The Ides of Perry Mason 87

Note: Below are the memorable episodes from the second season of the Perry Mason TV series that ran from 1957 to 1966, in 271 episodes. Granted, the noir theme of "innocents menaced by a hostile universe" was what PM was all about, but in the first three seasons the noir look and tropes were conspicuous.

The Best of Season 2 (1958-59)

The Case of the Lucky Loser (September 27, 1958). This episode overflows with noir elements, starting with the noir byword “Appearances are often deceiving.” A cranky dying father. His feckless son who digs up ruins instead of running the family empire. Son’s cheating wife. A fixer man who specializes in intimidation and corruption. A crooked resort owner who’s bribed to commit perjury.  Douglas Kennedy plays the sinister fixer, cast for his menacing air of willingness to throw his weight around. Plus he gets our goat because we are jealous of his sharp late Fifties Corvette, second in coolness only to an early Seventies Chevelle Malibu. As the cheating wife, Patricia Medina is drop-dead attractive with her dark Spanish eyes and sultry allure.

The Case of the Perjured Parrot (December 20, 1958). The first half-hour showcases two amazing actresses in two memorable scenes. Being interviewed in Perry’s office, Fay Baker is a mother who’s desperately afraid her daughter’s going to jail but feels angry as hell at the kid for ditching school too. Jody Lawrance plays a gentle and lonely librarian who finally finds love only to have her life shattered when she ends up charged with murder. Lawrance and Burr, in a nice change, don’t have their interview in a cell but on a park bench. Burr characteristically goes silent and gives space to Lawrance and she sustains the scene like a true professional. Two familiar faces, Edgar Buchanan and Frank Ferguson, whip up old-timey corn pone as a country coroner and sheriff respectively. Joseph Kearns – Mr. Wilson on Dennis the Menace – plays a self-styled expert nervous that his imposter syndrome will be exposed. Mel Blanc does the parrot’s voice: “Thank you for coming but you needn’t stay.” What more could we ask? This may be my favorite episode ever.

The Case of the Dangerous Dowager (May 9, 1959) has the familiar despotic dowager, her browbeaten son, and an alligator disguised as a gangster. In a comic scene crusty Ellen Corby (who later played Grandma Walton), gives Paul Drake crap at a poker table for not showing his cards when called. Paul looks put-out as Perry gives in to rare chortles. But the dramatic scene in which Perry does jail-cell therapy with compulsive gambler Sylvia shows great things happen when TV writers and actors get a little room to move. Broken and lost Sylvia tells about how she used gambling and alcohol to blot out the pain of being abandoned by her mother and tyrannized by her grandmother. Sylvia was played by London-born Patricia Cutts who studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. And the stage training shows. It’s an incredible scene.

The Case of the Lame Canary (June 27, 1959). I like another bird episode not only for the non-stop action that involves a broken marriage, attempted murder, insurance fraud, arson, grand theft, and of course the killing of the vic that needed killing.  But also it’s a cavalcade of all the usual suspects. The comely female client with poor judgement and her working-man boyfriend who’s loyal anyway. There is a tag team of evil doers: the sex bunny and dishonest insurance broker. Just classic noir. This was Berry Kroeger’s second appearance of seven on the show. His amazing voice – attention-grabbing but relaxing - got him started in radio in the late 1930s and he could act up a storm, from menacing to congenial, from forthcoming to clammed up. For once, DA Hamilton Burger gets the quotable last line, “That's the first time I ever heard of a lame canary turning out to be a stool pigeon.”

Honorable Mention: The Case of the Howling Dog is notable for its understated acting, melancholy atmosphere, and the highest body count in the whole series, I think. In The Case of the Purple Woman, elegant Bethel Leslie one of her three outings as a nice wife unhappily married to a louse who deservingly ended up on a slab in the morgue. Purple Woman also has Robert H. Harris playing his usual sleazy oaf; he was in seven episodes, as the perp in three and the defendant and victim in one each.