On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 6:20 AM 'Dave Sikula' via TVorNotTV < [email protected]> wrote:
> Even though I watched the original TV version in real time, I don't have a > lot of memories of it. My main familiarity with the character now is from > the movies made in the 30s, which vary in quality. Some of them are set in > Los Angeles, but at least one is in San Francisco. Sometimes he's operating > a one-lawyer firm, while in others, he has a vast network of associates, > investigators, and telephone operators, and takes only the most interesting > cases. In most of them, Allan Jenkins plays "Spudsy" Drake, who's kind of > dumb, but persistent, so Perry ends up having to do a lot of the > investigating himself. > > The main saving grace of the series (most of which are pretty good) is > Warren William (king of the pre-Codes) as a wolfish Perry (who seems more > concerned with his cooking skills than murder in one film) and Claire Dodd > as Della. There is little-to-no doubt as to the nature of their > relationship, even if the Production Code didn't allow them to fully spell > it out. I recommend almost all of them, but the last one with Donald Woods > as Mason is a little bland (as is Woods). > > I once had a dream that I was standing on the porch of my childhood home > and Fred Steiner's theme music came up. A convertible drove down the > street, and Monte Markham was sitting on the top of the rear seat like he > was in a parade. I thought "They tried to make us think Monte Markham was > Perry Mason, but it was really Raymond Burr." Then I woke up. > Back to the old TV series - Gardner wrote dozens of Mason books and the early episodes were based on them. I recall it took place in an unnamed city. The distinguishing thing about the Mason mysteries was that the clients and stories revolved around the wealthy. For average Joes watching on TV it was a glimpse into the homes and lives of the 1%. I don't know how big the writing staff was but at some point they ran out of Gardner stories and they had to branch out into other areas and other kinds of cases. At one point William Talman (DA Burger) was arrested for cannabis possession and didn't appear on the series for a while. At that point a lot of stories took place in rural areas outside of LA with various prosecutors. A shortcut the series took was to make the court proceedings take place in pretrial hearings. I think the reason they did this was to save on extras by not having to show a jury in the courtroom. Perry's relationship with Della on the show is simple: they are an old married couple with no hint of marriage or sex. Code era movies had ways of letting mature viewers know that characters had sex while leaving the young or naive unaware and that's not present at all in the series. It's hard to relate to a modern context because it doesn't exist in a modern context. They are an exclusive couple with no physical touch. And I don't think it has anything to do with Burr's orientation. If that hadn't been completely buried during the run of the show the sponsors would have fled and the show would have been canceled. Since HBO is letting me watch The Wire these days I would say the new HBO series is making Mason out to be McNulty and that doesn't work for me. The closest character by profession is Levy, the defense attorney, but Levy doesn't care at all about justice. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tvornottv/CAJE-FiEkGCP03Xzrz_JMJuoT4inZOfDxwYYBqTky-PHSX%2BRhkw%40mail.gmail.com.
