The Ides of Perry Mason 21

The 15th of every month until I don't know when I will post a review of a Perry Mason mystery. For the hell of it.

Note. This is another tribute to the actresses of Perry Mason. Previous entries covered Patricia Barry and Lisa Gaye.

Anna Navarro & Arlene Martel

In The Case of the Lonely Heiress (1958), Anna Navarro played Delores Coterro, the female partner in a scam run by con man Charlie “Country Boy” Baker. With hateful cunning, they make a living on a con game that ruthlessly exploits lonely women. Delores and Charlie are cruel to each other too. They have raging fights involving thrown dishes and deadly weapons brandished in anger. Then, to make up, they get all sweaty and pinchy and slappy and rough and – well, you get the idea. Delores calls him “My Charlie” which gives us nice folks the same creeps we got when Ron called Nancy “Mommy.”

In terms of TV stereotyping, everybody complains - quite rightfully, too - about the campy badness of the “Latina Spitfire” image here. To my mind, the over-the-top type-casting is as guilty a pleasure as VIrginia Gregg doing her wrath of god shtick. I’d argue that no ethnic group was spared by Perry Mason scriptwriters: drunken brawling Aussies, conniving French women, cold Germans, loud Danes, louder Sicilians, and the loudest theatrical Russians ever.

Famous for her part as Spock’s intended T’Pring in Star Trek, Arlene Martel (Sax) was a dark-haired beauty that called to mind her classmate in acting school Suzanne Pleshette. With an Austrian-Jewish heritage (her parents escaped to the Bronx in the early 1930s), her looks got her roles that called for striking as in spies, witches, and barbarian princesses.  In The Case of the Absent Artist (1962) she played Fiona Cregan, a beat girl who lived, of course, in an artist’s colony. With short unadorned hair, she’s hip in her straight-leg dungarees and dark plain top and even more plausible – or beatnik stereotypical, if you like – is her detached manner and unhurried grace. Her cool Vulcan mode makes this Indian want to wear a Dizzy Gillespie beret and take her out for pizza to talk about Chief Bromden in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. 

Her landlady, played by a wonderful Zasu Pitts, expresses concern over the rustling sounds from another apartment. Fiona tonelessly deadpans, “Maybe it’s a bat flying around.” Her boyfriend, a painter, has disappeared with his masterpiece and she tonelessly deadpans, while holding a painter's knife, “I’ll find him and, when I do, I’ll slit open his gullet.” Indeed, her ominous vow underscores the problem with passionate people. When they love you, you won’t find anybody that’ll love you more. When they hate you, change your name and move to Patagonia.

In an unfortunate move, Arlene Martel went blonde for her second, and last, appearance on Perry Mason in The Case of the Dead Ringer (1966) where she was ‘the worst secretary ever’ in a small part. On the stand, she gets to act all teary and weepy, like any other Mason weak sister. The point of interest in this one is that Burr played a double role, fulfilling the stereotype of the sardonic Cockney. Hey, it was show #267 of 271, the writers were tapped out.