Note: The producer of Perry Mason, Gail Patrick Jackson, said she had always believed Raymond Burr was perfect for the role of Perry Mason, as long as he shed enough pounds. In 1956 Erle Stanley Gardner, in a memo to Gail Patrick, praised her choice of Burr, “You saw possibilities in Raymond Burr which no one else saw." Because he played so many villains in the decade after World War II, Burr may have been anchored in casting producer’s minds as the brute, the psycho.
His
Kind of Woman
1951 / 1:57
Tagline: “They were Two of a Kind”
[internet
archive]
Raymond Burr is in the picture just long enough to make you wonder why he isn’t in it more. He plays an American gangster deported to Italy, a man who still runs his Jersey rackets from across the Atlantic and clears two million a year doing it. He’s thirty-two, thirty-three, and Naples isn’t his idea of a retirement plan. He wants back in the USA, and the way he sees it, Mexico is the door. The plan needs a fall guy, and that’s Robert Mitchum - a gambler with no fixed address and no one to miss him. The plan also brushes up against Jane Russell, who is the only thing Mitchum seems to care about.
Burr looks good here. He’s heavier in other pictures, but
in this one the suits fit and the shoulders are right. The makeup man has gone
heavy on the darkener, so Burr looks less Mediterranean than varnished. His
eyes do the work: feverish, unfocused, the kind of eyes that tell you he’s half
sadist. He talks about honor like he invented it, and then he threatens Mitchum
for not keeping his word.
Mitchum drinks milk. Says liquor makes him forget what he’s doing. He doesn’t like swing music, which tells you something. He looks like a choir boy who doesn't want his friends over to meet his family. His face at rest is a gambler’s face - flat, unreadable. Then you catch him in a moment and there’s a kind of hurt there.
Jane Russell wants a man who can keep her in mink, but she’ll settle for love. Vincent Price plays an actor tired of pretending, and Jim Backus plays a gambler who cheats honeymooners out of their stake. Mitchum wins it back for them because he’s decent that way.
The picture runs just under two hours. It starts slow, then turns noir, then turns something else. There are long stretches where nothing happens except Mitchum and Russell looking at each other, which is the best part of the movie. Burr comes second. By the last reel, it’s a gangster thriller again, with Burr threatening needles and Nazi drugs. Mitchum disappears, Price stages a rescue like Tom Sawyer planning a jailbreak, and Russell turns up at the end to watch Mitchum ironing a shirt.
It’s too long. It doesn’t know what it wants to be. But a movie-goer watches it anyway, because Mitchum and Russell have chemistry, Burr has menace, and Price has fun. Sometimes that’s enough.
Pre-Mason
Raymond Burr
Please Murder Me (1956) [internet archive]
[my
review]
I Love Trouble (1948) [internet archive] [my
review]
Sleep My Love (1948) [internet archive] [my
review]
Ruthless (1948) [internet archive] [my
review]
Pitfall (1948) [internet archive] [my
review]
Walk a Crooked Mile (1948) [internet archive]
[my
review]
Raw Deal (1948) [internet archive] [my
review]
Station West (1948) [my
review]
Red Light (1949) [internet archive] [my
review]
Abandoned (1949) [internet archive]
[my
review]
Borderline (1950) [internet archive] [my
review]
Unmasked (1950) [internet archive]
[my
review]
The Whip Hand (1951) [internet archive] [my
review]
Bride of the Gorilla (1951) [internet
archive] [my
review]
M (1951) [internet archive] [my
review]
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