Perry Mason

Created by Erle Stanley Gardner
(1889-1970)

PERRY MASON is Raymond Burr as a Defense Attorney, right?

Not a P.I., right?

Well, sorta. In the first ten or so books by pulpmeister Erle Stanley Gardner, Perry comes off as a particularly hard-boiled lawyer/detective, throwing his weight around, breaking and entering, and other private eye shenanigans, not above keeping a bottle of whiskey in his desk or roughing up a suspect or two — one of Gardner’s long line of corner-cutting heroes

As Doug Bassett pointed out on Rara Avis once upon a time, “The first Mason, The Case of the Velvet Claws, in particular, is certainly hard-boiled. Mason is definitely seen as a sort of Sam Spade-like character, willing to twist the law to serve his own higher ideals of justice. I like Gardner’s work generally — he’s a wonderfully readable author — but later books are much tamer, ‘medium boiled’, if anything.”

Gardner was one of the leading writers for Black Mask, the legendary hard-boiled crime fiction magazine. Although Mason never appeared in its pages, Gardner published six short stories starring a crusading defense lawyer named Ken Corning who fought against injustice in a corrupt city, serving as a rough template–and some say a trial run–for Mason.

But as good as the Corning stories were, they lacked the compelling supporting cast Gardner assembled for the Mason series, including Della Street, Perry’s long-suffering secretary and sometime love interest, his favoured private investigator Paul Drake, and his perpetual legal punching bag, District Attorney Hamilton Burger, with whom he regularly wiped the courtroom floor, case after case.

In fact, Gardner created a slew of characters for the pulps, private eyes and otherwise. Many claim, however, that his greatest creation was the mismatched pair of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam. And even if one argues that Mason isn’t really a private eye, it’s hard to ignore the fact that most of the novels do feature one of the most enduring fictional private detectives of all time, even if he is always playing second fiddle to his famous client. I’m referring, of course, to Drake, whom reader Frank Patterson has quite rightly taken me to task for overlooking.

FILMS

It certainly didn’t take long for Perry Mason to hit the silver screen. The first novel, The Case of the Velvet Claws, appeared in 1933, and the first film, The Case of the Howling Dog (based on the fourth novel of the series — that’s how fast Gardner wrote) appeared in 1934, starring Warren William as a rather dashing attorney with a definite eye for the ladies, who knew his way around a courtroom. In these early films, Mason was quite similar to the Mason of the books. He was tough, thoroughly professional, and more-or-less honest (though not always exactly ethical). Warner Bros did six films between 1934 and 1937, and while the first four, all with Williams, were decent, grade-A entertainment, the last two were done on the cheap. Ricardo Cortez got to play Mason once, as did Donald Woods, in the final Warner flick, The Case of the Stuttering Bishop.

RADIO

Nearly everyone is familiar with Mason and his ten year run on CBS television starring Raymond Burr. But radio’s Perry Mason was very different. The 15-minute episodes aired Monday to Friday on CBS at 2:15 pm, sandwiched between The Second Mrs. Burton and Lone Journey, sponsored by “the new Tide, the amazing washday miracle.” In other words, it was a soap opera!

Like most soaps, it ran a very long time, from October 1943 to December 1955. Numerous actors played Mason over the years, including Barlett Robinson, Santos Ortega, Donald Biggs, and John Larkin. His secretary, Della Steet, was voiced by Gertrude Warner, and later, Jan Miner and Joan Alexander. It wasn’t written by Gardner (although he got royalties for every show), so various other script writers handled this task, including Ruth Borden and Irving Vendig. The organist was William Meeder.

Perry wasn’t in the courtroom a great deal, as he was usually knocking down doors with Lt. Tragg and arrresting bad guys–in other words, he wasn’t afraid to get his hands dirty, much closer in fact to Gardner’s early novels than the sanitized courtroom figure of Burr’s TV persona. But since this was a soap, there was little time wasted on male action. In a typical episode, Mason and Tragg are trying to capture Killer Bill Barker and, as they knock on his door, the announcer breaks in with: “But let’s join Lt. Tragg’s wife, Harriet, as she says to her neighbor, Martha….” The next twelve minutes have Harriet and Martha discussing whether Martha should remarry after the death of her husband in the war. And we only get back to Mason and Tragg only for the lead-in to the closing Tide commercial.

TELEVISION

The first attempt to bring Mason to the small screen was to just continue the radio show which had just ended its run in December 1955. However, the show’s producers, Proctor & Gamble, couldn’t reach a deal with Gardner, so a writer from the radio show, Irving Vendig, created their own version of Mason, dubbed him Mike Karr, and called it The Edge of Night.

And wouldn’t you know it? That sucker ran for almost thirty years, from April 2, 1956 (it was originally broadcast live!) until December 28, 1984. Long-time fan James Reasoner dubbed it “the mystery soap opera,” and he wasn’t kidding–let the other shows have their doctors and convoluted family sagas–Edge’s main characters were cops (good and bad), DAs, detectives, lawyers, killers and enough wrongos to last an amazing 7420 episodes. In 1980, when, in honor of its 25 years on the air, it was even given a special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America.

As James recalls,

“I don’t know the entire history of the series, but by the time I was watching it, mystery novelist and Edgar winner Henry Slesar had been hired at the head writer, and he continued in that job for many, many years, often writing almost every episode with assistance from only one or two staff writers. The plots tended to move a little faster than on most soaps, and there was nearly always an unsolved murder or two driving the action. And action there was, with a minimum of sitting around talking. The characters were almost always in motion. The cast expanded to bring in more doctor characters, but hospital scenes were more than balanced out by smoky, jazzy moments in the local watering hole, the Blue Moon Café, run by the somewhat shady Johnny Dallas. And if you were lucky, at the end of an episode you got the full-length version of the show’s theme song, which had a definite noirish, wet-streets feel to it.”

The next attempt to bring Mason to television came a year later and was slightly more successful. You may even have heard of it. Raymond Burr starred as Mason in Perry Mason, in one of the all-time great detective shows. It ran for nine seasons, from 1957-1966 on CBS, and firmly established Mason as one of America’s most beloved crimefighters, and turned Gardner into arguably the most successful American mystery novelist of all time. And just like in the books, the early episodes had Mason cutting a few corners on behalf of his clients.

The shows success even inspired a short-lived revival, The New Perry Mason, starring Monte Markham, but it just didn’t click with viewers, and only lasted one season. Markham wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t Burr.

Raymond Burr finally relented, and returned as Mason in in 1985, along with Barbara Hale once more as Della in the appropriately tiled Perry Mason Returns, the first of a seemingly endless string of popular made-for-television movies which ran until 1995.

And then in 2020, HBO announced that they were launching their own Perry Mason, an ambitious eight-part prequel, starring Matthew Rhys as a down-and-almost-out private eyes on his way to becoming a lawyer. It has very little to do with anything Erle Stanley Gardner ever wrote, presenting Mason not as a brash, cocky and successful lawyer, but as a stumblebum; a self-doubting private eye scrounging his way upwards toward a law degree, badly in need of a shave. Even as prequel, it’s dubious, and the recasting of Della as his Lesbian legal partner (not his secretary), Paul Drake as an angry Black cop turned private investigator and Hamilton Burger as gay is about as subtle as dropping a metal crowbar on a concrete floor.

Okay, you’re woke. We get it.

But as always, I seem to have missed the point. According to HBO, the numbers were “good,” so a second season popped up in 2023, with Perry now a reluctant lawyer.

COMICS & COMIC STRIPS

Although Perry was a smash hit in books, on radio, and especially TV, that success never quite translated into comics, although several people took a whack at it.

In January 1944, Book-of-the-Month published two “comic strip” adaptations of the Perry Mason novels The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde and The Case of the Crooked Candle, adapted by Nevil Shute and drawn by Stephen Grout. The Book-of-the-Month was a syndicated feature that ran in numerous periodicals from 1942-47, and also adapted Fountainhead, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Lost Weekend and much more. But these weren’t really comics–they were more like illustrated adaptations, with each daily panel boasting three comic-style illustration, with three columns of story below.

Mason’s first appearances in bona fide comics were two comic book adaptations of Gardner novels in the late forties, in two issues of David McKay’s Feature Books (issues 49 and 50, for those of you keeping scores). The Case of the Lucky Legs (1946) was adapted by Vernon Greene and The Case of the Shoplifter’s Shoe (1947) was drawn by Paul Norris. Although both are extremely collectible now, at the time they barely drew any notice.

A few years later, an attempt was made to bring Perry Mason to the comics page of newspapers, with mixed results. Drawn by Mel Keefer and Charles Lofgren, and probably scripted by Gardner himself, it was difficult to adapt the intricate court cases into the comics media, although the strip does have its moments. Alas, it lasted less than two years.

And finally, in 1964, with the television show a certified hit, Dell Comics released two issues of Perry Mason Mystery Magazine, with photo covers of Raymond Burr as our man Mason.

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NOVELS

The Case of the Velvet Claws (1933) | Buy this book | Kindle it
The Case of the Sulky Girl (1933) | Buy this book
The Case of the Curious Bride (1934)
The Case of the Howling Dog (1934)
The Case of the Lucky Legs (1934)
The Case of the Caretaker’s Cat (1935)
The Case of the Counterfeit Eye (1935)
The Case of the Sleepwalker’s Niece (1936)
The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (1936)
The Case of the Dangerous Dowager (1937)
The Case of the Lame Canary (1937)
The Case of the Shoplifter’s Shoe (1938)
The Case of the Substitute Face (1938)
The Case of the Perjured Parrot (1939)
The Case of the Rolling Bones (1939) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
The Case of the Baited Hook (1940) | Buy this book | Buy the audio | Kindle it!
The Case of the Silent Partner (1940)
The Case of the Empty Tin (1941)
The Case of the Haunted Husband (1941)
The Case of the Careless Kitten (1942) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
The Case of the Drowning Duck (1942)
The Case of the Buried Clock (1943)
The Case of the Drowsy Mosquito (1943)
The Case of the Black-Eyed Blonde (1944) | Buy this book
The Case of the Crooked Candle (1944)
The Case of the Golddigger’s Purse (1945)
The Case of the Half-Wakened Wife (1945)
The Case of the Borrowed Brunette (1946) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
The Case of the Fan-Dancer’s Horse (1947)
The Case of the Lazy Lover (1947) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
The Case of the Lonely Heiress (1948) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
The Case of the Vagabond Virgin (1948)
The Case of the Cautious Coquette (1949)
The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom (1949) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
The Case of the Negligent Nymph (1950)
The Case of the One-Eyed Witness (1950)
The Case of the Angry Mourner (1951)
The Case of the Fiery Fingers (1951)
The Case of the Grinning Gorilla (1952)
The Case of the Moth-Eaten Mink (1952)
The Case of the Green-Eyed Sister (1953) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
The Case of the Hesitant Hostess (1953)
The Case of the Fugitive Nurse (1954)
The Case of the Restless Redhead (1954)
The Case of the Runaway Corpse (1954)
The Case of the Glamorous Ghost (1955) | Buy this book
The Case of the Nervous Accomplice (1955)
The Case of the Sun Bather’s Diary (1955) | Buy this book
The Case of the Demure Defendant (1956; aka “The Case of the Missing Poison”)
The Case of the Gilded Lily (1956) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
The Case of the Terrified Typist (1956) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
The Case of the Daring Decoy (1957)
The Case of the Lucky Loser (1957)
The Case of the Screaming Woman (1957)
The Case of the Calendar Girl (1958)
The Case of the Footloose Doll (1958)
The Case of the Long-Legged Models (1958; aka “The Case of the Dead Man’s Daughters”)
The Case of the Deadly Toy (1959; aka “The Case of the Greedy Grandpa”)
The Case of the Mythical Monkeys (1959)
The Case of the Singing Skirt (1959)
The Case of the Waylaid Wolf (1959)
The Case of the Duplicate Daughter (1960)
The Case of the Shapely Shadow (1960)
The Case of the Bigamous Spouse (1961)
The Case of the Spurious Spinster (1961)
The Case of the Blonde Bonanza (1962)
The Case of the Ice-Cold Hands (1962)
The Case of the Reluctant Model (1962)
The Case of the Amorous Aunt (1963)
The Case of the Mischievous Doll (1963)
The Case of the Step-Daughter’s Secret (1963)
The Case of the Daring Divorcee (1964)
The Case of the Horrified Heirs (1964)
The Case of the Phantom Fortune (1964)
The Case of the Beautiful Beggar (1965)
The Case of the Troubled Trustee (1965)
The Case of the Worried Waitress (1966)
The Case of the Queenly Contestant (1967)
The Case of the Careless Cupid (1968)
The Case of the Fabulous Fake (1969) | Buy this book
The Case of the Crimson Kiss (1970)
The Case of the Crying Swallow (1971)
The Case of the Fenced-In Woman (1972)
The Case of the Irate Witness (1972)
The Case of the Postponed Murder (1973)
BY THOMAS CHASTAIN
The series was continued after Gardner’s death in a few books written in the eighties by Thomas Chastain, who created New York eye J.T. Spanner.
The Case of the Too Many Murders (1989)
The Case of the Burning Bequest (1990)