The Kalends of Perry Mason 97

In Tribute to Hugh Marlowe

This well-respected actor with a rich baritone worked in radio before he broke into the movies. He appeared in TCM perrennials such as Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Twelve O'Clock High (1949), All About Eve (1950), and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). He appeared in six – really five – episodes of Perry Mason, one of a dozen actors who played what Perry fandom calls the trifecta - the victim, the defendant, and the culprit.

The Case of the Fraudulent Foto (1959)

In serious horn-rimmed glasses, Hugh plays an idealistic DA aiming to battle graft in the awarding of construction contracts in small city. The dedicated DA is so focused on his goal that he doesn’t see big trouble coming his way from an obvious direction. The bad guys sic the comely Leora Matthews on him to lure him into a compromising position, complete with photographer. Hugh’s DA is arrested on a charge of murder when the blackmailer ends up killed on the floor, where many other blackmailers in Mason stories land.

However, the real star of his episode is the noir look of this season two episode. It is cool beyond belief. Black, white, and shades of grey never looked better in stock shots of cars old even in 1959. The city and the police station at night are made to look huge, cold, harsh, and pitiless, like places you enter as yourself but you come out not yourself any more. The 1890s hotel has incredible woodwork that looks great in monochrome. Mason drives a black 1959 Cadillac convertible. Hugh wears a trench coat that makes us think of fedoras, fog and Nelson Riddle’s theme for The Untouchables. It’s weird because director Arthur Marks did not have an impressive noir history on his resume until the 1970s.

The Case of the Slandered Submarine (1960)

Often cast as a military man, Hugh was the commander of the good sub U.S.S. Moray in this one. He ends up with a screwdriver in his chest so he did not get a chance to make that baritone resonate.

The Case of the Borrowed Baby (1962)

Somebody who trusts Perry and Della to do the right thing leaves a four-week-old baby in a basket on Perry’s office desk. The mother finally surfaces but ends up in trouble deep after she is arrested for murder. The baby in fact may be the heir to a fortune. Hugh is just okay in not a big part as a business manager. The focus on Barbara Hale bonding with the infant was the centerpiece in this episode. Not aging real well is game and savvy Della Street regretting her choice to be a career woman having adventures with Perry Mason.

The Case of the Nebulous Nephew (1963)

Season 7 was kicked off with one of the better scripted episodes. Hugh plays one of two scamsters who aim to con two harmless old ladies. But after living with the two women for a little while, Hugh’s partner in fraud becomes fond of the aunties and puts the argument to Hugh for abandoning their nefarious plan. But greedy calculating Hugh objects and ends up murdered. Besides the stellar acting, the long set-up is about perfect, without a wasted word or scene. The writers make points about staying in touch with your core values, feeling family loyalty, atoning for past sins, admiring the colorblindness of children, and using love and faith as guides. Up there with The Case of the Perjured Parrot and The Case of the Nine Dolls, this may be my favorite episode ever.

The Case of the Sleepy Slayer (1964)

“How much is it worth,” wonders an exhausted caregiver, “to be a sick, empty creature, drained of every drop of the joy of life?” Poor Rachel Gordon has been driven to distraction by providing care to her tyrant uncle for many years. At the end of her tether she puts a couple of rounds into Uncle as he sleeps. The investigation reveals that the tyrant was poisoned before Rachel shot him. Hugh has a small part as a doctor who says of the miser, “even death despises him” and that the old buzzard’s heart, driven by a jolt of adrenaline “would have been like running a transistor radio on a fifty million volt generator.” Hugh is overshadowed by Phyllis Hill as the hard-pressed caregiver who in her loneliness gets involved with a louse; Robert Brown who plays her user BF persuasively; and finally he of the screaming skull,  Richard Hale, who often played the crooked businessman, sickly pawpaw, and sinister miser. 

The Case of the Hasty Honeymooner (1965)

I detest spoilers so I can only say that Hugh again plays the bounder and dastard as he did in Nebulous Nephew. Oddly enough, in this episode his TV wife is his real-life wife K.T. Stevens.  Noah Beery, Jr. puts in a rip-roaring performance as Lucas Tolliver of Oklahoma. He wants Perry Mason to draw up a will for a future wife. This weird request spurs Perry to send Paul Drake on a quest for information about down-home Luke. Paul finds Luke a man unlucky in marriage, having lost not one but two wives, one to a salad of baneful greens and the other to a passing train. Set in 1965, the story has elements based on the new tech of computer dating and newfound concern for PR fallout. Playing true to his usual good old boy, Strother Martin puts in a great turn as a Bible-thumping tattletale.

Stoic Week 5/5: Integrity

Note: Epictetus, Seneca and Aurelius examined fictional characters like Medea, Odysseus, and Hercules through a Stoic lens. Inspired, I apply the Stoic orientation to the messed-up impressions of characters in the TV stories of the original Perry Mason (1957 - 1966) and then I ordered the ghost in the machine to recast the review in the style of Epictetus.  In TCOT Curious Bride, Perry Mason says, “What right have I got to sit back with that 'holier than thou' attitude and expect [clients] 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.”

The Case the Resolute Reformer (Season 4, Episode 14, 1/14/61)

Let us consider the tale of Hoyt, the County Civil Engineer - a man who sought to raise his son by the book, not just any book, but the one written by the upright sages of cinema, Tracy and Heston, on ethics and integrity. Hoyt believed that if he held his son to the highest standards, the boy would rise to meet them. But the Stoic knows: you cannot force virtue into another as you would pour water into a jar. You may guide, you may model, but you cannot command the soul of another.

Hoyt’s son, unable to meet his father’s impossible expectations, turned instead to wine and folly. And in his drunken missteps, he became the pawn of a ruthless man in construction, who used a society girl to bait the boy and compromise the father. The target was not the son - it was Hoyt. The upright man must fall, so the dishonest may rise.

This is the ingenuity of the wicked: they do not fight fair, because they do not fight with reason. They fight with manipulation, with bribery, with the corruption of the weak. And yet, the Stoic does not despair. For what is corruption but the inevitable pursuit of reputation, position, influence in any political system? Wishing for a world free of corruption is like longing for figs in winter.

Hoyt’s assistant Kent, bribed and broken, confesses in court that Hoyt once told him, “Your judgment is not sound.” And Perry Mason, who speaks here with the clarity of a Stoic, replies, “Well, yes. Hoyt was right. If your judgment had been sound, you wouldn’t have taken bribes.”

This is the heart of the matter. The Stoic does not ask whether the world is fair. He asks whether he himself is just. He does not demand that others be perfect. He forgives their ignorance, their weakness, their vanity. He knows that anger at others’ faults is a kind of madness - a refusal to accept that people are as they are.

High standards? Keep them - for yourself. For others, offer patience. Offer understanding. Offer the kind of mercy you will one day need. For we all stumble. We all forget. We all fall short.

And when the world tries to drag you into its chaos, remember: the only thing you truly control is your response. Choose reason. Choose compassion. Choose not to be like them.

Stoic Week 4/5: Spite

Note: Epictetus and Aurelius examined fictional characters like Medea and Hercules through a Stoic template. Inspired, I apply the Stoic orientation to the messed-up impressions of characters in the TV stories of the original Perry Mason (1957 - 1966) and then had the ghost in the machine recast it in the style of Seneca. In the novel TCOT Shoplifter’s Shoe, Perry Mason says, "People have their strong points and their weak points. The true philosopher sees them as they are, and is never disappointed, because he doesn’t expect too much. The cynic is one who starts out with a false pattern and becomes disappointed because people don’t conform to that pattern. Most of the little chiseling practices come from trying to cope with our economic conventions. When it comes right down to fundamentals, people are fairly dependable. The neighbor who would cheat you out of a pound of sugar would risk her life to save you from drowning."

The Case of the Witless Witness (Season 6, Episode 28, 5/16/63)

It is a curious thing, Lucilius, how men of sound judgment and upright character, once content to dispense justice from the bench, are drawn to the theater of politics, where virtue is often mocked and ambition wears the mask of service. Judge Daniel Redmond, a man of probity, has accepted the nomination to be Lieutenant Governor - a role which, to the Stoic, may seem as superfluous as weighing down the wise with the ceremonial chains of spectacle and trumpery.

Why would a man exchange the solemn majesty of the law for the hollow pomp and jibber-jabber of political office? Perhaps he imagines he can steer the ship of state. But the Stoic knows: the sea is not calmed by the hand on the rudder, but by the soul unshaken by storms. Yet before we can ponder this folly further, the judge is accused - of fraud, no less, and of poisoning a witness.

The irony is not lost on those who remember his long-ago lecture on statutory fraud, delivered with romantic fervor at a party teeming with lobbyists and fixers. Madge Eberly, once the object of his near-proposal, recalls this moment with a venomous smile. “Weren’t you advising them on fraud?” she asks, her tone sweet with malice. Redmond protests - he spoke only of how fraud might be done, not how it should be. But Madge, spurned and bitter, has already passed the tale to those who would see him fall.

Spite, Lucilius, is a passion rarely named in our post-modern age, which prefers to dress its wounds in irony and scrolling. But the Stoic sees it clearly: it is the soul’s abject surrender to perceived injury, the abdication of reason to resentment. To be consumed by spite is to give one's tranquility to another, to become the very thing one despises.

Marcus Aurelius, that emperor of the inner citadel, reminds us: “The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.” Madge, in her bitterness, has become the architect of her own unrest. Redmond, if he is wise, will not answer her poison with more poison, but with steadfastness and the legal hocus-pocus of Perry Mason.

Stoic Week 3/5: Ambition and Smarts

Note: Epictetus and Aurelius examined fictional characters like Medea and Hercules through Stoic sunglasses. Inspired, I apply the Stoic orientation to the messed-up impressions of characters in the TV stories of the original Perry Mason (1957 - 1966) and then I had the ghost in the machine recast it in the style of Musonius Rufus. In the novel TCOT Caretaker’s Cat, Perry Mason says on Stoic risk-taking, “What the hell can a man lose? He can't lose his life because he doesn't own that anyway. He has only a lease on life. He can lose money and money doesn't mean one damn thing as compared with character. All that really counts is a man's ability to live life, to get the most out of it as he goes through it, and he gets the most kick out of it by playing a no-limit game.”

The Case of the Larcenous Lady (Season 4, Episode 12, 12/17/60)

On the Pitfalls of Ambition

It is not the pursuit of high office that corrupts, but the manner in which one pursues it. Mona, though professing restraint, reveals herself not as a guardian of virtue but as one enslaved by ambition. She declares she will not interfere in the process of appointing her husband to a high post in state government, yet she proceeds to extort and manipulate, believing that the ends justify the means. But no end, however grand, can sanctify the use of vice. To blackmail is to abandon reason, and to intimidate is to forsake justice.

Such acts are not the marks of a noble soul but of one diseased by desire. The wise do not seek elevation through the exploitation and suffering of others. If a post is to be held, let it be earned through merit and service, not deceit. For what is the value of a crown gained by corruption? It weighs heavier on the conscience than on the brow.

Mona’s fate - death by the very ambition she nurtured - is not tragic but instructive. The Stoic mourns an end to all children of God, but learns from their unhappy fates: that unchecked desire leads not to glory, but to ruin.

On the Missteps of the Young and the Importance of Practical Wisdom

Susan, though kind and intelligent, lacks the prudence that wisdom demands. She gives away a great sum without securing proof in the form of a receipt, and worse, she tampers with death and deceit. To pick up a weapon at a crime scene is not merely foolish - it is a failure to consider what is within one’s control. To lie to one’s attorney about firing the shot from the murder gun to divert suspicion from the man she loved (identical to the one that didn't even know she was alive) is to sabotage the very advocacy one seeks.

Musonius Rufus taught that philosophy is not for idle speculation but for living rightly. Wisdom is not found in books alone, but in the choices we make daily. To act without thought is to live as a child, not as an adult with the slightest pretentions to live like a Stoic philosopher. Susan’s errors are not sins of malice, but of ignorance - and ignorance, though forgivable, is dangerous when left uncorrected.

Let us then teach our youth not only to be kind, but to have good calculation. Let them learn that love, if not guided by wisdom, becomes a tyrant. That truth, even when painful, is the ally of justice. And that in all things, we must ask: Is this within my power? Is this in accordance with virtue?

Stoic Week 2/5: Revenge

Note: Both Epictetus and Aurelius examined fictional characters like Medea and Hercules through a Stoic lens. Inspired, I apply the Stoic orientation to the messed-up impressions of characters in the TV stories of the original Perry Mason (1957 - 1966) and then I had the ghost in the machine recast it in the style of Marcus Aurelius. In the novel TCOT Phantom Fortune, Perry Mason says, “Make up your mind to one thing, Mrs. Warren. After water has run downstream and over the dam, you can't find any way on earth of getting it back upstream and over the dam a second time. Take things as they come. Concentrate on the present, forget the past.”

The Case of the Lonely Heiress (Season 1, Episode 20, 2/1/58)

Observe Delores, as portrayed by Anna Navarro - a force of nature, yes, but one enslaved by her own passions. She lashes out not because others provoke her, but because she has allowed anger and anxiety to become the lens through which she sees the world. She is not free. She is ruled.

And what of her love for Charlie? If it is love, it is love corrupted - possessive, destructive, conditional. “If I cannot have him, no one can.” This is not affection. It is tyranny disguised as longing.

When poor Delores asks, “Do you think I’m a bad girl?” the question pierces the heart. The Stoic does not rush to condemn. We are all flawed, all fallible. But when one’s life is a litany of cruelty - greed, violence, deceit, exploitation - then yes, we must say: this is not the path of virtue. This is the path of ruin.

And yet, Delores is not the only one lost. Marilyn seeks revenge for her sister’s self-destruction, believing Charlie to be the cause. But what is revenge, if not the surrender of reason to emotion? To retaliate is to become the very thing that wounded you. It is to let another’s vice dictate your own virtue.

Marcus Aurelius reminds us: “The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.” To plot revenge is to allow external events to govern your inner state. It is to give away your peace, your judgment, your soul.

Let Marilyn learn from pain. Let her transform grief into wisdom. Let her choose forgiveness - not because the wrong was small, but because her spirit is large. Forgiveness is not weakness. It is strength. It is the refusal to be ruled by bitterness.

And let us remember: rage, revenge, and resentment are thieves. They steal our clarity, our compassion, our capacity for excellence. The Stoic does not deny emotion - but he does not serve it. He serves reason. He serves virtue. He serves the inner citadel.

Stoic Week 1/5: Obsession

Note: Epictetus, Seneca and Aurelius examined fictional characters like Medea, Odysseus, and Hercules through a Stoic lens. Inspired, I apply the Stoic orientation to the messed-up impressions of characters in the TV stories of the original Perry Mason (1957 - 1966). In TCOT Perjured Parrot, Perry Mason says, "We've been talking quite a bit about becoming hypnotized by circumstantial evidence. After a person once gets a fixed belief, he interprets everything which happens in the light of that belief. It's a dangerous habit to get into and I'm afraid I haven't been entirely innocent, myself."

The Case of the Misguided Missile (Season 4, Episode 25; 5/6/61)

Aerospace engineer Dan Morgan’s obsession with rocket propulsion probably started when he was a teenager under the influence of pioneer Robert Godard in the Twenties.  Morgan said “Jets hadn’t been invented when I was talking about missiles.” So in the early Sixties he landed his dream job in NASA’s space program. But a nosy auditor wouldn't let Morgan’s Sceptre blast off, so Morgan killed the auditor. On the stand a starry-eyed Morgan rants, “I built the first Sceptre, and it flew. It flew!”

In a culture that encourages people to pursue obsessions and fanaticisms, the Stoic stance is radical to say aloud but here goes. It’s possible to like and dislike, work and play, think and do in a moderate fashion. When our preference is moderate, it leads us to set reasonable goals and work toward them wisely.  If our preference is immoderate, says Daniel Gilbert in Stumbling Toward Happiness, it leads us to lie, to cheat, to steal, to hurt others, and to sacrifice things of value, like spending time with family, for the sake of work – or whatever our passion is all about. 

European Reading Challenge #10

Note: Alan Watts sometimes spoke of materialists and abstractionists. Materialists are devoted to loafing and savoring the physical and the present while the abstractionists do their damnedest to make us materialist scamps “fit” or “correct” or “productive” or “future-oriented.” Mozart was a materialist: Listen to the waves. Beethoven was an abstractionist: Enjoy listening to the waves!

Mozart: A Life – Peter Gay

Wolfgang’s father Leopold was musically talented but Leopold ascribed to God his daughter’s prodigious musical proficiency and his son’s musical genius. Piety did not stop Leopold from taking the divinely inspired children on grueling road trips to perform at European courts. Uncomfortable carriages. Bad food. Epidemics. Nor could late nights and perpetual instability have been healthy for the two kids. It was on one of these long exhausting tours that our Mozart contracted rheumatic fever. He was to suffer periodic relapses of fever, swelling, rash, and fatigue in youth and adulthood. It’s not a stretch to claim rheumatic fever contributed to his early death, of exhaustion and over-work, at 35 years of age, in 1791.

Gay points out that young Mozart soaked up all the different genres of music he was exposed to: J.C. Bach for cantatas, Handel for fugues, Hayden for symphonies, and Gluck for operas. Mozart started composing when he was only a child of seven years old. Mozart found his own voice when he was about 16 years old, in the finale of KV 134 Symphony No. 21 in A major. His favorite genre was opera and many say he was the greatest opera composer of all time.

Not a musicologist, historian Gay discusses the music in lay terms for the general reader. Gay also mentions Mozart‘s practical jokes and sense of comedy. And quotes scatological passages from letters that may be hilarious or bewildering, depending on the reader’s predispositions. Not a womanizer, Mozart was fond of strong women – wife Constanze was decidedly not a ditz though she was a soprano* - and featured strong women characters in his operas.

The short biography is for readers that want the highlights of the life and times of the subject. Without being callous about it, Gay offers contra-Romantic views of Mozart’s last year and his demise. For instance, though many people sigh at the forlorn image of a simple cart taking the remains of the neglected abused artist to a common grave with no stone or flowers, there was no way Mozart’s estate, facing huge debt, could pay for a private funeral. 

Its only drawback is that while it lists many books for further reading, it does not list recordings that experts would recommend to the lay listener. I know it is beyond the scope of the life, but interesting would have been a chapter on the history of the Mozart legend and how after WWII the Mozart we know today was constructed by the recording industry and notables such as Malcolm Bilson, Sir John Eliot Gardiner, Sir Charles Mackerras, Alfred Brendel, Wolfgang Meyer, and Nikolaus Harnoncourt.

* “Why is there a soprano outside of your door? She can't find the key and doesn't know when to come in” is just one egregious example of the appalling stereotypes that dog sopranos to this day.