The Ides of Perry Mason 66

Note: On the 15th of every month we publish something to do with Erle Stanley Gardner's contribution to mystery fiction. Below are reviews of the memorable episodes from the third season of the Perry Mason TV series that ran from 1957 to 1966, in 271 installments. Granted, the noir theme of "innocents facing impending doom courtesy of a hostile universe" was what PM was all about, but the third was to be the last season in which noir aesthetics were conspicuous.

The Best of Season 3 (1959-60)

The Case of the Spurious Sister (October 3, 1959). The first show of the season teems with noir tropes. Doubling, for instance. Peggy "The Big Sleep" Knudsen shines in brittle blonde glory as a blackjack zombie and so does her look-alike Marion Marshall, her partner in the old sister act of the title. In a lapse of judgement typical of noir protagonists, the dimbulb husband Karl Weber tampers with evidence in a big way, which naturally makes innocent him look guilty as hell. Helen and Walter Sprague are the honest moths caught in a gale of forces beyond their control, another perennial noir element. The real star is, however, the 1959 Edsel Corsair 4-Door Hard Top.

The Case of the Watery Witness (October 10, 1959). Disbelieving the chick that comes home to roost, a has-been movie actress cruelly rejects a young wife who claims that she is the star's thrown-away daughter. In her early fifties, Faye Wray still looks regal and imperious as the washed-up star with delusions of fame and entitlement. Douglas Dick plays his patented no-good, this time a blackmailing private eye. John Bryant for once plays a nice if designing guy though his niceness is undermined by his riverboat gambler looks.  Malcolm Atterbury plays the loyal agent protecting the has-been, bringing to the role a restrained pathos not often seen on the boob tube. Veteran of the stage Kathryn Card plays a housekeeper who pops the classic question, "Do you know how tell when someone is dead." We are treated to two Edsels, a 1959 Edsel Corsair 2-Door Convertible and a 1959 Edsel Corsair 2-Door Hard Top.

The Case of the Wayward Wife (January 23, 1960). As in The Case of the Purple Woman in Season 2, elegant Bethel Leslie plays the nice wife of a louse who ends up murdered and she lands in the dock. Purple Woman is about the dark side of the art business and Wayward Wife is about the literary racket, plagiarism, betrayal, and fraud. In an alluring combo of elf and hellcat, Madlyn Rhue plays a beatnik-lite artist with a troubled soul. All the characters, in the noir tradition, are battling against odds and circumstances, which gives the episode a weird anguished energy. 

The Case of the Wary Wildcatter (February 20, 1960). Gentle and delicate Lori March is lured into one of the most frightening traps of the whole series, with lights going out in a locked hotel room she can't escape and then suspicious cops treating her with savage contempt. Nobody could do the mirthless smile of the femme fatale like Barbara Bain. Harry Jackson puts in one of his two turns as the dastardly scoundrel (in other episodes he was the perp once and richly deserving victim twice). Finally, formidable Douglas Kennedy plays the part he was born to, a hard-hearted casino owner and extortionist.

The Case of the Mythical Monkeys (February 27, 1960). Louise Fletcher’s part as Gladys Doyle gives her a chance to display her acting chops as an independent-minded but naive young person. In the scene where she’s warming her wet self by a fireplace the Alabama in her voice gives her character a mixture of femininity and fight.  Sophisticated and svelte Beverly Garland plays a writer who gets in over her head with menacing and shaved Lawrence Dobkin, an archetypal scary white man in the Sterling Hayden tradition. In an episode that sticks to the original story, the veteran actors all seemed determined to put on a great show.

The Case of the Crying Cherub (April 9, 1060). Carmen Phillips goes all Nyu Yaawk as a feisty artist who produces paintings of cherubs for the market of society matrons with no taste. The cherub paintings are so awful as to be laughable and nauseating at the same time; thank heaven it was the heyday of black and white TV, all the pink would have made us lose our appetites. We meet noir stock characters, the tyrant dowager and her downtrodden son. Also familiar was the sendup of the art racket – the producers and writers often examined the pitfalls for greenhorns and idealists in the business sides of arts and entertainment

The Case of the Ominous Outcast (May 21, 1960). The corrupt small-town setting and theme of the past haunting the present are about as noir as it gets. A bearded stranger shows up in town. The stranger is the spit and image of a man that committed a terrible crime against the town 20 years before. So the peasants go crazy, mistaking him for a fiend from the past bent on dragging them to the searing hell they know they deserve. All the acting is persuasive, especially Margaret Hayes and Denver Pyle. Victim once, defendant twice, perp thrice on PM, Denver Pyle deserves much better than to be remembered as Grampa in The Dukes of Stupid.

Honorable Mention: In The Case of the Frantic Flyer Patricia Barry puts in a fine performance as the woman who’s never scarier than when she’s being coy and kittenish.  For animal lovers, Mason brings a large quadruped into the courtroom in The Case of the Bashful Burro. In The Case of the Madcap Modiste personal and professional conflicts end up in murder, plus a glimpse into what TV celeb journalism used to look like in those bygone days.  George Takei is persuasive in The Case of the Blushing Pearls and it is surprising to see Asian-Americans on TV as early as 1960.

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