Perry Mason 180: Gems from the Gritty Thirties

Note: In his early Perry Mason novels, Gardner’s experience as a lawyer shines through in clever courtroom twists and procedural detail. Many early tales - like TOCT Velvet Claws  - captivate with inventive plotting and dramatic revelations. These early Mason novels move rapidly, keeping readers engaged through a steady succession of legal dilemmas and high-stakes maneuvering.

Three Perry Mason Gems from the Gritty Thirties

The Case of the Howling Dog (1934)
Frequently cited as the strongest early Mason novel, its average reader rating (~4.06 Goodreads) is the highest of the 1930s titles. Praised for its clever mystery - centered on snappy plotting, it remains a standout in Gardner’s early run.

In Gardner’s fourth Perry Mason novel, the case starts not with murder but with a peculiar request. Arthur Cartright, a man suffering the fatigue, poor focus, and headaches of insomnia, wants to leave his estate to another man’s wife - and stop neighbor Clinton Foley’s dog from driving him mad with its nightly howls. Foley calls Cartright a lunatic and accuses him of spying on his household, including a Chinese cook who becomes a symbol of being seen but not understood.

Cartright sends Mason $10,000 to change his will. Soon, the dog is poisoned, Foley’s wife vanishes, and secrets pile up. Mason and Paul Drake dig in while police blunder - Detective Holcomb is arrogant, and DA investigator Pemberton spews racist slurs, claiming expertise on “Chinks.” Gardner gives the cook dialogue that reflects the pidgin speech he likely heard as a lawyer for Chinese and Mexican clients.

Mason plays his trademark no-limit game: planting stories, hiding witnesses, crafting fake confessions. He explains Americans crave drama, not dignity - so he turns the courtroom into theater. His justice isn’t blind; it’s pragmatic, empathetic, and fearless. He bends rules to protect the innocent, guided by lived wisdom, not academic theory.

The ending is open. Justice here is messy, the law a maze. Gardner offers more than a mystery - he meditates on identity, perception, and the fragile bridge of language. A man with binoculars, a poisoned dog, and a missing woman unravel a world - and remind us how hard it is to make sense of the noise.

The Case of the Perjured Parrot (1939)
One of the most highly rated early entries, earning an average Goodreads score of ~4.05. Critics and readers applaud its inventive premise - murder with a talking avian witness, highly sympathetic accused, and its tightly wound courtroom drama.

The fourteenth Perry Mason novel opens with Della ribbing Mason about paperwork - until Charles Sabin hires him to probe his father Fremont’s murder and block a greedy widow from grabbing the estate. Gardner adds backstory: Fremont, a rugged individualist, oddly obsessed with avoiding publicity, makes choices that lead to trouble.

Fremont is found shot in his mountain cabin, while his parrot shrieks, “Helen, put down that gun!” But which Helen - his wife Helen Watkins or librarian Helen Monteith? And why swap parrots? Gardner makes Helen Monteith’s Depression-era choices believable, hinting at the demoralization of long-term unemployment.

Mason muses on “fixed beliefs” and misread signs - a Stoic-style digression on calculation and judgment. Meanwhile, Gardner keeps the plot brisk, mixing will-law technicalities with sharp-elbowed characters like Mrs. Watkins Sabin. The finale swaps a courtroom for a coroner’s inquest, complete with bully Sgt. Holcomb and a satisfying twist.

The Case of the Counterfeit Eye (1935)
Strongly regarded, with a ~4.01 rating on Goodreads. Admired for its eerie atmosphere and sharp legal maneuvering over a stolen glass eye, it’s often singled out as one of Gardner’s more imaginative early mysteries.

Perry Mason’s day starts with Brunold barging in, claiming someone swiped his glass eye and swapped in a dime-store dud. He’s sure the real one will star in a crime scene -because in 1935, glass eyes are the new fingerprints.

Before Perry can finish his coffee, in waltz a young woman and her puffed-up brother. Said brother worked for Hartley Bassett, a businessman with all the charm of a tax audit, and got caught embezzling. Bassett wants his money yesterday; sis begs Mason for an installment plan. Mason agrees - because wrecking a life over youthful stupidity isn’t his style.

Bassett, however, is about as flexible as a brick. No deal. Then his wife corners Mason with a question straight out of pulp: “Can you run off with another man without committing bigamy?” Mason’s day is now officially sponsored by Chaos Inc. And then - surprise! -Bassett turns up dead, clutching a glass eye like it’s Exhibit A.

Fun fact: the 1960 TV version swapped the eye for a toupee. Apparently, mid-century America had a lower cringe threshold. Gardner keeps the energy high, tossing Mason into scrapes and letting him bend the law like a pretzel. Della nails it: “You’re half saint and half devil!”

Bonus milestone: this sixth Mason novel introduces Hamilton Burger, future courtroom nemesis - here still polite, before evolving into the guy who hates Mason’s guts.

The finale? A courtroom circus with Mason pulling stunts that look reckless until his logic lands like a mic drop. If you want psychological depth or social commentary, look elsewhere. If you want the Thirties tough as taxes and full of legal acrobatics, this one delivers.

Stoic Week 2026 #2

Note: This week is Stoic Week 2026, the annual event that encourages participants to “live like a Stoic for a week.” It’s online, completely free, and considerably less laborious than massaging insights from childhood torments into a memoir. Besides, now that I no longer teach (the pandemic having euthanized the program), D. H. Lawrence’s “passion of instruction” must be directed somewhere before I end up on campus wearing a sandwich board that reads: “FREE WISDOM. LIMITED WARRANTY.”

So this Pre-Code movie's basic lesson is wisdom begins when we stop reacting to appearances and start examining our judgments. The danger is being deceived by our own unexamined value judgements. If yesterday's Bad Girl argues that smooth human relations come from honest vulnerability, Flaming Gold argues that Stoic justice comes from intellectual humility: the willingness to say, "I may be wrong about this person," and then look again.

A Stoic Reading of Flaming Gold (1933)

The Pre-Code movie Flaming Gold looks like a routine oil-field melodrama, but beneath the adventure plot lies a surprisingly Stoic lesson about perception, emotional reactivity, and the discipline of fair judgment.

Dan Manton and Ben Lear are successful oil wildcatters whose friendship is tested not by external competitors but by their own judgments. A powerful corporate rival threatens their business, yet the greater danger comes from suspicion, wounded pride, and the stories they tell themselves about one another. As Epictetus might observe, people are disturbed less by people and events than by the opinions they form about them.

The film's moral center is Claire Gordon, played by Mae Clarke. Claire's past as an escort becomes the basis for nearly every judgment made against her. Ben treats rumor as fact and prejudice as knowledge. Claire, however, displays a form of practical wisdom. Having lived through hardship and scrutiny, she understands human nature better than thems that wear pants who presume to judge her. She neither wallows in self-pity nor desperately seeks approval. Instead, she meets suspicion with resilience and composure.

Clarke's performance works because she refuses to play Claire as either victim or fallen woman. She portrays someone who has learned that reputation is not entirely within one's control, but character is. When confronted by Ben's accusations, she often appears less wounded than amused, recognizing that his hostility says more about his own misconceptions than about her.

William Boyd and Pat O'Brien make an effective pair as partners whose friendship balances loyalty and rivalry. Boyd's Dan frequently allows passion to cloud judgment, while O'Brien's Ben initially mistakes cynicism for wisdom. Ben's character arc is the film's most satisfying achievement because it is essentially a journey toward Stoic self-correction.

At first he is ruled by prejudice, quick conclusions, and the desire to be right. Yet unlike many stubborn men in melodramas, he is capable of examining his own judgments. After his confrontation with Claire, he recognizes that fairness requires more than confidence in one's opinions. It requires the humility to admit error. His eventual support of Claire feels earned because it grows from justice rather than sentimentality.

Viewed through a Stoic lens, Flaming Gold is about learning to distinguish facts from impressions. Ben's growth comes when he stops reacting to appearances and begins evaluating his own character. Claire succeeds because she understands what lies within her control and what does not.

The ending resolves matters too quickly, but the film remains engaging because it presents a timeless lesson: mistrust, pride, and prejudice can destroy friendships far more effectively than any business disagreement. Wisdom begins when individuals examine their judgments and choose fairness over snap judgements. Mae Clarke's modern, self-possessed performance gives that lesson much of its force.

Stoic Week 2026 #1

Note: This week is Stoic Week 2026, the annual event that invites participants to “live like a Stoic for a week.” It’s online, completely free, and considerably cheaper than years of therapy. Besides, now that I no longer teach (the pandemic provided the excuse to can the program I taught in), what D. H. Lawrence called “the passion of instruction” has to find a host lest I take to sitting on a rock in the middle of campus behind a sign saying “Ask Me Anything.”

This Pre-Code movie echoes Stoicism with its advice to stop managing appearances and start facing reality. Fear, pride, and false beliefs create more misery than circumstances ever do. What director Borzage ultimately dramatizes is a Stoic paradox: true strength is not lofty self-containment a la Mr. Spock or John Wick but the willingness to meet reality honestly, together with others, without fear of appearing vulnerable.

A Stoic Reading of Bad Girl (1931)

Frank Borzage's Bad Girl is often described as a Depression-era romance, but viewed through a modern Stoic lens it becomes a study of how fear, pride, and mistaken judgments can keep people from receiving the very things they most desire.

Dot Haley (Sally Eilers) and Eddie Collins (James Dunn) genuinely love one another. Their suffering arises from a failure of honest communication. Like many people who grew up among unsympathetic types, they mistake vulnerability for weakness. The Stoics would recognize this immediately as a problem of judgment rather than circumstance.

Both characters come from difficult backgrounds and have learned the same lesson: protect yourself by telling nobody nothing. They conceal worries, mute emotions, and avoid direct expressions of need. What appears to be strength is actually a defensive posture toward life. Epictetus warned that many people become prisoners of false beliefs. Dot and Eddie believe that revealing fear, love, or uncertainty will diminish them and lay them open to hurt. As a result, they create unnecessary isolation inside a marriage built on genuine devotion.

Eddie hides behind jokes and slang because humor feels safer than honesty. He dismisses affection as "mushy stuff" and mistakes emotional reserve for masculine strength when it is really fear in disguise.

Dot's pregnancy intensifies these fears. Haunted by her mother's death in childbirth, she suffers as much from imagined futures as present realities. As Marcus Aurelius observed, people often burden themselves more with anticipation than with the thing itself.

Eddie also ties his worth to his ability to provide, treating financial struggle as a personal failure rather than a circumstance to be faced honestly. The Stoics never condemned material success, but they insisted that it had better not become the foundation of self-respect. Eddie's refusal to discuss money openly stems from the belief that financial struggle reflects personal failure.

The film's most revealing irony is that both spouses think they are protecting each other. Dot hides her worries about pregnancy. Eddie conceals his anxieties about money and responsibility. Each assumes silence is an act of love. In reality, silence deprives them of true intimacy. Their suffering grows precisely because they attempt to carry burdens alone.

What makes Bad Girl endure is its understanding that people often fear emotional honesty more than hardship itself. Dot and Eddie's real obstacle is not poverty, pregnancy, or social pressure but the mistaken belief that strength means self-containment. Borzage's profoundly Stoic insight is that tranquility comes not from suppressing emotion but from confronting reality honestly. Nearly a century later, the film remains moving because its lesson is timeless: people suffer less from circumstances than from fear, pride, and false judgments. Happiness arrives when Dot and Eddie stop managing appearances and begin facing life together.

Perry Mason 179: TCOT Reluctant Model

Note: In the 66^th Mason novel from 1962, an anxious world finally learns Della Street’s address - the Crittmore Apartments on West Selig Avenue. The novel is dripping with mid-century cool: Drake records a phone call and casually kills the legal beep, credit cards are the new craze (though Mason’s client is strictly cash-only), and Drake name-drops the dye-transfer color photo process like a hipster snapper. Gardner even unveils a cutting-edge way to peg time of death - blood-cooling rates. The term “Lushbaugh method” is still used today because Gardner coined the name in this novel.

The Case of the Reluctant Model - Erle Stanley Gardner

It begins with something trivial, as these things often do: a question about a painting. Lattimer Rankin, an art expert, comes to Perry Mason with a grievance. Another expert, Collin Durant, has cast doubt on a canvas Rankin sold to Otto Olney. A model, Maxine Lindsay, claims it’s a fake. Rankin wants to sue. Mason advises restraint - better to secure Maxine’s sworn statement and let Olney handle the matter. Sensible, measured. But sense rarely prevails.

Maxine testifies. Olney makes a statement to the press, all bravado and polish. That evening, Durant appears at Mason’s office, demanding to be heard. Mason refuses. Then Maxine calls, her voice taut, saying she’s leaving town. No explanation. Mason sends Paul Drake to follow her. The next day, Durant is found dead - in Maxine’s apartment. She has vanished.

From here, the story coils tighter. Mason informs Tragg, but soon finds himself in another city, speaking to Maxine, only to be caught by Tragg again. Rankin’s lawsuit fades; Mason now defends Maxine, who is drowning in circumstantial evidence. Durant had leverage - knowledge of secrets surrounding Maxine’s sister and her husband - and he used it. He also commissioned fake portraits of Maxine, another grotesque example of punishing a woman for her beauty.

The preliminary hearing is a parade of damning fragments. A woman saw Maxine at a bus station phone booth; her gun was found in a locker there. That gun killed Durant. A neighbor glimpsed her near the apartment at the time of death. Canary has disappeared. The artist produces the disputed portrait. The judge listens, impassive, as witnesses file past. The case seems airtight. Is it? Who placed the gun in the locker? Who pocketed the $2,000 for the forgery? And why does every answer feel like a door opening onto another, darker room?

Gardner’s ending strains credulity. Coincidence piles upon coincidence: an unlocked door, a conveniently found gun, a victim oblivious to an intruder’s presence. The killer discards the weapon where Maxine had been, sealing her fate. It feels hurried, as if Gardner, weary of wandering in his own topiary labyrinth, chose escape with a trimmer shearing through the nearest hedge.

Still, the novel fascinates. It breaks Mason’s usual pattern, revealing his stoic philosophy and Tragg’s authoritarian fairness. And those antique Americanisms - “as dead as a mackerel,” “take a powder” - linger like ghosts of another age. These idioms seep into my vocabulary and make 50-something women at work say softly, wonderingly to me, “You sound like my dad.”

 

Perry Mason 178: Bachelors Get Lonely

Bachelors Get Lonely - A. A. Fair aka Erle Stanley Gardner

This 1961 effort serves up the usual Cool & Lam cocktail: Bertha’s penny-pinching optimism, Donald’s improvisational genius, and a murder that blows their plans sky-high.

Bertha is thrilled to land Montrose Carson, a respectable developer who looks like the kind of client that will help the firm dodge the messes into which clients usually drag them. Carson suspects someone in his office is leaking sensitive information to a rival who keeps beating his bids. Before Donald’s bunk detector even starts to flash yellow, Bertha has cooked up a plan to smoke out the mole and is her usual smug self over her brilliance.

Naturally, the case pops like the culture. A corpse appears, Donald is hip-deep in trouble, and Lt. Frank Sellers is measuring Lam’s neck for the noose. Bertha, buying into Sellers’ accusations, charges betrayal and accuses Donald of tanking the firm. The only suspense, as in past novels in the series, is whether this is the time Donald can’t find his way out.

The title nods to Lam’s bachelorhood and his role as a faux playboy heir in a sting operation to expose business espionage. Espionage leads to murder, murder to secrets, and secrets to rationalizations like: “How many people live the orthodox lives they’re supposed to?” Gardner was a sympathetic guy, ever ready to assure readers they weren’t nearly as weird as most people.

The novel is absurd fun: comic relief, snappy setups, and coincidences that glide rather than jar. Lam oscillates between out of control and cool as a cucumber, while Bertha clutches her purse like Mr. Krab in diamonds. Switchboards buzz, cafeterias hum, and motels come with separate units – Nostalgia City for readers born in the Fifties.

As always, every babe falls for Donald (including a stripper named Daffodil), though he’s mostly a gentleman - except when looking down Elsie Brand’s top and calling her “Sister.” Sellers, meanwhile, tramples constitutional rights, and Gardner slips in practical advice: “I refuse to talk to you… until I consult with an attorney.” Good to know if life plays dirty.

The wrap-up isn’t as baroque as a Perry Mason finale, but the dialogue crackles with antique slang and blessedly few ten-dollar words. Gardner, writing as A.A. Fair, keeps the tone light, the pace brisk, and the ethics flexible.

Bottom line: Bachelors Get Lonely delivers vintage Cool & Lam - industrial intrigue, murder, and morals as flexible as a yoga teacher’s spine - with enough charm to make you forgive the creaky coincidences. Not top-tier, but a solid slice of mid-century pulp entertainment.

 

Perry Mason 177: Great Day in the Morning

Note: Raymond Burr plays – surprise! – a heavy in this western. He brings to his performance as village potentate Jumbo Means his imposing physical presence (he looks close to 300 pounds) and his distinctive intensity. As the owner of palaces of vice and sin, his character has his shady side. He is an influential Northerner in a predominantly Unionist town in Colorado, so he is in the thick of pre-Civil War strains.

Great Day in the Morning
1956 / 1:37
Tagline: “I like walking alone - no ties.”

It’s a strange movie with an unlikely hero. Set just before the Civil War, it features Owen Pentecost, a character who keeps himself emotionally distant from everyone around him. Robert Stack, an actor with a range up there with Fred MacMurray and George Raft, was perfectly cast to play a loner who says “Sure, I'm loyal. I've got an undying loyalty to myself and no one else, nothing else.”

On the eve of the Civil War in 1861 Owen Pentecost of North Carolina arrives in Denver as a stranger. But he quickly achieves the American dream (money and influence) by winning a saloon cum hotel in a card game rigged in his favor by Ruth Roman, mama of the attached brothel. He is thus able to invest in gold digging start-ups, gathering in half their findings in exchange for his financing.

In the over-heated times before the Civil War, everybody has to choose a side. There’s no “let us all reason together” here, the times don’t allow for subtleties like conscience or brotherhood. Pentecost is from North Carolina but the other Southerners don’t like or trust him because they’ve not known him for years. The Union men in town don’t like him because he is a Tar Heel.

Pentecost's interactions with women highlight his strange solitude. Boston Grant (Ruth Roman) ardently pursues him and not just for his money and power. Though she wants to be his helpmeet in business, he evinces zero affection for her. His relationship with Ann Merry Alaine (Virginia Mayo) intermittently sparks up but romance sputters out. This triangle in the movie features good acting by the actresses.

But the triangle adds to a crowded movie. Pre-war stresses, amoral jerk as hero, two plucky women after the same grouchy jerk and more – the subplot of an orphan boy who is hoorawed by the local kids because they’ve not known him for years so they don’t trust him. The gorgeous Technicolor is the reason to watch this movie.

As for the connection with the classic Perry Mason TV series, hate-filled Yankee Leo Gordon appeared in TCOT Dangerous Dowager as an honest casino owner. Bar employee who has a great scene with Stack, Peter Whitney played an ill-tempered farmer in TCOT Pathetic Patient, an irascible gangster in TCOT Stand-In Sister and a venerable sea captain in TCOT Wrongful Writ. Ubiquitous character actor Regis Toomey, a priest in this movie, was in TCOT Loquacious Liar and TCOT 12th Wildcat.

The Ides of Exploitation: Mystic Circle Murder

Note: Everybody’s a critic. I’m informed that I’ve bestowed “almost Dostoevskian moral gravity” upon a cheap exposé picture. Guilty as charged. Give me a 68-minute Poverty Row programmer and before the second reel I’ve discovered alienation, sexual politics, class warfare, psychic trauma, and the collapse of Western civilization. Perhaps occasionally I should just let the guy in the turban be a crook. OTOH, just wait until you see posts for Stoic Week 2026.

Mystic Circle Murder aka Religious Racketeers  aka Madame Houdini Speaks
1938 / 1:08 minutes
Tagline: “Thrilling Chilling Exposé of the Fake Medium Racket!”

In the dim corridors of human grief, where memory clings like burrs to the soul, there are phonies who prey upon the broken. This exploitation film, brief and strange, does not seek entertainment for the masses. It is a warning, a document of moral decay, and a tribute to the lonely struggle of Beatrice Houdini, widow of the great illusionist, who devoted her life to exposing the lies of spiritualist charlatans.

She appears early in the film, not as a character, but as a conscience. Her voice is clear, her purpose unwavering: to protect the grieving from those who would exploit their sorrow.

The story centers on a wealthy steel heiress, Helene LeBerthron, whose guilt over her mother’s death makes her vulnerable. She is young, pale, blue-eyed, and fragile - an image of innocence that invites corruption. Her hope is not strength but weakness, and the audience, helpless, watches her drift toward deception. We movie-goers whisper, “Girl, listen to your skeptical boyfriend.”

The medium, La Gagge, is no mystic. He is a technician of illusion, a manipulator of grief. He explains to his accomplice - who smokes constantly, as if to remind us that death is always near - that belief must be coaxed, not forced. The machinery of deceit is literal: wires, soundboards, Orientalist props. But the machinery of psychological manipulation is more insidious. The medium isolates the mark, surrounds her with unfamiliar sights and sounds, and replaces her beliefs with ritual and mumbo-jumbo. He uses loneliness as a tool, and sexual attraction as bait.

This is not a tale of ghosts. It is a tale of how easily the human mind, weakened by loss guilt and shame, can be bent. The film shows how repetition, isolation, and suggestion can break down reason. It is not unlike the methods used in darker institutions - prisons, institutions, cults - where obedience is extracted not by force, but by erosion of the self.

The actors do what they can. They are not great, but they are honest. The dialogue is sometimes clumsy, serving exposition more than character. Yet the film moves quickly, and dignity is preserved. It is not art, but it is truth.

This film is for those who study belief, who ask why people cling to illusions, and how grief can become a weapon. It is not comforting. It is not popular. But it is necessary. In a world where deception is often rewarded, it reminds us that truth must be defended - even when it is unwelcome, even when it is ignored.