Note: In the Roman calendar, the Kalends, Nones, and Ides were three days that marked the month's counting period. In a hat tip to those tough old Romans (may their example inspire our courage), on the first, fifth or seventh, and the fifteen of every month, I will run an article about Erle Stanley Gardner's contributions to the mystery genre (Perry Mason is mostly Late Stoic). Fact is, so many articles are in the can, I figure why not release more often? Saving them doesn't earn interest and it's not like I'm exempt from the universal experience of humankind.
Your friends may not help you much, but they can do you a lot of harm if you offend them.
In the classic TV series, now and then Mason and Pals visit a small California town, maybe a market town or mountain resort or a mining town past its halcyon days. Following the traditional noir stereotype, small towns are anything but quaint and cozy, with covetousness, profligacy, and anger seething beneath the surface, the folks a mix of nice, naughty, crafty, and prone to gossip, secrets, and felony.
Logan City: The Case of the Drowning Duck (October 12,
1957)
Scene after scene emphasizes how frickin’ hot Logan City is in the late summer. It would be, located in the desert east of L.A. near the Nevada border. No wonder our Woman With A Past, Lois Reed, looks blissful when she chug-a-lugs a Pabst from the can, while her sexy blouse and silk drawers hang to dry in the kitchenette of her motel room. Small-town cronyism has allowed an innocent man to be executed for murder eighteen years before this story. Then, at the behest of the village potentate, the cops and DA dutifully build a case against the innocent’s son on the flimsiest of motives and skimpiest of evidence.
Logan City: The Case of the Perjured Parrot (December
20, 1958)
In the past year since Drowning Duck, Logan City has miraculously grown a lake that looks suspiciously like Malibou Lake between Malibu and Agoura, CA. Thus, the flora makes no sense as desert flora and the squirrel Della tries to feed is not of the species that lives in the desert. Ecological boo-boos aside, this is a great episode. Joseph Kearns – Mr. Wilson on Dennis the Menace – plays a self-styled criminologist nervous that his imposter syndrome will be exposed by the city lawyer. To exonerate the innocent librarian, Perry calmly uses logic to blow up the circumstantial evidence submitted by the big fish in the small pond.
Piñon City: The Case of the Barefaced Witness (March
18, 1961)
Iris has grown up in the small town. You’d think she’d have friends that would stick by her when tongues wag and accusing fingers point at her for being in on an embezzling scheme. But no, the smarmy hypocrites kick her to the curb when the going gets rough. Since in a small town there’s no escaping one’s past, she has to leave for the big city with her reputation in tatters. And Iris’ Aunt Sarah is so scared of small-minded public opinion that she pays blackmail to keep a common law marriage secret. Sheesh, give me the alienation from society and self and an anonymous death in the city anytime.
Outcast: The Case of the Ominous Outcast (May 21,
1961)
The corrupt small-town setting and theme of the past haunting the present are about as noir as it gets. A bearded stranger shows up in town. You'd expect in 1960 in a hot dusty California village the beard would be enough to provoke the vigilance committee to ready the rope and drag the stranger to the old oak tree with the yellow ribbons. Worse, the stranger is the spit and image of a man that committed a terrible crime against the town 20 years before. Now the dear hearts and gentle people don’t know if the stranger is the son of the criminal nor do they care the stranger was only a toddler when the atrocity went down. The peasants go crazy anyway, taking the stranger for a fiend from the past that going to drag them to the searing hell their consciences know they richly deserve.
Placer Hill: The Case of the Lurid Letter (December 6,
1962)
I'm not a keen fan of the 1960s episodes whose relevance and preaching have not worn well. This episode, however, examines problems in high school education that have hardly gone away: bullying of teachers by students, teen sexuality and mental health, alcohol abuse among minors, unsafe school climate, hysterical parental involvement, and lack of respect for teachers among the public. Like in wealthy suburban counties today, in this small town the high school’s female teachers are subject to sexual harassment, sexual assault, and threats of violence from the boys whose impunity is coddled by parent-pleasing principals. Perry Mason takes the moral high ground against small-town in-group favoritism and mobocracy, scolding the whole town in a public meeting in the climax. But the ending in which the victimized teacher makes nice-nice with the weak-brained and narrow-minded parent-victimizers is kind of sickening.
Burgess: The Case of the Reckless Rockhound (November
26, 1964)
An ex-business partner returns to a small mining town, waving around a contract that he claims makes him entitled to half the mine’s profits for the years he was away. He ends up murdered, his corpse deposited in a sluice for separating gold from gravel. It is a grisly, grotesque touch, unusual for TV at the time. The small-town aspect feels convincing due to the fine acting from the likes of Elisha Cook Jr. (The Maltese Falcon), Bruce Bennett (The Treasure of Sierra Madre), Audrey Totter (The Lady in the Lake) and Ted de Corsia (The Enforcer). They portray tough people who take for granted helping themselves means helping each other and circling the wagons when outsiders threaten their interests. It’s an episode that for once esteems the venerable small-town virtues of self-reliance blending with loyalty to one’s own, especially when one’s own are hardly saints.
Note: The green-highlighted title is from Country Town Sayings. Check 'em out for thems that are true, half true, and no longer true.
