrevealed evidence, often discovered by ace detective Paul Drake, that vindicates the defendant. Other times he applies psychological pressure, usually in the form of his aggressive interrogations, that forces the real culprit to confess, or offer something akin to a confession.
Moreover, the tone of Perry, even in the occasional oddball episodes, is strictly late Fifties civil, and thus presents American society as stable, wholesome, even bland, in other words, more or less an endorsement of capitalism, patriarchy, and heteronormality that was, and still largely is, the American model. Indeed the basic gestalt isn’t that different from Leave it to Beaver or Donna Reed. Maybe it was a CBS thing (or more likely, a censorship thing). Suffice to say, the idea of Perry as a commentary on, and reflection of, American society in the 1950s and 1960s is a fascinating, and debatable, issue that likely won’t be resolved anytime soon. And it occurs to me that such matters are prime grist for an enterprising PhD student or two, and indeed such studies have probably already been done.
Even though CBS was the most liberal of the three networks in the 1950s and 1960s, Perry Mason’s leftist sentiments, such as they are, express themselves in quiet, under-the-radar ways. One example: while Perry’s clients come from all ranks of the socio-economic spectrum – defendants range from the destitute to the filthy rich – he often represents the little guy, pro bono no less, while the big folks, i.e. big money, usually are the guilty party in these stories.
But it would be remiss not to mention at least one conspicuous example where Perry Mason dropped the ball, and that’s civil rights. Being as it was the dominant domestic political issue of the late 1950s and early 1960s, civil rights was the proverbial elephant in the living room, but we look in vain throughout the 270-odd episodes of Perry and find not one overt reference to the Civil Rights Movement, much less an entire story. But perhaps the Perry writers sneaked in progressive ideas, even nods to civil rights, through other means, in particular the generally sympathetic treatment of African-American, Asian, and Hispanic characters.2 One caveat: even Perry sometimes tended to have Caucasian actors portray Asians.
While it’s hard to dispute that Perry Mason was produced by white people, for white people, and watched by white people, nonetheless there are ethnics and minorities sprinkled throughout. Over the nine seasons we had two African-American judges (a couple of women judges too), a black court clerk, a black expert witness, a black woman in an episode’s first scene (in which she’s a resident of a minimum-security prison), a black actor playing a white character, a black night watchman, black mechanic, two black policemen, black jailer, black ‘hostess,’ an Asian caretaker, Asian hero, two Asian heroines, two black bartenders, blacks and Asians in the galleries and juries, and in public places like restaurants.3 For the times such casting was fairly daring.
In addition, there was also what we would call a Japanese episode, a Hawaiian episode, and a Chinese episode, complete with de rigueur exoticized treatment. And there are probably other examples that I don’t recall at the moment. In a strange reversal, characters who hail from Britain, Central Europe, or the Slavic countries are usually depicted as villains, or at least as shady, slippery types. Likewise for those who have an upper crust, faintly British vibe (though the actors may be American [read: Victor Buono and Jacques Abuchon]).
Perry Mason’s progressive bent also finds expression in characters who practice otherwise unconventional lifestyles or engage in ‘inappropriate’ relationships – bohemians, eccentrics, drifters, grifters, psychics, self-styled artists, wayward nephews/nieces, recluses, hitchhikers, runaways, as well as subtle suggestions of lesbians, lavender males, and relatives who are a little too fond of each other. This is the Perry subversive strain at its best.
This more or less gets us back to the pleasures offered by the program, and much of the credit has to go to the overall production design and high quality of delivery each week. And yes, there are a few clinkers along the way, but the highly consistent level of quality was a small miracle given the time and budget constraints, and in this context long-time executive producer Gail Patrick Jackson must be noted as one the true unsung heroines of the Perry universe.4
But in my case the appeal of Perry and -like shows from television’s Golden Age might be more personal. A recent viewing of a Twilight Zone marathon on the H&I network underscored this fact, especially so because I’m of sufficient certain years to have seen some of the TZ episodes when they were first broadcast back in the day. They say you can’t go home again, but experiencing these black and white gems allows us to re-live slivers of memorable early experiences, however different their present contexts may be. In a word, we invoke that overused term nostalgia, or put another way, the uncomplicated memory of a simpler time, and childhood recollections of baseball, visits to the lake, picnics in the park, and ice cream floats at Dairy Queen, all of which I suppose falls under the umbrella of nostalgia.
But as the fellow said, I begin to digress. The multiple pleasures of the Perry show, yes. With no disrespect to the yeoman work done by writers, directors, composers, cameramen, and regular cast members, for me the greatest joy of watching and re-watching the Perry’s is the pleasure received from the guest casts, and in particular how well matched actor and character are in the great majority of stories.5 A special delight is that so many of the players are veterans of classic film – the Forties and Fifties especially, and in some cases even earlier – with a goodly number who were prominently featured in films noirs, and this in part reinforces the impression that the Perry show was television noir.
Much as Alfred Hitchcock famously pronounced that a thriller is only as good as its villain, we might say that a Perry episode is only as good as the guest cast, and I challenge any Perryphile to name a truly memorable episode that had a middling cast.
By the way, I define guest casts to be those who play characters associated either directly or indirectly with the victim: spouses, relatives, significant others, business partners, witnesses, lawyers, agents, employees, clients, and of course the victim and eventual revealed culprit. To this group I would arbitrarily add the six pinch-hitting lawyers who filled in when Mason/Burr was out due to injury or illness. Excluded are anyone in official capacity: judges and medical examiners, assistant district attorneys, policemen, court clerks and guards/matrons, many of whom appear on multiple occasions and might be considered regular cast members.6
A curious note: numerous guest performers appear more than once. Julie Adams, Virginia Field, Ruta Lee, Dabbs Greer, Whit Bissell, Richard Erdman, Mala Powers, Lisa Gaye, and Gloria Talbott are only a few examples. But what’s interesting is that no guest player ever repeats an exact character. Character types, yes, almost to the point of typecasting: Stuart Irwin and Robert Harris as sweating neurotics; Patricia Barry as duplicitous femmes fatales; Anne Barton and Bethel Leslie as long suffering wives; Bill Williams as abrasive villains; Kathryn Givney as dictatorial, eminently unpleasant, family matriarchs; Richard Erdman, William Campbell, and Harry Jackson as scheming ne'er-do-wells.
Then there’s another group that falls somewhere in-between guest casts and regular cast members, and that’s the various extras and bit players who show up in numerous contexts – we glimpse them in restaurants, offices, night clubs, department stores, casinos, hotel lobbies, sidewalks, hallways, at the circus, racetrack, theater and other public venues – but most of all in the courtroom galleries and juries. Certain actors and actresses appear again and again, and it’s never clear whether they’re actually playing the same character each time. Some of the more visually prominent individuals include: Pencil Mustache Man, ‘Sasha Magaloff,’ Little Old Lady in a Hat, various Distinguished Ladies and Distinguished Gentlemen, Cute Brunette, Mediterranean Girl, and the Purple Woman Girl.7 There are probably others and I can’t claim to have listed them all. It’s in this group that we come to my favorite, ‘Miss Carmody.’
By the way, just so there's no confusion, a second 'Miss Carmody' appears in Season 8 in the person of a 'Sharon Carmody' (played by Mary Ann Mobley), a one-off character who has no connection to the ubiquitous Miss Carmody that's our concern here. Our Miss Carmody is an attractive, elegantly coiffed and dressed, thirty-something blonde whom we frequently see in the gallery. The actress’s name has never been revealed in the credits, and initial research suggests she may have worked as an extra in other venues in addition to Perry, but I've yet to confirm.
As for her Perry Mason contributions, ‘Miss Carmody’ appears in multiple guises – secretary, waitress, greeter, nurse, grocery store customer, receptionist, racetrack fan, restaurant customer, and of course face in the gallery – and we’re never certain whether she’s always playing the same character or multiple ones. By the way her name derives from the identity of a character she played in the “Blushing Pearls” episode. Curious that she didn’t receive a credit for this performance, playing a crucial, if peripheral, character. Miss Carmody’s appearances run the gamut of all nine seasons and while it’s a subjective thing I think she actually became more attractive as she got older. It's always fun for me to stumble upon a Miss Carmody sighting in a Perry. I scan the galleries to see what folks are there and in particular to find out if Miss C will turn up. In any event, stay tuned for further thoughts on Perry, Miss Carmody and the rest of the Perry universe.
1 Further reading: Heather L. Rivera and Robert Arp, Perry Mason and Philosophy: The Case of the Awesome Attorney, (Popular Culture and Philosophy), Open Court, 2020; Thomas Leitch, Perry Mason (TV Milestones), Wayne State University Press, 2005; Elayne Rapping, Law and Justice as Seen on TV, NYU Press, 2003; J. Madison Davis, "The Life and Times of Perry Mason: The Evolution of Today's Legal Thrillers," World Literature Today v86 n6 (Nov.-Dec. 2012), pp 9-11.
2 To the Perry creators’ credit they avoided casting African-Americans in clichéd or negative roles such as drug dealers, pimps, maids, mob bosses, prostitutes, athletes, entertainers, or destitute poor. Curiously, it’s the Hispanics (Mexicans and Mexican-Americans mostly) who get the short end in the Perry universe, as they are frequently portrayed stereotypically by vocation, accent, or clothes. Another group that gets the worst of it are the Native Americans. I could be wrong but I don't recall ever seeing a character played by a Native American actor, even in a bit part or cameo.
3 The Twilight Zone went Perry one better with an episode (“The Big Tall Wish”) with a near all-black cast.
4 A fun bit of trivia: in 1932 Gail Patrick Jackson, who then went by ‘Gail Patrick’, was one of the four finalists in the national contest for the coveted role of the Panther Woman in the horror cult classic Island of Lost Souls. She lost out to Kathleen Burke but later commented that losing the Panther Woman contest was the best thing that ever happened to her. She went on to a successful career as an actress, mostly in B movies, but is best remembered today for her work with the Perry show.
5 Alas, my enthusiasm for the guest casts is tempered by a certain sadness when I contemplate that almost all of the cast members, guest and regular, have passed on. To see them perform at their absolute peak, both physically and artistically, is always a privilege, and it serves as a sobering reminder that none of us is immortal and it's always a stacked deck when we're playing the mortality hand.
6 Many of the thespians of officialdom appear multiple times playing the same character, especially the judges. Exceptions: in one case a judge was also a guest cast member, and that was Lillian Bronson, who appeared as a judge three times and once as the doting housekeeper who looks after “The Sulky Girl." Other exceptions are 'Miss Carmody,' who, in addition to her many guises, had also appeared as a jail and court matron, and Don Dubbins, who was a Deputy D.A. three times and other characters in four stories.
Paul Fix was a kind of hybrid in the guest cast/not guest cast sweepstakes. He appeared in five episodes as a District Attorney. In four of the five appearances the character's name was Hale, and in one no name was given. In each episode he was the District Attorney, but the story took place in a different city each time.
7 For me it’s fun to speculate on these and other uncredited performers: who were these actors and actresses anyway? What happened to their careers? Could someone make a living by appearing as an extra and bit player? Did they appear in other TV series? How were they selected, and why did certain individuals like Miss Carmody become such favorites?
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