The 15th of every month until I don't know when I will post a review of a Perry Mason mystery. For the hell of it.
Note. This is yet another tribute to the actresses of Perry Mason. Previous entries covered Patricia Barry; Lisa Gaye; Anna Navarro & Arlene Martel; and Elaine Devry & Karen Steele.
Bonnie Jones
Bonnie Jones made her first appearance in The Case of the Frustrated Folksinger (1965) as Amy Jo Jennings who wants to make a splash on the folk and country scene. In efforts to put youth wise to the wily ways of the world, this outing gives a typically acerbic view of the cut-throat practices of the entertainment business.
But the script is weak with a particularly unsatisfactory ending. Ms. Jones, born in central New York, is given a hokey southern accent and so is Mark Goddard (Don in Lost in Space). Mason fandom is really down on her performance, unfairly, to my mind. To me, her manner - so full of youth and joy and healthy ambition - makes up for the not believable premise that her character would so easily be conned. I thought that rich people were rich because it's so frickin' hard to get money out of them, to even get them to pay their bills. At any rate, it is a given that by Season 8 of the series, the writers were starting to flail, rather.
In another example of the writers struggling for ideas, Season 9's The Case of the Impetuous Imp (1965) is the remake of Season 1's The Case of the Negligent Nymph. We brace ourselves for a unconvincing recycled episode.
At first we are ruefully amused to see in the first scene, one of the Rin Tin Tins was lured out of retirement, since The Adventures of ended in 1959. This scene is memorable for dog fanciers because the canine paddles back to shore with a ball in her mouth. Later the dog blows a scene in which she is supposed to be vicious and snapping but she barks happily and wags her tail when a dog handler lassos her. Canine actors can’t all be as great at acting as the original Rinty or King in Sgt. Preston.
However, putting the failings of four-legged actresses aside, we are pleasantly surprised that in her second Perry Impetuous Imp, as Diana Carter, Bonnie Jones is one of the brightest luminaries in the Perryverse. In her first scene, Perry and Paul fish her out after she’s been swimming frantically while being chased by the fine Alsatian.
On Perry’s fishing boat, she’s so appealingly focused and sincere describing her problem that she doesn’t care how soaked she is. Or she’s confident her looks aren’t harmed even when soaked. Or she knows being soaked makes her as striking as, in Hesiod’s phrase, “neat-ankled daughters of Ocean.” But I babble. Such is her effect.
Turns out she’s a writer of romance novels. In the scene of her at her typewriter, she’s impossibly cute wearing horn-rimmed glasses. You’d think she was anticipating the horn-rims craze among East Asian college girls, but this was the stock photographer’s convention in the Sixties and Seventies: woman at typewriter must wear glasses. But her writing outfit is a hoot. She has a massive bow in her hair. She‘s wearing baby doll pajamas. Between the horn rims, the bow, and the baby dolls, she’s the goddess of adorable that somehow isn’t sick-making.
Unfortunately, she must become the typical Mason defendant, sitting silent at the defense's table looking concerned. At least she is wearing the horn rims. It’s too bad she didn’t get a chance to show off more of her acting chops. After all, she studied with Wynn Handman and Lee Strasberg. Handman taught Dustin Hoffman, Faye Dunaway, and Richard Gere. Famous for Method Acting, Lee Strasberg taught Sally Field, Laura Dern, Marilyn Monroe, and many others.
Bonnie Jones went on to have a respectable career in TV. She lives back home, in Central New York.
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