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.