Note: In the 271 episodes of the original TV series Perry Mason (1957 - 1966), many business dramas unfold. Relatable were family businesses fighting over succession and bigger companies that were bedeviled by competitors, office romances, or rivalries over promotions. Writers liked to examine the dark sides of businesses in the arts, entertainment, and high fashion.
There’s No Thief like a Bad Book
As professionals, the Mason writers were probably of two minds about the cultural phenomenon entitled Peyton Place (1956), marveling at its massive success and cultural impact but also taking jabs at the literary racket, plagiarists, and authors of bad books that become best-sellers.
The Case of the Wayward Wife (1/23/60). The premise is shaky because it would have been impossible for a prisoner to keep a journal in a North Korean POW camp. Still, author and sage Arthur Poe manages to do just that. During an escape attempt, however, he is re-captured and his journal ends up in the larcenous hands of his fellow soldier Ben Sutton. Back in the USA, Sutton publishes the journal under his own name. Ordeal becomes a best-seller, and attracts the attention of movie producers. Sutton is an all-round heel because when not reaping the fruits of plagiarism, he is blackmailing the family of his wife Sylvia. Sylvia makes the wrong choices at the wrong time and place and ends up in the dock accused of Sutton’s murder (regal Bethel Leslie played three times the murdered louse’s nice wife who ends up Perry’s client). Besides the shaky premise, Poe’s Stoicism-lite is neither consistent nor convincing. The subplot of the blackmailed family members clouds the story. But the acting is superb and the mood somber even if the writing tries to pack ten pounds of story into a five-pound sack.
The Case of the Prankish Professor (1/17/63). In a university classroom, a condescending English prof stages a shooting as the basis for a writing assignment. That the prof would traumatize at least 10% of the students in the room for the sake of a writing prompt shows that his judgement is unsound, his pedagogy dubious. He is thrown a curve ball when the sister of one of his former students accuses him of plagiarism. It seems he filched the manuscript of trashy novel L'Affaire Annabelle and published it under a pen-name. Referring to the best-selling Peyton Place ripoff, a bookstore clerk leers, “If it smells, it sells.” The prof is spared the embarrassment of a scandal when he is murdered with a letter opener to the pump. His wife, long-suffering and noble, ends up in the dock. Good acting especially from the relentless and greedy sister, played by dynamic Joyce Van Patten.
The Case of the Skeleton’s Closet (5/2/63). Richard Harris is full of rage and hostility against his ex-wife and young children because after the divorce she changed their surnames from his to her maiden name. So he writes a tell-all book called Dishonored, about the tawdry high jinks of dwellers of an upper-class LA suburb. His ex-wife is afraid the tacky book will disgrace the kids and she wants it pulled from the market. Their scenes of bitter argument hiss and sizzle, kudos to Michael Pate and Peggy McCay. In a poignant scene, a broken young woman is weaving a basket as her occupational therapy. I ask my weaving and basket-making wife if that stereotype of “basket weaver as basket case” still dogs her and her buds. “Only with narrow-minded people,” she says with a glare that adds, “like you.”
The Case of the Bountiful Beauty (2/6/64). Ryan O’Neal plays a small part as John Carew, the boyfriend of Debra Dearborn (gamine Zeme North). John has told Debra stories of his bad-girl step-mom Stephanie (Sandra Warner, a Joan Collins type). Budding writer Debra has woven these stories together into a lurid novel like – you guessed in one - Peyton Place. The book becomes a best-seller, attracting the attention of a rotten movie producer (John Van Dreelan, a George Saunders cad). This episode illustrates the tendency of this series to paint the entertainment industry in the worst colors. In an episode that features superb acting, the best character is an agent man who protests his innocence and calls our favorite lawyer “Perry baby.”
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