Perry Mason in Murder and Mystery Forum

0 Points

Forum Jump

Perry Mason

Author	Comment
Lawrence Nepodahl		#21	[-]
Jun 30 09 9:33 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Neither have I!
	Remove this ad
Lady Tottington		#22	[-]
Jul 1 09 9:08 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Last year I had a book containing -maybe -six or seven of the Perry Mason stories. They were fine for a summer read, and, in fact some were rather entertaining. But, after the first two or three, the "pattern" emerged and I pretty much knew what was going to happen and how it would happen. I went on to other authors. I now am a big fan of Ruth Rendell (aka Barbara Vine).
Lady Tottington		#23	[-]
Jul 1 09 9:16 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Sorry -- I forgot to add that I can understand the observation that Gardner disliked Warren Williams' portrayal of Perry. Perry was absolutely nothing like that. Williams was just doing his usual thing. I am a bit of a purist; as much as possible I prefer a film to respect an author's work......it may expand upon it but, please don't rewrite the whole thing.
davlghry		#24	[-]
Jul 3 09 10:03 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	In THE CASE OF THE LUCKY LEGS, I think they were trying to make Mason more like William Powell in the popular THIN MAN movies, boozy and humorous. Actually, Warren William kind of pulls it off.
Bill Warren		#25	[-]
Jul 4 09 1:20 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I can imagine Gardner not liking one of Warren Willilam's portrayals of Mason, but surely he didn't dislike all four--because William, apparently at the instructions of Warner Bros., played him a different way each time he played the role, which was four times. In the first one, he's very serious, very much in charge--and very wealthy, with a huge suite of offices, several telephone operators, a room filled with clerks, several partners and several private eyes, including Paul Drake. In the next one, set unaccountably in San Francisco rather than Los Angeles, he's a bon vivant and a gourmet cook, not breezy but self-assured. In the next, as noted, he's more or less a duplicate of Nick Charles--he has been drinking too much, and under the orders of his doctor has to switch from booze to milk. He's nonchalant and genuinely breezy, seemingly so insousciant (sp?) that he can't take anything, including the case at hand, very seriously. In his last outing, in which he marries Della Street, he's more serious again--but a la Raymond Burr in some of the lesser episodes of the TV series, pieces together the extremely unlikely case and all its multifarious parts based on, as far as I could tell, nothing whatsoever. In the next Mason outing, he was now Ricardo Cortez, not married, and fairly serious. The last time around (at Warners), he's Donald Woods, a murder suspect in an earlier Mason outing.
MJBare		#26	[-]
Jul 6 09 3:54 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Did I miss it or weren't the DVD's of the Mason movies released?
Bill Lydig		#27	[-]
Jul 6 09 8:04 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	The feature films have not been released. The first 4 seasons of the TV series will have been released by end of this year.
Friend of Daniel		#28	[-]
Jul 6 09 9:01 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Strangely, the element missing from these Mason films is the dramatic courtroom showdowns between Mason and the D.A. Sort of like no full moon in THE WOLF MAN. Were these courtroom scenes in the books or were they a creation of the Burr series?
Lady Tottington		#29	[-]
Jul 7 09 9:24 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Friend of Daniel wrote: Strangely, the element missing from these Mason films is the dramatic courtroom showdowns between Mason and the D.A. Sort of like no full moon in THE WOLF MAN. Were these courtroom scenes in the books or were they a creation of the Burr series? As I said above, I read the six or seven stories at least a year ago, so my memory is fuzzy. However, I really can't remember any big courtroom scenes. I do remember that Paul Drake was a private eye who was not on Perry's payroll and had his offices down the hall. He did lots of work for Perry, but wasn't a staff member per se. By the way, regarding the TV series....They made it clear that the scripts were reviewed by legal experts to be sure that the proceedings were accurate and realistic. The show was a big favorite of my father-in-law who became an attorney in Brooklyn in 1936 and worked steadily there until he died at age 86 (yeah he still had clients). He handled murderers, deeds, wills, a drunk driver going the wrong way on a bridge who killed and/crippled an entire family. He was an old -fashioned lawyer. He really liked the show but, would occasionally point out "That's not what he would do."or "The judge can't accept that." My assumption is that they didn't "sweat the small stuff" for the sake of drama and the time restrictions. The basic legal premises were respected though. Am I correct that E.S. Gardner was an attor
Dr Acula		#30	[-]
Jul 7 09 11:04 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	He was indeed a lawyer, and he created a fairly famous group that almost acted like real-life perry Masons, the Court of Last Resort: THE COURT OF LAST RESORT was formed by the late novelist Erle Stanley Gardner, although it was not his premeditated goal. Most remember Gardner as the creator of Perry Mason, the radio and television portrayal of a shrewd and cunning defense lawyer who often exposed the court to dramatics and then to the ultimate disclosure of the actual perpetrator of the crime. During the creation of The Court of Last Resort, the theme resembles the mission of the Justice: Denied Magazine, the exposure of wrongfully convicted persons of crimes for which they were not responsible, even though circumstantial evidence and a jury's conviction was contrary to the evidence. During 1946, The Court of Last Resort resulted from a three-part article published in the Saturday Evening Post. The article was entitled, The Case Of Erle Stanley Gardner, written by Alva Johnson, and it focused on Gardner's affinity for the underprivileged and those falsely convicted by fabricated evidence and brought attention to a corrupt criminal justice system. Much more at the above link, including details of a defendant they saved in a fairly high profile murder. Now here is a question for Perry Mason tv-show fanatics: What was the origin of the primitivist/minimalist human mask that hung behind Perry's desk in the series? Was it a one-on-a-kind piece made specifically for the show, or something that was commonly available at the time? And does it still exist? My God, what's Bond doing?... I think he's attempting re-entry, sir. http://www.eccentric-cinema.com/ Cole's Comics: All About Jack Cole http://colescomics.blogspot.com/
	Remove this ad
Bill Warren		#31	[-]
Jul 7 09 2:14 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Dr Acula wrote: Now here is a question for Perry Mason tv-show fanatics: What was the origin of the primitivist/minimalist human mask that hung behind Perry's desk in the series? Was it a one-on-a-kind piece made specifically for the show, or something that was commonly available at the time? And does it still exist? I don't know about the primitive mask nor about the giant toilet tank float near it. I'm also curious about the bust just inside the main door which usually has Mason's hat on it--and in the earliest episodes, we see him put it there a couple of times. I haven't read the books, so I know nothing about the set decoration that may have been described by Gardner in the novels--but in one of the WB features, I did notice a bust with a hat on it, so I suspect that one did originate with Gardner's fiction. Last Edited By: Bill Warren Jul 10 09 4:44 PM. Edited 1 times.
Bill Lydig		#32	[-]
Jul 8 09 9:28 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	The bust (I believe) is of Judge Blackstone and was also mentioned in the novels (Wiki bio below). The other decorations were likely unique to the TV series and were fashioned to give the office a contemporary look. Courtroom showdowns were a big part of many of the novels and were quite fun to read. Gardner novels are dialogue driven and courtroom scenes allowed dialogue to flourish. In the novels and the series, Drake was an independent PI who did a lot of work for Mason. Only the Allen Jenkins version was reduced to servant status. "Sir William Blackstone (originally pronounced Blexstun) (10 July 1723 - 14 February 1780) was an English judge, jurist and professor who produced the historical and analytic treatise on the common law called Commentaries on the Laws of England, first published in four volumes over 1765-1769. It had an extraordinary success, reportedly bringing the author £14,000, and still remains an important source on classical views of the common law and its principles."
Buzz Dixon		#33	[-]
Jul 9 09 2:46 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I've read a few several years ago (and have been looking for more but the local library doesn't have any). the one I remember involved a divorce' partitioning her house with barb wire until the case was settled. IIRC, the pacing and plotting were very similar to the TV series (many of which episodes were based on Gardner stories). I saw one several weeks ago about a lost gold mine; Gardner spent a lot of vacation time in Arizona hunting for the Lost Dutchman Mine (he wrote on article on his hunt for either POPULAR SCIENCE or POPULAR MECHANICS magazines). www.SnokieStories.com www.BuzzDixon.com http://twitter.com/snokiestories
Amentep		#34	[-]
Jul 10 09 4:07 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	If I recall correctly, the one with the barb wire is THE CASE OF THE FENCED-IN WOMAN published in 1972 after Gardner's death. The husband in the divorce sells it to the man who'll become Mason's client without letting him know about the problems with the divorce and the wife has been granted half-the-house while the divorce is being settled. I read it a couple of years ago and it was pretty entertaining. I haven't read many of the books (four to be exact; I went two for two in guessing the killers!) but the ones I did were from different periods and so patterns didn't seem obvious (the earliest I read THE CASE OF THE STUTTERING BISHOP included a prolonged fight between Mason and some Thugs with Della being endangered), the middle two played more like the TV series, and the last one with the Divorce reading a lot more like a 70s detective show to my mind). One of the recent Doc Savage reprints from Nostalgia Ventures tracks the parallel careers of Doc, Perry, Gardner and Lester Dent (Dent and Gardner were friends, Dent enjoyed the Mason series and wrote positively about it and Doc and Perry got their first stories published within months of one another in 1933)
Buzz Dixon		#35	[-]
Jul 14 09 9:01 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I'm starting a thread on the PERRY MASON TV show right..........here! http://monsterkidclassich...om/topic/24842/master/1/ www.SnokieStories.com www.BuzzDixon.com http://twitter.com/snokiestories
Bill Warren		#36	[-]
Jul 15 09 11:00 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	But this series is neither horror nor science fiction. Oh well. It looks like I've made some peculiar errors in buying the seasons as they come along. I don't quite understand the source of this error, but it is irksome. Apparently I've bought only about half the episodes for each season.
rvoyttbots		#37	[-]
Jul 15 09 11:20 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	The PERRY MASON season sets are split in two with Vol 1 & Vol 2. 30 episdoes per season, 15 episodes per volume, the studio is forcing us to pay double for one season. Same thing FOX did on the Irwin Allen TV shows. I always try to buy the sets during the DDD sale to get them cheaper.
Scathach80		#38	[-]
Jul 18 09 5:48 AM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Sotomayer honored Erle Stanley Gardner recently by mentioning Perry Mason. Gardner's founding of the Court of Last Resort does indeed qualify him as a human rights activist, so she did well to honor him. http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/lsf/nevins24.htm Francis Nevins wrote an article detailng Erle Stanley Gardner.
Lawrence Nepodahl		#39	[-]
Jul 18 09 3:28 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	I watched the very first Perry Mason MOTW, from 1985, last evening. The one where Dela is accused of murdering her boss (played by Patrick O'Neil). This show is on my 50th Anniversary set. In the intro. to it, Barbara Hale says that they made 30 of these Movies of the Week. I didn't realize they made that many.
Bill Warren		#40	[-]
Jul 18 09 7:43 PM Reply Quote More My Recent Posts	Hallmark Channel recently ran the whole batch.
	Remove this ad

<< Previous Topic Next Topic >>

Add Reply

Yuku free message boards

Perry Mason