The Kalends of Dick Powell: Christmas in July

Christmas in July
1940 / 1:07
Tagline: “If you can't sleep at night, it isn't the coffee - it's the bunk!”
[internet archive]

This comedy is based in the reality of 1940. In its heyday, the radio broadcasting industry didn’t depend so much on selling time for commercials but teamed up with companies to host shows such as The Bing Crosby Show for Chesterfield. They also worked together to sponsor endless contests. The competitions would involve playing games, doing stunts, or writing essays and jingles. Suspense would be carefully built over weeks before the winner was declared. This picture opens satirizing this process and the phony radio gabbers that would stoke it. Franklin Pangborn is cast perfectly as one unctuous voice of the airwaves.

Our hero Jimmy MacDonald (Dick Powell) is a dreamer just like his late father. So Jimmy is an inveterate contest enterer. He figures, though a movie-goer doubts the statistics would bear this out, that every contest loss will double your chances of winning the next one you enter.

Jimmy also takes the popular view that happiness depends on obtaining a pile of money. His girlfriend Betty (Ellen Drew) claims two can live as cheaply as one, to which he replies, “Who wants to live cheaply.” Betty argues you need just enough money to keep worries down to a minimum, since worries are “the only terrible thing about being poor.”

Three practical jokers named Tom, Dick, and Harry trick Jimmy into believing that he has won a $25,000 prize (about $400,000 in today’s money). Zaniness ensues when generous Jimmy spends money that he doesn’t really have. Despite the circus of unbridled consumption that forms around them, somehow Jimmy and Betty, the innocent and honest couple, maintain their values.​​

The writer and director Preston Sturges observes masses of clerks toiling away at unspecified drudgery. Even distilling his picture down into a mere 60 minutes and change, Sturges doesn't lose a chance to aim smacks at The System and its contradictions. He examines our perennial hope for a better future, especially for and among youth. Young people, argues Betty, simply want a chance to succeed or fail. This hope that a chance still existed took a battering in the 1930s as the Depression went on and on.

But he also wonders if our hopes are at least partly illusory, given our confusion over values due to our own endless struggle with materialism. Our leaders are no better than us when it comes to judging the worth of people and things based on their success or failure on the fickle, spoiled, dumb marketplace. In fact, despite their posturing self-confidence, our leaders may be a sight worse than us when it comes to using the sense Heaven gave them.

The mere appearance of affluence impresses us unduly even though we know nice people are often poor and rotten people are often rich, that blessings rain down on the unworthy and trouble comes to the blameless and harmless. Even work demonstrates the falsity of appearances. The boss says, “I'm a success. And so are you, if you earn your own living and pay your bills and look the world in the eye” but how much self-respect is possible given the endless grind of paperwork, the punching of clocks, to the ringing of bells as if we were in grade school, under fussy close supervision because they don’t trust us to get the job done unless they are hovering over us?

Okay, so much for the ideas in the movie, some are still relevant, some not. Dick Powell is perfectly cast due to his Dagwood Bumstead looks that call to mind a bloodhound. Ellen Drew is all freshness we like to see in the Greatest Generation when they were in the bloom of youth. Raymond Walburn is wonderful as the windbag president of a coffee company.

European Reading Challenge #4

I read this for the European Reading Challenge 2026.

Colossus of Maroussi - Henry Miller

The author of Tropic of Cancer took an extended trip in Greece from August, 1939 to early January, 1940.  He wrote about the Greeks because he met people whose exuberance matched his own. The title, in fact, refers to Katsambalis, a Neal Casady-like character, larger than life.

Miller describes the beauties of Athens, Corfu, Crete, Mycenae, Delphi and many other spots.  He focuses on his own response to people that he talked to and meals that he ate. The intended audience is anybody who enjoyed his previous writings or feels slacking is a reasonable alternative to struggling against The Combine. Miller argues that Greece teaches how to be human being, simple and transcendent, again, instead of replaceable wheels in the industrial machine.

Miller is besotted with Greece but he never gushes.  His colloquial style is the readable antitheses of his travel companion Lawrence Durrell’s nearly impenetrable multi-syllabic prose. While not always coherent or clear or sensible, Miller’s informal voice is forceful, original, fluid, readable, with a mix of everyday lingo and mystical words that don’t mean much.

On the other hand, he makes few nods to Greek history and none to geography. He doesn’t read newspapers so he willfully pig-ignorant of the world on fire in the run-up to WWII. Miller gives no word, not one, about Orthodox Christianity and its possible influence on the world view of the Greeks. Miller sometimes babbles or pontificates for pages at a time. Oddly, there are times when he sounds preachy, as when he sums up his revelations and shares them with us lesser beings at the end of Part 1. For somebody so astute and down to earth, he’s strangely credulous upon receiving the findings of an Armenian astrologer that he visits in Athens. It’s one thing to be a clown or holy fool, quite another to be a gull.

This is the book for you if Miller’s preference for old hotels resonates: "I like hotels which are second or third rate, which are clean but shabby, which have seen better days, which have an aroma of the past." I think it suits the intended audience, of skeptics, malcontents, seekers and those who connect with the neglected and out of the way.

I liked this book, though my eyes did roll rather. It was the first Miller I’d read in about 20 years. I’d forgotten how vigorous his prose was. If his goal was to get me to want to visit Greece, he met it.

 I don’t think I’d re-read this book but I recommend it to any readers into travel books written between the wars. This book is one of the last ones of the era and genre, which ended in September 1939.

Perry Mason 136: TCOT Missing Interior Life

Note: This essay argues that Perry Mason’s power lies in emotional minimalism: a hedgehog lawyer organized around one moral idea, who rejects psychological depth so evidence and momentum can dominate, revealing truth by moving relentlessly forward rather than inward.

The Case of the Missing Interior Life

No hardcore reader of old‑school mysteries comes for the interior decorating of the soul. We arrive knowing that characterization, like a Toyota RAV4, will be serviceable at best. Rex Stout gives us Nero Wolfe, a collection of mannerisms assembled from orchids, appetites, and beery genius. Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op is less a guy than a junk drawer of professional reflexes - cynical, efficient, immune to reflection. These detectives are not mirrors of anybody’s soul; they are Subaru Crosstreks that carry stories on the roof rack.

Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason belongs squarely in this tradition, though his emblematic vehicle would be a top‑of‑the‑line Ford Edsel Citation – impressive, confident, and up to the minute. Mason is less a character than a moral appliance. Plug him into a case and the truth pops automatically, toasted crispy and exonerating. In Isaiah Berlin’s terms, Mason is a hedgehog: a figure organized entirely around one large, immovable idea.

For Mason, the law is a rational system that works - provided you work it harder than anyone else in the courtroom. Each novel is a variation on the same old choreography: preparation bordering on obsession, procedural mastery, and the courtroom reveal that snaps the entire mess into focus. All tactics point in one direction. There is no wandering.

Gardner even lets Mason say this out loud.* He takes chances, follows hunches, believes in innocence and trusts The System to see the truth when Mason lambastes Burger, Tragg and Duh Judge with it. He insists - correctly - that a lawyer is not a jury and that representation is a right, not a reward for driving carefully most of the time. This is not a crisis of conscience; it is a statement of guiding principles. Values are only the start, but they have to be in place for consistent action.

What Mason notably does not experience - anxiety, dejection, longing for the woman he spends his days with, the urge to stare out a window at the falling rain - is precisely what makes him effective. Gardner opts for radical emotional minimalism. Mason’s inner life is kept firmly offstage so that action, timing, and consequence can occupy the foreground. He does not brood. He does not have episodes. When anger appears, it is directed inward only insofar as he failed to see what should have been obvious. Even his irritation is efficient. 

This absence of turmoil is often misread as flatness, but it’s better understood as discipline. Gardner was writing for mass circulation, for readers who wanted momentum over meditation. Psychological depth would only muddy the waters for readers who act out of habit, emotion, social pressure, self-deception, or confusion. The Perry Mason novels are not about a lawyer’s soul; they are about identifying truth under pressure. They move forward, always  - and that movement, for Gardner, is the point of his entertainments. The novels are like a bag of Chex Mix: once started, must finish.

____________

* I’ve always tried to represent clients who were innocent. I’ve been lucky. I’ve taken chances. I’ve played hunches, and the hunches have panned out. Circumstantial evidence can be black against a client, and I’ll see something in his demeanor, some little mannerism, the way he answers a question or something, which makes me believe he’s innocent. I’ll take the case, and it will work out . . . . I do know that a lawyer can’t simply sit back and refuse to take any case unless he thinks his client is innocent. A client is entitled to legal representation. It takes the unanimous verdict of twelve jurors to find a person guilty. It isn’t fair for a lawyer to turn himself into a jury, weigh the evidence, and say, ‘No, I won’t handle your case because I think you’re guilty.’ That would deprive an accused person of a fair trial. (TCOT Silent Partner)

Perry Mason 135: TCOT Curious Bride

Note: Fifth Mason book, 1934. Early Mason plants fake evidence just to mess with the D.A. - a stunt he’d never pull later. Gardner also trots out multiple characters to recap the facts, giving magazine serial readers the “just-the-facts-ma’am” tour straight to the culprit, if they are paying attention over weeks.

The Case of the Curious Bride – Erle Stanley Gardner

A woman walks in the office, says she’s not a bride, but her manner says otherwise. Perry smells a rat. Della Street - secretary, oracle - knows the score: lady’s married, lady’s lying. After trying out some half-truths about a friend's problem, she flees the interview. Mason is philosophical if contrite:

What right have I got to sit back with that ‘holier than thou’ attitude and expect them to come clean with a total stranger? They come here when they’re in trouble. They’re worried and frightened. They come to me for consultations. I’m a total stranger to them. They need help. Poor fools, you can’t blame them for resorting to subterfuges. I could have been sympathetic and drawn her out, won her confidence, found out her secret and lightened the load of her troubles. But I got impatient with her. I tried to force the issue, and now she’s gone.

The setup: husband presumed dead in a plane crash pops up alive. The “friend” story collapses under its own weight. Then the dominoes fall - murder charge, cops snarling, DA readying the rope. All the evidence points one way: guilty.

Perry’s job? Cheat the hangman. He does it with tricks, fake evidence, and legwork he mostly undertakes himself.

Tone? Hard as nails. Depression-era funk seeps through the cracks. Millionaire in the mix, ethics of an alley cat. Public hated fat cats in 1934, and Gardner milks it. Near the end Mason mutters that the victim “needed killing.” Whoa. Highly unusual for Gardner’s moral compass to spin like a busted fan. Not like him. Sure, the dead guy was a con man, fleeced lonely women, but still - lawyer shrugging off murder? Mason never colder.

Plot mechanics: intricate as a Rube Goldberg mousetrap. Gardner cheats? Nope. He plays fair - repeats the facts like a broken jukebox so you can’t whine later. Why the repetition? Serialization in Liberty Magazine. New readers parachuting in every week. Gardner, ever a professional, says “Readers first” and spoon-feeds them, not following Wilkie Collins's dictum; "Make 'em laugh, make 'em cry, make 'em wait."

Trial scene? Short. Early Mason books didn’t always climax in court. This one’s more about the chase, the feints, the sucker punches. And the atmosphere - antique, pre-war, no sex despite the wink in the title..

Did I guess the killer? Nope. Gardner blindsided me. That’s the fun. You think you’re smart, then wham - you’re not.

Brass tacks: TCOT Curious Bride is a good read, not great. It’s got grit, speed, and a whiff of moral rot, courtesy of the Dirty Thirties. If you want Perry pure and prime, maybe try later stuff. But if you dig the smell of old money and older lies, this early one will do.

Perry Mason 134: Some Women Won’t Wait

Note: In this 1953 outing, Gardner chooses Hawaii as the setting, emphasizing leis, hula, and surfing at Waikiki. Highly unusual because he wasn’t a product placement kind of writer, he even mentions by name three hotels that offer nice lodgings. In those palmy post-WWII days, I imagine the stressful memories of the war were fading and people were thinking of getting away from it all. Later in the Fifties, the massive boom of the jet age and statehood (1959) changed everything.

Some Women Won’t Wait – Erle Stanley Gardner writing as A. A. Fair

Erle Stanley Gardner, best known for Perry Mason’s courtroom theatrics, moonlighted with a different sort of duo: Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. If Mason is all gravitas and method, Cool and Lam are screwy – a partnership of private detectives who somehow always make the situation worse but come out of it smelling like roses. Bertha, a woman of formidable girth and even more formidable greed, is obsessed with getting fat fees. Donald, her pint-sized partner, compensates for his lack of muscle with a surplus of quick-wittedness and a knack for wriggling out of trouble.

This particular caper begins aboard a Pacific cruise ship and drifts into Honolulu’s sun-drenched temptations. The setup? A young, fun-loving playgirl marries a man old enough to be her grandfather. Six months later, he’s dead. She’s not in a widow's black - she’s sunning on a beach in something far more revealing. Was it impatience? Opportunism? Or something nastier? Did her husband really ask her to buy that arsenic? What happened? Why is she alone? And how much trouble is she in?

As usual, Bertha blunders about like five puppies duking it out over three toys, while Donald plays the cerebral sleuth - though here he indulges in spy guy surveillance among the lazy palm trees. The plot is brisk, the dialogue snappy, and the atmosphere pure mid-century vakay with sandy beaches, tropical flowers and balmy temps. With all the “delectable babes” in skimpy swimsuits on Waikiki, it is more male-gazey than usual, and there is a surprising reference to Oriental inscrutability that I would have thought Gardner was above.

Gardner keeps the emotional thermostat at zero - motives revolve around money and its attendant security, not passion. No torrid love affairs, just inheritance schemes and extortion. Gardner has Lam narrate the story, but Lam is no more forthcoming with us readers than he is with the other characters. The real shocker? For once, Donald’s freedom isn’t menaced by cops that want his hide tacked to the wall. Though not much action is on tap, the ride is fun, the setting lush, and Bertha’s swimsuit and traditional Hawaiian garb moments alone are pretty funny. If you like your mysteries brisk, brainy, and just a little absurd, this Waikiki holiday delivers.

Perry Mason 133: Horizons West

Note: In addition to film noir, Raymore Burr appeared in several Westerns before Perry Mason. Some notable Westerns he acted in include Station West (1948). He also appeared in Count Three and Pray as a villainous storekeeper that ran the town, like Flem Snopes in The Hamlet. He auditioned for the lead role of U.S. Marshal Matt Dillon for the Gunsmoke television series in 1955. However, CBS producers felt he was not the right "John Wayne type" they were seeking and passed on him, a role that ultimately went to James Arness.

Horizons West
1952 / 1:21
Tagline: “LAWLESS RUTHLESS DEFIANCE!”
[internet archive]

Two Confederate brothers return to Austin after the war, hoping the family ranch can soothe old wounds. Robert Ryan, all restless energy, chafes at peace; Rock Hudson, sunny and idealistic, sees silver linings. Their father expects Ryan to stay home out of love of ranching but it is impossible for him, bored by peace, to return to the old life in the sticks.

A natural leader, Ryan is drawn to Austin to make money and garner power. Is Ryan driven by bitterness over defeat - or by the rot of a cause built on slavery? Either way, he scorns simple pleasures: good food, honest work, neighborly respect. When asked if he could work with Northerners, Ryan replies, “I could forget grudges for enough money.”

Raymond Burr oozes menace as Cort Hardin. From his first scene, movie-goers know that he’s going to be excellent as a bad dandy, northern and cold-hearted, rich and spoiled. While Ryan seems to portray the type of normal guy who’s wrestling with PTSD or unresolved bitterness over defeat, Burr doesn’t have the default settings of a man of flesh and blood, since even when he is gambling, he is unsmiling and brusque. His brutality peaks in a belt-buckle thrashing and predatory embraces that leave Julie Adams wiping her lips in disgust. Jealous, insecure and alert, he notices right away that his unhappy wife is attracted to Ryan.

Ryan borrows $1,000 to take Burr in poker, loses big, and sinks into debt. To claw back, he recruits war’s leftovers for a cattle-rustling scheme, selling stolen stock to a Mexican general decked out like a parade float. Taking exception to being robbed, Burr tortures Rock Hudson to gather information on the rustling.

Per the traditional noir trope, Ryan loses his soul in short order. Momentum drags Ryan from rustling to bribery, arson, and street murder. Pity and mercy shrivel; ambition hardens, observes crony Jim Arness. In an explanation so terse as to be frustrating, Ryan admits that he yokes cruelty and ambition, with his only goals in life to build an empire and make Julie Adams the great lady of Texas.

The magnificent Technicolor is the reason to see this movie. Outside is stunning, interiors are lush. The clothes have a wide variety of colors. But the human beings Ryan, Burr and Adams are all strong in their parts. A notorious tough guy, Robert Ryan looks at Raymond Burr with so much contempt that Burr’s character seems to wilt and get even doughier. Julie Adams’s solid performance balances the fact that her motivation for falling for Ryan like a ton of bricks is not made clear at all though we movie-goers know that Hollywood seldom explains love at first sight, especially in westerns. Not given much to do except scold and hector Ryan, Rock Hudson looks rather like a lightweight in this movie as if he were a pop idol cast in a movie to attract the youth audience.  

As for the connection with the classic Perry Mason TV series, Julie Adams was the strung-out wife in TCOT Lover's Leap (great is her turn on the stand, blitzed on what in my youth we called Christmas Trees). She played the kindly if intense mom in TCOT Missing Button. She was convicted in error in TCOT Deadly Verdict (a most Hitchcockian outing) and was the patsy again in TCOT Fatal Fortune.

Perry Mason 132: TCOT Gilded Lily

Note: When there’s a butler, as there is in this 1946 outing, mystery fans know the drill: he’s guilty until proven innocent. Did he do it? And what about that phone call? Did he listen in to protect his employer, or was he simply hoping for gossip spicier than the hot and sour soup? In Perry Mason’s Los Angeles, even the butler’s alibi comes with a side of suspicion. After all, if you’re paid to open doors, why not open a few cans of trouble while you’re at it?

The Case of the Gilded Lily – Erle Stanley Gardner

Stewart Bedford had it all: money, power, and a wife young enough to make his friends whisper and his enemies grind their teeth. Twelve years a widower, he’d married Lily, a woman who turned heads and made him feel alive again. Life was good - until the letter came. Twenty thousand dollars in cash, or Lily’s past would be splashed across every scandal sheet in the country. Insurance fraud. Jail. The kind of dirt that could ruin reputations and wreck marriages.

Bedford didn’t hesitate. He played the game. A blonde with legs that could stop traffic drove him to a roadside motel, promising a quick payoff. But the drink she handed him was laced with something stronger than bourbon. When he woke, the blonde was gone - and the blackmailer was dead in the next room. Shot. With what looked like Bedford’s own gun.

That’s when Perry Mason enters the picture. The man who makes the law slip like a yoga teacher’s backbone. Mason takes the case, but this time he’s skating so close to the edge that even Della Street, loyal and levelheaded, wonders if her boss has finally gone too far. Evidence gets shuffled like a deck of cards. Fingerprints, not ballistics, hold the key - and Mason’s trick is so audacious it makes you wonder if Gardner and his dictation-takers busted a gut laughing.

The set-up is pure Gardner, but with a twist. No damsel in distress rushing into Mason’s office. Instead, a slow burn: a wealthy executive, a trophy wife, and a blackmailer who ends up with a bullet instead of a payday. Mason doesn’t pound the pavement this time; he leaves the legwork to Paul Drake and his gumshoes while he plots a legal gambit that feels more like a con. Hamilton Burger, the eternal optimist, thinks he’s finally got Mason cornered. He doesn’t. He never does.

This isn’t the Mason of the early years, racing through interviews and springing surprises every chapter. It’s a later-career story, darker, riskier, with a hero who knows the system and isn’t afraid to squeeze it until its eyes pop. Gardner respects his readers enough to make them sweat through the details - and when Mason finally lays down his cards, the payoff is pure gold.

TCOT Gilded Lily isn’t just a mystery. It’s a cocktail of sex, money, and murder served ice-cold. It reminds you that in the world of power, as the Chinese used to say, “It’s cold in a high place.”

The Ides of William Talman: The Hitch-Hiker

Note: Like Raymond Burr, William Talman was a Prince of Film Noir. He had big ears, a high forehead, asymmetrical eyes, a stern mouth, and a lop-sided face that somehow looked forceful instead of merely funny-looking. He was also six foot tall and athletic. His performance in The Hitch-Hiker so impressed producer Gail Patrick Jackon that she offered him the part of district attorney Hamilton Burger on the classic TV series Perry Mason.

The Hitch-Hiker
1956 / 1:11
Tagline: “When was the last time you invited death into your car?”
[internet archive]

William Talman gives us Emmett Myers, an escaped convict so tightly wound he makes piano wire look like a mess of ramen. He’s the sort of school-leaver who thinks “Mexican” is a language. His self-image? Smart and tough. Reality check? Pig-ignorant along with law-breaking, deceitfulness, impulsivity, irritability, recklessness, irresponsibility, and lack of remorse.

Myers is a walking case study in low frustration tolerance. He can’t wait for change from a big bill  - because patience is for suckers - and every impulse he indulges is a bad idea wearing a sign “I’m a Bad Bad Boy.” He’s allergic to foresight. If Myers had a theory of mind, it’s lost in the same place as his right eye. That blindness isn’t just physical; it’s a metaphor so loud it practically rents a billboard: empathy? Never heard of her.

He mocks prayer, sneers at decency, and congratulates himself for being “free,” which in his dictionary means “armed and stupid.” He blames his ugly mug for society’s cold shoulder, as if sentencing guidelines were written by Vogue. His sarcasm drips like a leaky faucet, and when he laughs, it sounds like phlegm.

Meanwhile, the two hostages - combat vets, stoic as granite - know the score: they’re already dead, so they play the their role of compliant hostages until the indifferent if not hostile universe coughs up a miracle. Myers, too cocksure to notice, is driving straight into the arms of inevitability. The man couldn’t outwit a traffic cone.

Ida Lupino directs with the kind of stark realism that makes you want to check your pulse. Claustrophobic interiors, barren exteriors - she turns geography into psychology. Talman nails the role, Edmond O’Brien and Frank Lovejoy keep it lean, and the whole thing hums with tension.

Highly recommended.

Perry Mason 131: Casting Cool & Lam

Note: In the noir-lite mysteries penned by Erle Stanley Gardner under the pseudonym A.A. Fair, the detective duo of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam is a study in delightful contradiction. Gardner, ever the courtroom trickster, flips the genre’s tropes. Bertha Cool is brash, overweight, and unapologetically vulgar - a bulldozer in dripping in diamonds. Donald Lam, her partner, is the anti-Mike Hammer: diminutive, cerebral, and empathetic. Casting these two from the golden age of Hollywood is no easy feat, but let’s give it the old studio try.

Donald Lam: The Underdog with a Law Degree

Lam is no trench-coated bruiser. He’s the little guy who wins the fight by knowing the law better than the authorities and the crooks. He’s clever, slippery, and always underestimated. So who could play him without turning him into a just a lucky wise-ass?

·         James Cagney: He’s got the size and the speed, and he could talk circles around a DA. But Cagney’s default setting is “ready to punch,” and Lam wins with brains, not fists. Verdict: Too much peppy pugnacity, not enough heft in the brains department.

·         Dick Powell: Post-songbird Powell gave us a credible Marlowe, and he’s got the sardonic deadpan down cold. But Lam’s intellect is scalpel-sharp, and his well-concealed emotions warm. Verdict: Close, but not quite cutting it.

·         William Powell: Too old? Nick Charles had Lam’s charm and smarts, but he also had a cocktail in hand and Nora on his arm. Lam’s world is grittier, less tuxedoed. Verdict: Too debonair, too charming.

·         Dana Andrews: Andrews brings the brooding intensity, but Lam isn’t haunted - he’s harried by clients and cops, bad guys and Bertha. He’s a man dodging punches and talks with the DA, not ghosts. Verdict: Too tragic, not enough hustle.

·         Alan Ladd: Physically perfect, and his performance in This Gun for Hire proves he can play underestimated. But Lam needs to talk fast and think faster. Ladd’s controlled insecurity might come off as self-doubt. Verdict: Right size, wrong temperature.

·         I admit I'm stuck - Gig Young? Jack Lemmon? Martin Milner?

Bertha Cool: The Bulldozer in Diamonds

Bertha Cool is a casting challenge Hollywood often fumbles on the one-yard line. She’s loud and large. She’s not comic relief; she may or may not have a heart buried somewhere under layers of sarcasm and cigarette smoke.

·         Marie Dressler: Dressler had the heft and the humor, but Bertha’s bite is sharper than Dressler’s maternal warmth. Verdict: Too cuddly for Cool.

·         Thelma Ritter: Ritter’s wisecracks are legendary, and she could sell Bertha’s street smarts. But Bertha needs to fill a room physically and vocally. Verdict: Too compact for the role.

·         Marjorie Main: Main could bulldoze with the best of them, and her Ma Kettle had the grit. But Bertha’s urban jungle isn’t Main’s backwoods. Verdict: A maybe.

·         Margaret Rutherford: Rutherford’s Miss Marple had the eccentricity, but Bertha’s not quaint - she’s caustic. Verdict: Too British, too genteel.

·         Lucille Ball: Ball had the brass and the timing, but Bertha’s vulgarity isn’t sitcom-ready. Could Lucy go full-on ferocious? Verdict: Tempting, but risky.

Perry Mason 130: Shame They Got Kilt

Note. On the classic TV series the Mason murder victim is usually a scamp doing crimes like blackmail, so detestable that we figure they needed killing, like they say in Texas. And we hope the killer gets the sentence meted out to cops and judges gone wrong.

Shame They Got Kilt

Killed in Error. Poor Flavia is mistakenly poisoned in place of her husband and his lover in The Case of the Madcap Modiste. One of the few on-screen killings in the show, the poisoning scene is uniquely gruesome, complete with death rattle. In The Case of the Sleepwalker's Niece, too accommodating for his own good, Uncle Phillip trades bedrooms with a dastard. And thinking it’s the dastard, the cold-blooded killer knifes Uncle Phillip in his sleep. That’ll learn would-be perps, as Mickey Rourke said in Body Heat (1981), “Any time you try a decent crime, you got fifty ways you're gonna fuck up. If you think of twenty-five of them, then you’re a genius - and you ain’t no genius.”

Harmless Geezer Buys the Farm. In The Case of the Sun Bather’s Diary, a nice guy who likes a little potation, George Ballard is uncle to the red-headed beauty of the title. He is murdered with a knife to the back for no motive that I can discern unless maybe it was robbery or to keep him silent or both. When his dog Sandy guards and whimpers over Uncle George’s corpse, it’s pitiful. Just as pitiful is the killing of another Uncle George in The Case of the Shoplifter's Shoe. He likes a drink so much that before he goes on a toot he mails his car keys to himself. He was killed to keep him silent and his niece goes all to pieces. Nobody was as adept at sobbing on cue as Margaret O’Brien. She used to ask directors “When I cry, do you want the tears to run all the way or shall I stop halfway down?”

Paragon Meets Unjust Deserts. In The Case of the Sulky Girl, sadly, virtue turns out to be less than its own reward. Not that I’m blaming the victim, mind, but a factor in the motive was Uncle Edward being an uncompromising model of rectitude. Perhaps if Uncle had been less ready to call the cops when he thought a crime was going down, the killer would not have bashed in his skull with a walking stick.

Commendable Motives of a Boss from Hell. A multi-million-dollar space project is six weeks behind schedule in The Case of the Angry Astronaut. James Coburn’s General Addison Brand is brought in to get things on track. Speaking in a hectoring voice, he screws up his belligerent face into a visage of dynamism and purpose.  If fulfilling his duty involves kicking ass and blasting complacencies, that’s the way it is going to be. Ironically, he is not murdered for doing his duty in an obsessed fashion. We feel the federal government will miss such a hard-charging can-do manager.

The Worst Case. In The Case of the Nine Dolls, a tyrannical oil baron repudiates a seven-year-old grand-daughter until he meets her. He then sees with his own eyes that she is the exact duplicate of her mother at that age. Naturally the joyful reunion calls for a change in the millionaire’s will in favor of the newly found member of the family. This amendment is not something certain interested parties will tolerate. They kill the old man out of sheer greed and cowardice. They are quite OK with the old man’s niece going the gas chamber in their place. That the heart-warming reunion provokes such a terrible crime is ironic and tragic, making this episode especially melancholy. But as disturbing is another scene: in Perry’s hotel room a mangled doll is left by a note saying, “This can happen to little girls too.” It’s one hell of an episode, certainly in my Top 3 Favorites.

Clearly, being an uncle is a risk factor in Perry Mason mysteries.

The Nones of William Talman: City that Never Sleeps

Note: Growing up in Detroit’s exclusive Indian Village, William Talman was exposed to the theater and acting when he was only about ten years old in the mid-Twenties in his father’s Players Club. Talman and his brothers attended the elite Cranbrook academy in Bloomfield Hills and joined the drama club. His brother said “Bill had the most brilliant mind in the family. He could read a page once, turn it over, and recite every word by heart.” This ability probably helped him digest all the legal mumbo-jumbo he needed in his role as the district attorney Hamilton Burger on the classic TV series Perry Mason.

City that Never Sleeps
1953 / 1:30
Tagline: “… from the Honky Tonks to the penthouses … the creeps, the hoods, the killers come out to war with the city!”
[internet archive]

Republic Pictures pulls a fast one with this moody little crime drama, opening on Chicago in foggy greys like it’s auditioning for noir status. Don’t be fooled, however, the film flirts with noir but never quite gets there. It’s more about the ache of frustrated ambition than overheated emotion and light through venetian blinds.

Everyone here wants out of their life. Policeman Johnny (Gig Young) dreams of fishing boats on the Pacific, but mostly he’s stuck delivering babies once a month and grinding through the job. His wife Kathy earns more than he does, which gnaws at his pride. Enter Sally (Mala Powers), a nightclub dancer who once aimed for ballet and now hoofs it with poodles. Her despair is so thick she’s considering a comedy act with a mime called The Mechanical Man - performance art as existential shouting into the abyss.

Hovering above is Penrod Biddel (Edward Arnold), a mob lawyer who collects people like stamps. He “rescues” Lydia (Marie Windsor) from a lunch counter and remakes her as a trophy wife. He “reforms” Hayes Stewart (William Talman), a pickpocket turned magician. Both protégés rebel, because living someone else’s script feels like slow death. That’s the film’s pulse: autonomy versus control.

Talman's Hayes slinks through boiler rooms and catwalks like a reptile, all cold audacity and sleight‑of‑hand menace. When the stakes spike, he turns vicious without blinking. His snarl - “I’ve stolen lots of things in my life but never someone’s wife” - lands like a smack. Later, blaming Marie Windsor for his downfall, he lies with chilling conviction.

The supporting cast does its job. Gig Young sells Johnny’s weary decency. Powers, cast against perky type, sometimes strains at hard‑boiled bitterness but nails the bewildered anger. Arnold brings sadistic polish; Windsor channels her inner Maria Ouspenskaya (her acting teacher) with gusto.

Visually, a few close‑ups scream early television, but the nightclub scenes hum with tension. Showgirls wear smiles like masks. The safe‑cracking sequence is tight as a drum, and the climactic chase along commuter tracks is pure Republic adrenaline.

This isn’t just a B‑movie time‑killer. It’s a sharp, stylish riff on identity and ambition, totally unexpected by this viewer at least. Watch it for Talman - he’s the real deal.

As for the connection with the classic TV series Perry Mason, Marie Windsor was great it all four of her appearances: TCOT Daring Decoy (cheated on wife), TCOT Madcap Modiste (victim killed in error), TCOT Tarnished Trademark (noble woman who suffers) and TCOT Wednesday Woman (monstrous perp).

Perry Mason 129: TCOT Grinning Gorilla

Note: Mason and Street’s romance? Always a non-starter - thanks to Della, the ultimate realist. Her logic? ‘If I marry him, I lose all the fun of speeding, committing B and E, and letting the air out of Paul Drake’ So, she’s kept it strictly professional … until now. Cut to Della, blushing like a teenager because her fortune cookie just declared, ‘You’re about to fall for someone in a snazzy suit.’ Cue Mason smirking, cue audience laughter.

The Case of the Grinning Gorilla - Erle Stanley Gardner

In 1952, Perry Mason acquires - mindfully - the diaries of Helen Cadmus. She is either dead or missing, either drowned or vanished, either tragic or up to something. The authorities, as usual, are plodding. Mason is not.

The diaries, bought for five dollars at auction, are immediately contested. A man named Nathan Fallon appears. He is a cousin, allegedly. He is also, unmistakably, a crook. His sponsor is Benjamin Addicks, a millionaire with interests in gorilla neurology. Addicks offers money. Mason declines. It is not about money. He doesn’t like being lied to and taken for a chump.

Paul Drake, who is Mason’s investigator and cultivates the bland facelessness of a politician afraid of his own opinions, discovers that Addicks is the poster boy for the eccentricity of the rich. The mansion is fortified. The gorillas are real. The science is speculative bordering on Boris Karloff in The Ape. Mason and Della Street, who is always present, visit the crazy old house. There is a confrontation. There is a gorilla. There is a murder.

Addicks is found dead. The weapon is sharp.

The accused is Josephine Kempton, a housekeeper with an aptitude for being economical with the truth. She withholds facts. She calls it discretion. Mason calls it usual for a client who is scared and not about to talk of intimate matters and bad choices to strangers.

The case feels pulpy, but not quite. It is noir, but not entirely. It is existential, in the way that only stories involving gorilla brains and mad scientist millionaires can be. Mason is nearly killed - twice. The city vibrates, quaking at the uncharacteristic violence. The truth is elusive and slightly absurd.

This is a weird Perry Mason novel. Unique in the canon.

The Kalends of William Talman: Two Gun Lady

Note: Let's take a break from Perry Goddamn Mason. No less a cultural arbiter than TV Guide acknowledged William Talman in this cheapo western as “the U.S. Marshal who lends a hand …” and remarked that Talman “efficiently takes care of a trio of heavies,” indicating he brought a steady, workmanlike energy to the role. Talman played the DA in the greatest courtroom drama in the history of broadcast television.

Two Gun Lady
1956 / 1:11
Tagline: “A two-timing petticoat built to break a man's heart!”
[internet archive]

This isn’t your standard shoot-’em-up with a square-jawed hero and a schoolmarm waiting in the wings. It’s a Western boiled down to gristle and bone, where men swagger like alpha roosters and then die like flies. The surprise is that it's not about men. It’s about Kate Masters, a woman who walks into this moral wasteland with pistols on her hips and vengeance in her veins. Forget the Annie Oakley tricks - those are just the window dressing. What matters is that Kate is the only one in this dried-up world who understands that she can choose personal vendetta or the law, that justice isn’t just a bullet to the brainpan.

The men are a sorry lot. Jud Ivers, a patriarch with a soul of soot, thinks violence will buy him peace. His son Ben is a walking pathology case - cruel to animals, crueler to women, and dumb enough to think a gun makes him a demi-god. Dan Corwin, the law with a grin, imagines he’s Kate’s savior, but he’s just another deluded pissant in pants. They all drink, brag, and brawl, as if noise could drown out the emptiness in their souls.

What makes this curio worth a look is its bleak honesty. The script may be thin and the sets cheaper than a dime-store cap-gun, but the theme cuts deep: men’s hearts are dark, and their ways are cruel. Into that darkness rides Kate - a woman forged in massacre, carrying her own brand of justice. When the smoke clears, the moral is clear: in a world of endless violence by angry lost men, retribution is more just when pursued legally.

And yes, William Talman shows up, doing the mixed-up guy archetype of James Dean and Monty Clift, but the other surprise is that the film flirts with revisionism. It’s grim, it’s fierce, and it dares to focus on a woman’s wrath in a genre that usually treats women like furniture, in a culture uncomfortable with the anger of women. 

For a Western from the Fifties, the claim that justice is grounded in moral choice, not gender roles, may be one reason it is worth an hour and change on a rainy afternoon in spring.

European Reading Challenge #3

I read this for the European Reading Challenge 2026.

Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State - Götz Aly

In this detailed analysis, historian Götz Aly explains how the Nazi regime established and maintained public support by providing material comfort to German citizens. This comfort was obtained through systematic plunder. The regime financed its social programs by looting occupied territories and confiscating assets, particularly from Jewish communities.

Aly traces the flow of money and goods to show how the Nazi state operated as a vast criminal enterprise. Its leaders orchestrated the plundering, but ordinary Germans benefited, shielded from war’s consequences by policies designed to maintain the approval of the masses. The regime’s redistribution of stolen wealth ensured widespread complicity.

The final section of Aly’s work focuses on “The Plunder of the Jews,” revealing how Jewish wealth was targeted to settle Nazi debts. This wasn’t limited to Germany: governments and individuals in Bulgaria, Greece, France, Romania, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia also profited from the confiscation of Jewish property. Aly cites studies like Holocaust of the Jews of Greece, historian Michael Molho’s account of the riches seized in Thessaloniki, which rivaled fictional treasures in their scale.

Ultimately, Aly argues that the Holocaust was enabled not just by ideology, but by economic incentives. Many across Europe materially benefited from the persecution and murder of Jewish people. It’s disturbing to think that Europeans may have lived with a German-dominated Europe - without any Jewish people - had the Nazis been less rigid, less greedy, less brutal, less thieving.

Perry Mason 128: The DA Calls It Murder

Note: For nine novels, Doug Selby is the DA Gardner threw into Madison County, California to slug it out with the sleaze, the hacks, the lawyers who think ethics means coercion should be used only when necessary. He’s human, yeah, but relentless, like justice on too much coffee from South Sulawesi.

The DA Calls It Murder – Erle Stanley Gardner

Doug Selby’s first outing as Madison County’s new district attorney starts with a bang - literally, a corpse in a hotel room. He and Sheriff Max Brandon, his election-day partner-in-crime-fighting, are still riding the high of victory when the call comes in. Madison City sits a hundred miles north of Hollywood, but the trouble Selby’s about to wade into has Tinseltown fingerprints all over it.

Max is the kind of straight-shooting lawman you’d expect to see in a pulp Western, loyal to the bone. Sylvia Martin, Selby’s girlfriend, is no shrinking violet either - smart, quick, and ready to dive into the mess. She’s the kind of woman who knows when to hold your hand and when to frog-march you toward the truth.

The dead man isn’t the only mystery. There’s an envelope fat with five grand, a lawsuit snarled around an estate, and a movie script so overwrought it’s Gardner doing parody - Lest Ye Be Judged. Toss in a poisoned German Shepherd (don’t worry, the dog pulls through) and a camera that’s cutting-edge for 1937, and you’ve got Gardner’s signature: a plot that twists and cool technology.

Hollywood glamour slinks into the picture in the form of Shirley Arden, a star with more brains than her studio gives her credit for. Like John O'Hara did with his shabby glamorous characters, Gardner lets her speak with a candor that slices through the hype. Heaven knows, Gardner liked his short digression but this monologue on fame and privacy is unique in the canon.

[Fans]'re like telegraph poles whizzing by when you're traveling on a Pullman train, if you know what I mean. They tell me things about themselves and I smile at them sympathetically and work my eyes; but all the time I'm thinking about my last income tax return, how long I'm apt to be working on this present picture, whether the director is going to listen to what I have to say about the way I should say "Farewell" to my lover or whether he's going to insist on doing it according to some standards which don't register with me. I give my fan my autograph and turn loose my best smile on him. I know I'm never going to see him again and he's in sort of a daze anyway which he's conjured up to wrap around me as an aura.

Selby nearly gets hypnotized by her - literally - and their verbal sparring has the smoky tension of an Ida Lupino - Ronald Colman scene.

The novel’s heartbeat, though, comes in a quiet room where Selby and Sylvia break the news to Mrs. Larrabie, the widow of the murdered man. Gardner drops the hard-boiled mask for a moment and shows us something rare: women carrying each other through grief. Sylvia steps up, comforting a stranger until her own composure cracks and in a twist of human grace, the widow consoles her. It’s a scene where Gardner tries to do something out of his lane. It works, I think, but I'm as easy-goingly uncritical a reader as you'll find anywhere.

The D.A. Calls It Murder is a puzzle box of subplots and clues. It is also Gardner doing something different, perhaps to test himself, peeling back the gloss of Hollywood and the grit of small-town realities to show us what ambition and compassion look like when the stakes are high.

Perry Mason 127: Clear & Present Risks

Abstract: This analysis examines the social, political, psychological, and emotional risks associated with excessive exposure to Perry Mason novels. While Erle Stanley Gardner’s legal fiction is widely regarded as harmless entertainment, prolonged immersion may generate subtle but cumulatively significant distortions in readers’ expectations about society, institutions, and the self.

Social Risks
From communication and sociological perspectives, habitual reading of Perry Mason novels may foster unrealistic expectations about interpersonal competence. Mason’s near-superhuman capacity to outwit authorities and evil-doers, detect deception and prevarication, and conduct incisive cross-examinations can encourage readers to overestimate the efficacy of fluent cleverness in everyday social interaction.

Naïve or impressionable Mason fans may also fail to apprehend the inescapable fact that over a prolonged period few enjoy the company of a garrulous know-all that asks too many questions. This may result in conversational grandiosity, inordinate suspicion of others’ motives, or an inflated belief that every disagreement can be “won” through rhetorical maneuvering rather than compromise. Over time, such tendencies risk social alienation, particularly in contexts - like the world of work - that reward collaboration over courtroom-style confrontation.

Political Risks
Politically, excessive Mason consumption may subtly reshape attitudes toward legal and civic institutions. The novels’ persistent depiction of weak-brained police, narrow-minded prosecutors, and unreliable eye-witness testimony can promote a skewed belief that our systems of criminal justice are obstacles made effective for justice and safe for the innocent only by heroic individual intervention. While healthy skepticism of authority is a democratic virtue, its exaggerated form may harden into bitter cynicism and avoidance of any civic engagement. Readers may come to believe that justice is best achieved not through collective norms or gradual institutional reform, but through the intervention of singularly brilliant agents – i.e. superheroes - operating in opposition to established legitimate authority.

Psychological Risks
Psychologically, prolonged exposure to Mason’s sense of empathy for his clients may contribute to cognitive distortions. Readers may develop what could be termed the “latent exculpatory fantasy,” the unhelpful belief that any personal error or ethical lapse could, under sympathetic scrutiny, be revealed as justified or misunderstood only by ill-willed observers such as police officers. This mindset risks weakening accountability and encouraging rationalization.

In extreme cases, habitual immersion in Perry Mason’s airtight resolutions can condition readers to expect definitive answers. When real life presents murky motives, conflicting alternatives, insoluble problems, or ethical gray zones, such readers may feel unease or impatience, having internalized the promise of the Perryverse that truth always emerges cleanly and conclusively, without uncertainty.

Emotional Risks
The Perry Mason novels quietly train readers - especially those prone to stress, discomfort, and anxiety, which is to say nearly everyone - to regard the police not as neutral civil servants but as fundamentally menacing forces. Cops are depicted as biased gatherers of circumstantial trivia, cavalier about constitutional rights, quick to presume guilt, eager to prime witnesses, and chronically inclined to read ordinary nervousness as evidence of deception. For readers burdened with secret shames - which, again, is most readers - this portrayal encourages a grim inference: because everyone is guilty of something, even the most cursory investigation can unearth a chargeable offense.

For such unhappy people, the mere sound of sirens signals impending exposure and humiliation; a routine traffic stop feels like the first move in a frame‑up. Perry Mason’s brilliance only intensifies this capiophobia. His virtuoso rescues imply that justice is not a normal outcome of the system but an extraordinary exception - possible only through luck or the dazzling intervention of a singular hero. In a world of overcharging, racial disparities, and the cognitive shortcuts humans apply unthinkingly, fairness, sense, and mercy appear absent by default. The novels thus whisper a chilling lesson: if you have a plausible motive, lack an airtight alibi, and fit the circumstantial evidence, cops and prosecutors do not particularly care whether you are innocent.

Conclusion
In moderation, the Perry Mason novels function as an efficient vehicle for consolation and reading pleasure. When consumed in excess, however, they risk cultivating distorted expectations about both law and life - encouraging readers to assume that reality ought to unfold with the coherence, moral certainty, and inevitability of a legal thriller, and to experience frustration or indignation when it does not.

More troublingly, the novels may foster a bleak fatalism: the conviction that, absent the intervention of an action figure like Perry Mason, no safeguard exists against a criminal justice system whose agents are routinely capricious and malevolent. In this view, justice is not an institutional norm but a contingent miracle, and the ordinary individual stands largely defenseless once the machinery of prosecution has been set in motion.

Perry Mason 126: TCOT Moth-Eaten Mink

Note: We true fans of the Perry Mason novels have always known Lt. Tragg as the honest cop who plays fair with Mason, while Sgt. Holcomb and D.A. Hamilton Burger are charter members of the “Burn Mason’s Briefs” club. In the case of this 1952 novel Tragg is never more likable and we even feel a pang of sympathy for him. He’s working overtime in a finale where he shows grit and attitude.

The Case of the Moth-Eaten Mink – Erle Stanley Gardner

More than a few Perry Mason mysteries kick off in restaurants. Mason and his confidential assistant, Della Street, are relaxing after a long day when trouble breaks up a quiet dinner.

Waitress Dixie Dayton vanishes mid-shift, leaving behind a paycheck and a shabby mink coat. Soon, someone tries to run her down, then another villain takes a shot at her. She lands in the hospital, only to disappear again.

Her jittery boss, Morris Alburg, hires Mason to find out why Dixie bolted. Mason inspects the mink and discovers a pawn ticket from a Seattle shop. The police learn Dixie pawned a diamond ring and, more ominously for her, a gun. Ballistics tie the weapon to the killing of a police officer. Dixie’s boyfriend, Thomas E. Sedgwick, becomes suspect number one. Unusually for a Mason novel, the body count rises: Dixie and Moe are linked to the murder of George Fayette, a hardcase with plenty of enemies. Mason, of course, takes Tom and Dixie on as clients.

This case brims with oddities. Two lipstick messages scrawled in a seedy hotel room. Mason serving as both defense counsel and prosecution witness. A Paul Drake operative with a shady streak. Two witnesses boasting exceptional memory skills. The solution withheld until the last page. Dixie Dayton revealed as an alias - her real name never disclosed, a mystery forever. 

Gardner’s formula is unmistakable: rapid tempo, dialogue-driven scenes, and faith that forensic science will overcome police blunders born of corner-cutting and mental shortcuts. Readers craving lush descriptions or deep character studies should look elsewhere. Gardner’s style was narrow, but within those limits, he was inventive at plotting and superb at setting a pace.

Perry Mason 125: Top of the Heap

Note: Published in 1952, this is the thirteenth of 29 novels starring the PI partnership of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam that were written by Erle Stanley Gardner under the pen name of A.A. Fair. Though not a fan of comparisons, I think that Fair’s Cool and Lam novels are smarter, sexier, wittier and just more entertaining than Gardner’s Perry Mason novels.

Top of the Heap – Erle Stanley Gardner writing as A.A. Fair

John Carver Billings II strode into Cool and Lam’s office doing his damnedest to seem confident.

He told a story as shaky as his hands. His date Maurine vanished after a party where Billings played escort. Slipped away with someone else. For most men, a bruised ego. For Billings, a big problem.

Because hours later, Gabby Garvanza - Maurine's dangerous boyfriend - was shot. Gabby is lying in a hospital bed, riddled with bullets, and the police are circling. Billings needs an alibi but fast.

Billings claims he spent the night with two other women. By morning, they were gone too. Three women missing. Coincidence - or is Fate teeing up John the Second?

What follows is classic Gardner in a case that starts simple and twists into a maze of lies and greed. Lam's PI partner Bertha Cool smells money. Three hundred dollars already paid in retainer, five hundred more promised. Simple job: find the girls, clear Billings. Lam sees the cracks, the details that don’t fit. And with his every step, the ground shifts. Mining assets, they call them. Lam knows better and follows his usual inclination not to tell anybody - not the reader; certainly not Bertha - what he suspects is afoot.

Top of the Heap exemplifies Gardner’s signature formula: murder as a side effect of scams and schemes gone sideways. Bertha Cool, a comic miser in the Mr. Krabs mold, clashes hilariously with Lam’s understated brilliance. His quiet finesse and patient listening make him irresistible to women - despite his short stature and Bertha’s stingy pay.

Hard Case Crime’s 2004 reissue was a masterstroke, rescuing a gem that proves Gardner’s Cool and Lam novels deserve a place beside the best of hardboiled fiction.

Lilias Folan

Note: March is Women’s History month. So I think it is appropriate to mark the passing of a wonderful soul whose spark went back to the big fire March 9, 2026, at the age of 90. Though I started yoga in the summer of 1992 with a Richard Hittleman videotape, it was Lilias on WNED-TV in the late 1990s that really kept me on the mat.

America's Best-known Yoga Teacher

In the middle Sixties, Lilias Folan seemingly had it all: a loving husband, two healthy little boys, two labbies, the big house in the chi-chi suburbs of the Big Apple. But she felt lousy, logy, and bored, smoked too much, and was overweight. Her PCP ordered her to take up an exercise program. Because golf and tennis didn’t excite her, she took a yoga class at the local YMCA.

Her decision was influenced by Jess Stearn’s 1965 book Yoga, Youth, and Reincarnation. This is still worth reading if you like memoirs by seekers. He’s skeptical, funny and not afraid of telling stories on himself. It’s also a tribute to his teacher Marcia Moore* whose equanimity his teasing never ruffled. Stearn testified that though he started as a skeptic, after practicing yoga and mindfulness meditation, his mental health improved and he was able to deal with demons from his past. For Lilias, this rang a bell, because like many seekers, she was an unloved child, a casualty of upper crust parents that were uninvolved in the lives of their children.

She loved yoga from the get-go. It made her feel wonderful. She quit smoking. She slept better. She also became more mindful, making friends with the observer self within that judges not. Her love of the spiritual side of life deepened. 

Lilias learned about watching the mind and getting a grip on the inner chatter. Focus on the body and breath. Quiet the mind down and deepen attention with breathing and asanas and observation. Become spacious. Be present, here, right now. This breath. And another. Who you are becomes deeper and deeper, more serene, more fair, kind, compassionate (if a bit detached).

Due to the dad's job transfer, the Folans moved to Cincinnati's Indian Hill in 1968. Lilias taught a local YWCA class. A yogine enjoyed her teaching and recommended Lilias to her producer-husband, who worked for Cincinnati's PBS station, WCET. Good-looking but not too, with her bright eyes and luminous smile, and that long braid, she was a natural for TV, making up for the spartan set and microphone in the floor that didn't always pick up what she said. 

Lilias, Yoga and You ran on PBS from 1972 until 1999 with 500 episodes in all. She introduced yoga to millions of viewers by meeting them where they already were: in their living rooms. At the time, yoga was often seen as weird or fringe, associated with bodybuilding, vegan diets, and nudist communes. Folan challenged those narrow assumptions.

She never saw it as a show starring Lilias Folan, but a class in which she was a teacher doing what she was put on earth to do:  share with people how they can get on the yoga bus. She was encouraged by the cards and letters grateful viewers sent her in thanks. The show covered its costs and made a little money for WCET so it got renewed for years until the crazes of "hot yoga" and "power yoga" made her hatha yoga seem outdated.

Her teaching style was warm, welcoming, practical, and relatable. She showed viewers that yoga was neither hippie-ish nor a religion, did not require special clothes or gear, and was not restricted to the young or flexible. Anyone could integrate it into their physical fitness routine. Her message was simple and radical for its time: yoga was for ordinary people, at any age, with any body shape, size or appearance.

Lilias offered more than postures. She included breathing, relaxation, reflection, and mindfulness, helping viewers understand yoga as something that could support their existing beliefs and daily lives, not replace them. Deeply influenced by her studies with Indian teachers and traditions such as Vedanta philosophy, Lilias translated complex ideas into plain language. She offered the benefits of yoga without asking anyone to retreat to an ashram or radically change their lifestyle.

Despite her national recognition, Lilias showed little interest in celebrity. She continued teaching classes and workshops well into later life, even when doctors advised her to slow down and not travel so much. Some modern yoga teachers have dismissed her work as outdated,** and her passing in March 2026 received little public acknowledgment.*** Yet through decades on public television, along with books and instructional videos, Lilias helped normalize yoga as a gentle, life-enhancing practice rooted in kindness and love. 

At the heart of Lilias’ philosophy was the idea that yoga is a personal, lifelong path toward emotional balance and self-understanding. She spoke of yoga as something that helped her “grow up,” not stay young, an important distinction in a culture that often equates all things healthy with youth. She modeled an approach to aging grounded in focus, observation, and presence.

For Lilias, yoga was inseparable from daily life. She saw it as a way to work honestly with emotions, develop patience, and cultivate compassion when life threw its inevitable curve balls. When she underwent chemotherapy for breast cancer in 2013, she shared how breathing and relaxation techniques helped her cope with chemo.

Teaching yoga, for Lilias, was both a service and a continuation of her own learning. She believed yoga helped people face stress, dissatisfaction, and temptation with greater steadiness. Her lasting legacy is not just that she popularized yoga, but that she made it accessible and deeply humane on and off the mat.

* Moore was an early ketamine enthusiast. Her end was terrible and sad.

** Twenty years ago, when a yoga teacher asked where I had got that, I answered "Lilias" and she rolled her eyes.

*** Even the TV station CET had de nada in the way of an obit on their blog, reminding us why decent people despise mass media.

The Ides of Charle Chan: In the Chinese Cat

Note: Hollywood script writers got wrong Charlie Chan referring to his own wife as “honorable wife.” You must never be so arrogant as to refer to your own family or your things with honorifics like “honorable.” Should your time machine whisk you back to traditional Japan, when talking to superiors, you say “my wife” with a humble word like “gusai” 愚妻 which means “my silly wife.” I don’t know but I would predict with confidence Chinese polite language would not be so different on this score.

Charlie Chan in the Chinese Cat
1944 / 1:06
Tagline: “"MUST CONFESS. HONORABLE SON...This Is My Most Baffling Case!"”
[WGN Christmas 1985]

The film opens with a striking premise: a wealthy San Francisco magnate is shot dead while pondering a chess problem. His body is discovered by his wife and stepdaughter. Neither are heartbroken, since his marriage was a financial transaction. Enter a publicity-hungry criminologist who publishes a sensational book all but accusing the widow of murder. Mortified, the daughter turns to Charlie Chan to clear her mother’s name. Chan hesitates to reopen the cold case but relents under pressure from his #3 son, Tommy, and a wager with the criminologist that will benefit Chinese war relief.

What’s a Charlie Chan film without comic relief that is now awkward in 2026? Fortunately, Benson Fong’s Tommy plays it straight. He’s brave and resilient, enduring a beating without betraying his father: “You can’t make a Chan talk.” His rapport with Mantan Moreland, as taxi driver Birmingham Brown, feels warm and genuine. Moreland, often cast as the easily frightened sidekick, adds nuance when he voices sharp complaints about being dragged into danger. Moreland's comic timing remains impeccable, as always.

Sidney Toler’s portrayal of Chan demands a caveat: the yellowface convention is dismaying. Yet, beyond that, Toler’s Chan is neither servile nor caricatured. He’s calm, courteous, and implacably logical. A professional with dry wit. His English is fluent, idiomatic, and laced with aphorisms. When Tommy boasts, “I’ve got a case that will knock your hat off,” Chan deadpans, “I need no assistance in taking off my hat.” To his son’s overeager help: “Your assistance is as welcome as water in a sinking ship.” He even dispenses fortune-cookie wisdom with sly ambiguity: “You should get married and have a large family. Once you have a large family all other troubles mean nothing.” These lines, delivered with understated authority, give Chan a distinctive voice.

The screenplay by George Callahan avoids formulaic shortcuts. Clues don’t fall from heaven; the mystery unfolds with genuine unpredictability. Director Phil Rosen bathes the story in early noir atmosphere - foggy streets, looming shadows - suggesting a debt to Robert Florey’s visual style. The climax in a funhouse of mirrors, skeletons, and wax figures is an eerie set piece coming off suspenseful and darkly comic, heightened by an effective score.

Viewed today, the film is a cultural artifact - baffling in its racial casting yet fascinating in its craft. It offers a layered experience: a solid whodunit, a glimpse of wartime Hollywood, and a study in how humor and heroism were portrayed on screen. For those willing to deal with what are now missteps, this Chan entry remains an atmospheric, engaging mystery with moments of genuine cinematic flair.

Perry Mason 124: Mara Maru

Note: Raymond Burr appeared in a couple dozen feature films between 1946 and 1957. He was typecast as the villain because his stoutness gave him a menacing presence. One wonders if he was parodying his own typecasting when he appeared in the 1955 comedy musical You're Never Too Young. Jerry Lewis plays a barber who is involved in Burr's theft of a diamond. So to get the diamond back grown-man Jerry masquerades as a 12-year-old child - totally something I'm going to piss away 1:42 I would never get back.

Mara Maru
1952 / 1:38
Tagline: “Tropical Treasure! Typhoon! and Temptation!”
[internet archive]

Gregory Mason (Errol Flynn), an American adrift in Manila, ekes out a living salvaging wrecks with his hard-drinking partner Andy Callahan (Richard Webb). Callahan’s drunken threats – “Someday I’m gonna kill you” - sound less like bar talk and more like prophecy. Stella Callahan (Ruth Roman, who is great) is unhappy in the horror of abroad, failing to adjust smoothly to expatriate life. Her beef with time zones - “It’s last night in New York!” - captures her dislocation perfectly.

When Callahan turns up dead, suspicion falls on Mason - until a greasy PI provides an alibi. Enter Brock Benedict (Raymond Burr), a suave treasure hunter dangling a fortune in sunken diamonds. Mason resists - until someone torches his boat.

This is a noir adventure movie made by Warner Brothers, which always cared about keeping it real, at least as to how things look. Though a movie-goer doesn’t feel the humidity of Manila, enjoyable are the camera angles of noir. Robert Burks - Hitchcock’s go-to cameraman - bathes Manila in noir shadows: gritty bars, peeling apartments, solemn churches. As for adventure, we get fires, foot chases and typhoons at sea. As the aftermath of Mason’s torched boat, we even get a death of a child scene, made more pathetic since as life ebbs out of the kid, his elder brother, breaking up, promises him a ride in the jeepney they would buy after they got rich.

The actors seem unconnected as if they are under-rehearsed. Flynn moves like a man whose charm has soured - sometimes vibrant, often just going through the motions. Raymond Burr, lethal in a white suit, radiates menace with mogul polish - murder as a business option. Roman steals scenes with a mix of allure and pragmatism, nailing the film’s thesis: ‘All you men are crazy about the same thing – money.”

As for the connection to the classic Perry Mason TV series, the heavy-handed detective is stout Dan Seymour, who played pushy guys in seven episodes. Richard Webb was in two shows, in one of which, my favorite TCOT Impetuous Imp, before he gets knocked off, he lays a film noir truism on Our Girl Bonnie Jones, “You're a very pretty girl, Diana, and pretty girls like pretty things. And pretty things cost money.” Webb played the well-deserving victim again as the obnoxious husband of Patricia Barry in TCOT Velvet Claws.

The Nones of Charle Chan: In Honolulu

Note: We take a break from Our Fave Lawyer to examine Sidney Toler’s debut as Charlie Chan. This B-movie has earned praise for warm family dynamics, fast pacing, and Toler’s engaging, lighter touch in the title role. Critics note the mystery often takes second fiddle to broad humor, exotic animals, and comic antics, offering dated stereotypes that make us post-moderns groan. But is has a nostalgic charm for hardcore readers who watched these movies when the family TV got only a half-dozen channels. 

Charlie Chan in Honolulu
1938 / 1:07
Tagline: “The New Chan Thriller you've been Waiting for!”
[internet archive]

Teenager Jimmy (Victor Sen Yung), the #2 Son of the famous Chinese detective, aspires to be a detective and so does his tween brother Tommy (Layne Tom Jr.). All of Charlie Chan’s thirteen kids, in fact, are positively American in their brainpower, ambition and high spirits.

In contrast, the movie-goer doubts the intelligence of a culprit who murders a courier in the confines a tramp freighter. But despite the fact that only six passengers were aboard, the victim receiving a payment of $300,000 in cash was shot dead. And the money goes missing.

Jimmy impersonates his father to get on the ship and investigate the murder-robbery. His brother Tommy tags along to get in on the action. Both boys forget their mission and their rivalry for their father’s attention and praise when they are scared brickless by the zoo animals that are lightly supervised by the comic relief zookeeper Al (Eddie Collins).

The studio spent money on the sets so all the well-lit sets are convincing. This is a lucky decision since most of the action occurs on the freighter, not at all in picturesque Honolulu like the beautiful 1931 Chan movie The Black Camel. Also convincing as a prop was Dr. Cardigan’s (George Zucco) apparatus for keeping alive the brain of executed master criminal Chang Ho-Pin.

Zucco, as always, totally convinces us movie-goers he is a mad psychiatrist as he uses calipers to measure heads for further study of the subject’s criminal tendencies. The cowardly zookeeper not being Mantan Moreland or Stepan Fetchit is surprising, making us relieved movie-goers wonder how the casting director missed that trick. Eddie Collins, a “funny mouth noises” kind of burlesque comedian, is most well-known for voicing Dopey in Snow White and Her Seven Boyfriends.

This outing was Sidney Toler’s first as the famous detective. As for mannerisms and physical quirks, Toler's presence is substantial in the obligatory white suit, with minimal gesturing, upright posture, and deliberate movements. He conveys the speaker is a non-native speaker of English by not replacing sounds (like d for th), but through rhythm of speech, by minimizing the ups and downs of American English. Toler also brings an amiable if sly sarcasm in word and facial expression to the character, as if the tough detective has no illusions about the world. Smilingly, he lets Jimmy and Tommy twist in the wind when their impersonation is revealed, as if to learn them a lesson in patience and restraint they won’t soon forget.

The Thirties expressions are cool “tough egg” for a person who is secretive, guarded, aloof, or reserved, “stir-bug’ for a person made crazy by incarceration and a “sneak-out” for a secret departure. Ditto for some of the inevitable proverbs with the stand-out being “When money talk, few are deaf.”

Recommended for the atmosphere and non-stop action.

Perry Mason 123: Capitalism in the Dock

Note: Erle Stanley Gardner advocated for justice, particularly for marginalized groups. He defended poor Chinese and Mexican immigrants early in his legal career. He founded the Court of Last Resort in the 1940s to help people who were wrongfully convicted or unable to get fair trials. These actions suggest a strong belief in individual rights and due process, for personal liberty, for accountability, against exploitation of the vulnerable, against abuse of state power. His series hero Perry Mason is the hero fighting the impunity of the rich, the corruption of the powerful, and the flaws of the criminal justice system.

Capitalism in the Dock: Perry Mason and the Price of Greed

Erle Stanley Gardner was no naïve cheerleader for capitalism. He probably believed it offered the widest berth for individual ambition, but his Perry Mason novels are clear minded examinations of the dark side of capitalism. Look beneath the roiling Mason plot and you’ll almost always find money as the shark stirring up the water. Stock manipulations, contested wills, insurance fraud, blackmail, embezzlement, and inheritances are Gardner’s leading players. Crimes come out of fear of loss: missing out on a money making opportunity or looking irrelevant or powerless or foolish due to a loss of status, etc.

Why this fixation on financial chicanery? Because Gardner took for granted the American nervous system. His stories pulse with the anxiety of a culture that worships wealth yet fears loss more than death, pretending money can buy happiness but knowing it can’t. Mason debuted in 1933, a year after the worst year of the Great Depression. Stressed readers knew fortunes could evaporate overnight, knew it was stupid to base happiness on what’s easily lost but did it anyway. Gardner’s villains are rarely Perry and Dick-type outcasts. They’re brokers, heirs, executives, respectable players who discover to their dismay that somebody smarter and more ruthless is always out there. Their desperation is familiar: the terror of losing money and status, the temptation to cut corners, the risk-taker’s faith that cleverness and luck will outrun accountability.

Enter Perry “Man of No Illusions” Mason, who accepts the system as it is. In the early novels, he barely stirs until the scent of big money wafts into his office. His genius lies in understanding the contradictions of a society that proclaims hard work and equal opportunity while enthroning profit as if there were no rules and admiring leaders with the ethics of buccaneers. The courtroom becomes Gardner’s platform, a stage where the social order, though shaken by the conspirators of unchecked capitalism is theatrically restored. The formula comforts. Yes, the system grinds and squeaks. Yes, it indulges the covetous. But a brilliant advocate can still make justice take up a sword against greedy malefactors.

Time passes, however. Today’s reader barely flinches. A forged will? A crooked stock deal? These seem crimes as bucolic as tractor joyrides and stealing crops beside the algorithmic labyrinth of modern financial skullduggery – social media grift, pushing addiction buttons for user data and ad revenue, crypto four-flushing, kleptocracies, scam industries that rely on human trafficking and modern slavery. Gardner’s financial crimes belong to an age when capitalism was personal, when fortunes hinged on smiles, handshakes, and signatures in blue ink. Not servers and signed PDFs.

Still, the novels endure among we happy few. They are morality plays for a society that believed in rules even as it mocked them. Given they no longer stoke outrage, they remain reminders of uncomfortable American truths.

The Kalends of Charlie Chan: At the Olympics

Note: Taking a break from Our Favorite Lawyer, this fast-moving  B‑movie mystery is set against real 1936 Berlin Olympic footage. It blends espionage, familial warmth, and old-school exoticism. Critics praise its pacing and period intrigue, yet deplore dated stereotypes and Warner Oland’s yellowface.  Entertaining but be prepared to make the usual allowances.

Charlie Chan at the Olympics
1937 / 1:11
Tagline: “Murderous Spies invade Olympic Games!”
[youtube]

This above-average Charlie Chan movie leans more toward espionage thriller than traditional whodunit. Set at a U.S. airbase near Honolulu, the plot revolves around foreign agents attempting to steal a device capable of remotely controlling aircraft. Their scheme escalates when they hijack a test plane and silence the pilot permanently.

Honolulu police enlist detective Charlie Chan (Werner Oland) to dismantle the spy ring. The pursuit spans continents: Lee Chan (#1 Son, played by Keye Luke) sails aboard the Manhattan liner, while Chan travels on the Zeppelin Hindenburg – the same airship that had a rendezvous with Destiny in New Jersey  in 1937. The film incorporates authentic footage from the Berlin Olympics, including Jesse Owens’ historic relay performance, though marred by the voice-over: “Look at that boy run!” The climax delivers genuine suspense and a satisfying reveal.

While the use of yellowface is rightly criticized today, Oland offers one of his stronger portrayals of Chan. The character’s defining trait - unflappable self-control - emerges through his courteous interactions with allies and adversaries alike. When Lee is kidnapped, Chan’s paternal concern feels authentic and moving.

The film opens ironically with Chan passing his annual physical with ease. In reality, Werner Oland died in 1938 at age 58, weakened by chronic alcoholism and COPD aggravated by smoking.

European Reading Challenge #2

I read this for the European Reading Challenge 2026.

The Fall - Albert Camus

This is a novel of confession, a monologue from a man who shouts into the abyss, not expecting any reply. Jean-Baptiste Clamence, once a respected Parisian lawyer, now wanders the bars of Amsterdam, recounting his descent with the clarity of one who has lost faith not only in others but in himself.

His crimes are various. A road rage incident, a woman poised to leap into the Seine - he did nothing. And in doing nothing, he became something else: not a coward, not a villain, but a watcher. A man who sees too clearly the absurd theater of daily life, the endless posing, the judgments, the masks. He is not defiant, not repentant. He is ironic. Detached. Silent. Not a monster but an imp, assenting to beliefs that don’t do him any good.

To mistake Clamence for Camus is to miss the point. The narrator is not the author’s mouthpiece but his warning. Clamence is what happens when one lives without authenticity, without responsibility. For us hardcore readers - especially those hardened by work and literature, tempted by postmodern games - Clamence is a cautionary figure. He reminds us that thoughts, words, and actions - inaction too - are not abstractions. They have weight. They leave marks.

The title The Fall is not merely personal. It is historical. It evokes the collapse of complacencies and illusions after the Great War and The Slump and the Second World War, the revelation of what humanity is capable of under pressure - internal, external, ideological, economic, social. Camus, in this slim novel, delivers philosophical ideas concisely.

Some critics call The Fall Camus’s greatest achievement. It is certainly his most intimate. In awarding him the Nobel Prize in 1957, the world recognized not just a writer, but a man who understood that the modern soul, stripped of its certainties, must still bear the challenge of freedom and the consequences of silence.