The Ides of Perry Mason 14

Every generation gets the Perry Mason it likes. When Americans liked screwball comedies in the Thirties, they got a drunken bon-vivant Perry Mason in a couple of bad movies. In the Fifties, when Americans felt confident and aggressive and strong, they got the solid unflappable Raymond Burr as our lawyer hero.

And in our days of pandemic HBO has given us post-moderns a Perry Mason origin story with details so bleak that what can we shut-ins do but blame the gory details on the wish to be distracted from loneliness, boredom, and the nagging dread that something bad is right around corner? The costume drama look of the series delivers the shabby glamour of the Thirties but not for the squeamish are the usual grisly HBO touches like torture by branding, arterial blood gushing to form pools on floors, and dead babies with their eyes sewn shut.

Erle Stanley Gardner, in the traditions of the pulp hero of obscure beginnings, was utterly mum on Perry Mason’s origins, leaving it to readers to conjure their own.

Challenge accepted. Here’s the proposal to get script writers going.

The first Perry Mason mystery (The Case of the Velvet Claws) was released in 1933. Say Perry was 35 in that story so he was born in 1898. Helping his mother take care of Baby Perry was amah Fei Hong, called Faye by the family. She speaks Cantonese to him and Perry grows up playing with her kids so Perry speaks Cantonese like a native speaker. He also speaks Spanish because he also hangs out with Spanish-speaking kids.

Need scenes to establish his power over words in three languages; leadership abilities; helping people get out of jams; what the pulps called the natural aristocrat. Perry does some Encyclopedia Brown-type adventures with his pals.

Perry was born in half-rural, half-city California, in a market town where the main industries were mining and agriculture. Mason’s father was an affluent (not rich) landowner, ambitious for his oldest son, Perry, to become a lawyer for the family business interests in farming, ranching and mining. His mother wants him to be successful at whatever he wants to do. She has a social conscience and instills that in Perry.

In high school, he does everything: football to glee. All the girls have their eyes on him. Della Street does too but she doesn’t take him seriously, because she has plans to make a life of her own anyway. Perry and Della help some vulnerable people out of jams: girl wrongly accused of stealing, boy misidentified as wrong-doer, teachers accused unjustly, etc.

They both enter USC Davis in 1916, she into accounting, he into business/pre-law. They break up a scam in which corrupted university admission officers are bribed by rich people to get their idiotic progeny into college over more worthy middle-class class. The bagman of the scam is murdered, either by a corrupt admissions officer fearing disclosure, a distraught parent fearing embarrassment, or a depraved teenager who shot somebody just to watch him die.

After a year at USC, in 1917, Perry goes into the Navy when the US enters WWI. Scenes to show how ambivalent Americans were about entering that war: Della and mother are proud of him but he is arguing with father who does not see the point of his throwing his life away in a war in wicked old Europe.

The Navy realizes it can do something with a smart guy that speaks three languages. Perry is assigned to counter-intelligence in San Francisco. Working with Paul Drake, he breaks up a spy/sabotage ring. The enemy can be either Germans or Japanese or both; if budget allows, blow up some ship yards or warehouses or defense plants.

In 1919 Perry returns to university, gets through law school. We need to research the career path here – could people enter law school after just a couple years of undergrad? The year 1927 was the first year California had a bar exam, Perry could be in the first group to pass. As for Della, she becomes a forensic accountant.

Possible plot line based on real life event in Florida in 1930s: A popular LGBT serving nightclub is stormed by a group of 100 armed men, patrons are ordered to leave and the nightclub is torched. We should resist HBO suggestions to burn the patrons alive. Perry and Della investigate and find out the storming was conducted by a hate group. If we have the budget, we can do a homage to White Heat "Top of the World, Ma" when the white supremacists' headquarters goes up in flames during the shootout. We should resist HBO suggestions to burn the haters alive.

In the period 1927-1932 Perry and Della form a partnership. He divides his time, working for family businesses and for local people having usual legal problems. Establishes reputation for fighting for Latin and Chinese families who are being screwed by the system or the victims of human trafficking. Can also get into how organized crime corrupted city officials with vice rackets.

Character notes: Work in Tragg and Burger in the law school era to show they are long time rivals of PM. The animosity of the novels should be evident, not the buddy-buddy stuff of the TV series. Tragg should be Mason's age, they should see each other as worthy adversaries; no evil or corruption in Tragg, but he's rather narrow-minded. Burger's uncontrollable temper should be clear, especially how it undermines his rationality.

Della is his business partner. And enough of the platonic relationship between PM and Della. He proposes to her sometimes and she always turns him down, claiming she wants to work, that she wants to make a difference by getting the Capones of the world with accounting..

Paul Drake must never be the Nigel Bruce Watson to Basil Rathbone’s Holmes - the TV series gave in to the temptation to make Drake the comic relief and it's not right for this update. Maybe Paul could have PTSD from the San Francisco days - stress from being undercover turned his hair white.