Yes, it’s true.
Some years ago, think early 70s, when I was an impressionable lad—and had time to kill after school—I would plant my butt in front of the TV, a 19” color model Magnavox, and learn everything one needed to know about the American judicial system as practiced in Los Angeles, California from 1957 to 1966. (Later, I learned about legal problems for private dicks—investigators—and government agents watching Mannix and Mission Impossible…but that’s a story for another time.)
Also catchphrases like incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial. Always good when you need a withering rebuttal!
That I would later come to find that the judicial system is, in real life, almost nothing like Perry Mason, has in no way dimmed my love for the show.
Let me count the ways:
Perry always gets his man or woman. No case goes unsolved. And it doesn’t take forever; mostly it seems to take only a couple of days or weeks to solve who killed who. It’s always murder!
Talk about a speedy trial!
This, as I understand it, is not the way normal justice works. You may be arraigned within a week, but all the rest; lawyers, discovery, plea bargains, trial, can take quite a while. And, believe it or not, most lawyers have no interest in solving the case! Just in representation.
Shocking.
How can he figure it all out, you ask? Because Perry is a bright bird who thinks outside the box, whereas DA Hamilton Burger (Ham Burger for you jokesters) latches onto whatever facts and evidence, and its immediate interpretation Lts. Tragg, Anderson, or Drumm hand him —which are always wrong. (I assume these are legacies from the books by Earl Stanley Gardner, who created the characters in the 1930s; I haven’t yet read any, though I’ve read a few books of Gardner’s other series. . It should be noted that Gardner wrote a good number of the show’s episodes.)
Perry has lot of time to devote to his clients because he has no life. For me, this is great because the characters on the show, whether it’s Mason, his confidential secretary Della Street (remember, this is the 50s/60s), suave PI Paul Drake (though he occasionally has a date), DA Burger, or the above mentioned police lieutenants, they have no wives, husbands, kids, or real personal problems. They may have friends or old Navy buddies who get into trouble (Perry’s a Navy vet from the war), and every blue moon they may be accused of dastardly deeds, but mostly they’re fairly one dimensional stock characters. No one breaks down and goes on a bender, and outside of the occasional flirt, no interoffice sex parties.
We’re all in it for the great cause of impartial justice. The show was broadcast when the ideas of social justice, equal justice were just coming into vogue and being woven into the show’s plots. Think mental illness, teenaged delinquents, rich versus poor access to representation, stuff like that. More hot topics like racial prejudice, sexual liberty, homosexuality were still taboo; maybe hints, maybe not. But fairness was a BIG shared commonality between Perry and Ham. That real life was quite different, well… If nothing else it gave impressionable me pause for thought.
The more interesting thing was how devoid the show was of politics, outside of the usual skeevy politicians, who were only in it for the money and power.
No commies! And this was during the cold war and all those dastardly Soviets!
Only Murders in the buildings. (see how I did that?) Perry, who was based on a lawyer named Earl Rogers (who did quite well in the murder biz), is there to get his clients off the hook for bumping off a bad person. I would normally say bad guy, but there were quite a few dastardly female villains on the show. Any if you’re looking for gradiations of bad, of conflicted characters who are merely misunderstood; fuhgeddaboudit! These people deserve to be bumped off, and its broadcast early and often how nasty these weasels are. That way it’s easy not to feel sorry for them after they’re found shot, stabbed, throttled, etc.
It’s all good clean fun.
It fulfills my need for nostalgia. I’ll own up that part of the reason I’ve watched it repeatedly over the last 50 years is I have a soft spot for the look of that period, both the 50s and 60s; the dress, the affectations and elegance. No one dresses up anymore. (It was also through how you dressed, and the cut and style of your clothes that signified your stature in society.) And the cars; those big, bouncy, beautiful death-mobiles, particularly the convertibles, that evinced status and class. It was an age where people still lived in modest apartments; where the bed was visible from the living room; where single room only (SROs) apartments were far more common than they are now, assuming any are left.
Sargent Brice. My favorite non-major character is Sargent Brice who was featured throughout all 9 seasons, yet wasn’t given any speaking likes for the first 3 or 4 years. Perseverance pays off. He also seemed to age the least.
Finally, it mirrors the change in crime fiction from the noir of the 50s to the hip dystopia of the 60s. This is reflected in the dialogue, background music, how the episodes were filmed (the whole series was made on film which is why there are such clean copies of the show); the earlier seasons have that dark foreboding crime feel, whereas the later seasons have a more detective vibe, along with the cheesy sorta hip pop/rock music all the “kids” were digging.
It set the tone and feel of every crime series that followed.
And if there’s nothing else to watch, you’ll find me there!
Bonus: this week’s song: Movie, is from the Broken Hearts and the Fabulous Perch album, the last album I did with other players back in 1982 (yes, I was alive back then). Basically, it's a lyrical montage of the movies I watched as a kid and their attitudes, or messages, about love.
©2024 David William Pearce