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.