Note: Bethel Leslie (1929 - 1999) had a distinguished career, marked by success in theater, television, and film, and was recognized with both Emmy and Tony Award nominations. Her career, which spanned over 50 years, included numerous roles in classic TV dramas like Playhouse 90 and the greatest courtroom drama in the history of Creation, and later she worked as the head writer for the soap opera The Secret Storm. She received a Tony nomination in 1986, when she was 57, for her performance as the addict mother in Long Day's Journey into Night.
A Tribute to Bethel Leslie
Entertainers often come from families that resemble Hieronymus
Bosch more than Norman Rockwell paintings, so we movie-goers, not without melancholy, wonder:
what was nine-year-old Bethel Leslie thinking in 1938 when her parents split?
Was acting her coping mechanism? Did joining a cast feel like joining a family
- or at least a tribe of people who understood the thrill of greasepaint and
applause? And were those older actors the kind of role models an upper-crust
mother would want for her teenage girl? (Spoiler: probably not.) Or maybe it was
simpler: acting rang a creative bell.
Whatever the psychology, history thanks producer George
Abbott for spotting her. By 15, Leslie was on Broadway, in 1944, and she stayed
there through the mid-Fifties, earning respect in a string of productions. She
was the kind of actress who made critics reach for words like “poised” and
“intelligent,” which is code for the Spockian observation “It is far easier for
civilized people to act like barbarians than it is for barbarians to act like civilized people.”
On the classic Perry Mason TV series, Leslie played variations on a
theme: the nice woman married to a brute who might as well wear a sign reading
“Murder Me!” It’s a role that could slide into autopilot, but Leslie never
mailed in being the pretty defendant. Like Raymond Burr, who could brood with
the best of them, she treated the material seriously. Even when the script
parked her silently at the defense table for half an episode, wedged between
Della Street and Our Favorite Lawyer, Leslie radiated conviction. She
understood that nuance matters - even when your only line is a rueful look.
Janet Morris in TCOT Fugitive Nurse 2/15/58
Janet insists she doesn’t want a divorce. She says it
with the kind of conviction that makes you wonder if she’s lying to herself.
Her husband, a doctor with a taste for cash and secrecy, has been stashing
money like a squirrel in winter, neglecting to tell the IRS about his little
nest egg. He’s also cheating - of course he is.
Janet, in a gesture of wounded dignity, pleads with the
other woman to leave him alone. But the tax men are circling, and it’s Janet
who seems to be holding the sack. Her behavior is a study in contradictions.
Even Della Street, whose instincts are as sharp as a stiletto, can’t decide: Is
Janet protecting the man she claims to love, or angling for the missing $92,000
- a sum that would make her a millionaire in 2026?
There’s a whiff of history here. Janet sends hubby off on
a solo flight to Salt Lake City with hot coffee and a smile, then asks where
he’ll be staying so Mason can reach him about the divorce. He’s startled,
suspicious. So are we. Is this a bait-and-switch from a woman who once believed
in happily-ever-after?
And then there’s Leslie - society to her fingertips. She
opens the episode in a mink that suggests it’s all she’s wearing, like a JohnO’Hara heroine sprung to life. Janet, by contrast, wears privilege like a tired
perfume. She thought life with her med student would be champagne and roses.
Instead, it’s subpoenas and despair.
Evelyn Girard in TCOT Purple Woman 11/22/58
Evelyn had that Yankee polish - quiet grit, loyalty
stitched into every gesture. Her father’s pulpit loomed behind her like a
cathedral shadow, and she guarded his name as if it were Meissen porcelain. Yet
here she was, in Perry Mason’s office, voice brittle as old glass. Her husband,
an art dealer with a taste for fraud, had passed off a counterfeit canvas. Was
she exposed? Mason, calm as winter light, assured her she was clean. Still, her
words sagged with fatigue: “He’ll cheat whenever cheating’s possible.” Della
Street caught the look - disillusion, stark and cold.
But Evelyn’s virtue had hairline cracks. She’d been
writing love letters with the Chronicle’s art critic - letters her husband now
clutched like a mace. When he confronted her, his cruelty was surgical. “How
did he ever get a job on a newspaper?” he sneered, savoring the sting. He
promised her father would read every sordid syllable in divorce court. Evelyn,
trembling, threatened him with scissors - an outburst witnessed by the
secretary he bedded. Later, to that same woman, he spat a line no woman should
hear: “You’re too intellectual to understand my wife’s emotionality.”
And so the story turned. Evelyn in jail, eyes wide with
disbelief. Mason, patient, laying out motive and opportunity like cards on
green felt. She could see the picture any DA would paint for twelve folks too
dumb to get out of jury duty - but
still, lips sealed, she refused to name her lover. Burr gave Leslie space, as
he always did for guest stars in the jail cell interview scene. The scene was a
high note of drama, second only to the confession yet to come.
Sylvia Sutton in TCOT Wayward Wife 1/23/60
Sylvia was running on fumes when she swept into Perry
Mason’s office, all nerves and strained poise. Her husband, Ben - a man with
the soul of a loan shark - had already
squeezed $14,000 out of her and now wanted ten grand more from her brother Gil.
The price of silence? A car crash Gil allegedly caused, leaving a woman
paralyzed and the police none the wiser. Mason, cool as a martini, advised her
to skip the payoff and tell the cops everything.
But fear makes fools of us all. Convinced Gil had killed
Ben, Sylvia purloined a cleaning woman’s cloth coat and babushka – Harper’s Bazaar would call that “peasant chic” - and
dashed to her ransacked house, where Ben lay sprawled, skull cracked by a
fireplace poker. The cleaning woman spotted the theft, and soon Sylvia was in
custody, her mug shot destined for the society pages she once skimmed over
breakfast.
In court, Sylvia spoke no lines, yet her face told
volumes. Irony flickered in her eyes as witnesses paraded by - was this really
her life? Stealing a maid’s clothes, shrieking at cabbies like a fishwife? She
mourned her blindness: not seeing Ben for the cad he was from the get-go, not
foreseeing the sister-in-law’s affair with Ben, not imagining the car crash
that set this domino run in motion. Still, she held her head high. Yankee grit,
laced with rue. Life had thrown her curveballs, and Sylvia - tragic,
stylish Sylvia - was determined to look her best swinging.
