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<\/a>Raymond Burr, as Perry Mason<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n Well, here we are…still.\u00a0 I hope you are all doing well and haven’t killed your spouse<\/strong> yet.\u00a0 Okay, that might be a bit drastic but I’ve been influenced by crime TV during my “staycation”.\u00a0 Specifically, I’ve been spending a lot of time with Perry Mason,\u00a0<\/em>the TV show from the 50’s and 60’s.\u00a0 Some things have not changed much in the intervening years – just as with ther current show, Dateline<\/em>, the spouse is almost always the perpetrator.\u00a0 Hopefully, you are still experiencing wedded bliss and Keith Morrison<\/strong> won’t be knocking on your front door anytime soon.\u00a0 But…back to Perry.\u00a0 I stumbled across the series as I was surfing our 450 channels for something to watch.\u00a0 As it happens, Family Entertainment TV (don’t worry – I’d never heard of it either) was starting the series from the beginning.\u00a0 What the heck?\u00a0 I figured out that to watch the entire series from beginning to end without any breaks takes up<\/strong> 10 days.<\/strong> Heck, I don’t have anything else to do.\u00a0 Plus, I relished the idea of taking a trip down memory lane recalling those wonderful Saturday nights when I watched the show, intrigued not with Raymond Burr, who played Perry, but with his “confidential secretary”, Della Street.<\/p>\n William Talman, sad sack Hamilton Burger<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n It has been interesting watching the series as an adult. Obviously, beyond the tail fins on cars<\/strong> and the lack of cell phones, the biggest change has been the role of women. There was a woman judge in a few episodes but no female attorneys. Mostly, women played murderers or victims. But still, it turns out that the show influenced a good share of women.\u00a0 Sonja Sotomayor,<\/strong> the Supreme Court justice, was one.\u00a0 In her autobiography she says she was hooked on the law when during one episode Perry asked the prosecutor, Hamilton Burger, if he wasn’t troubled that he had spent so much time prosecuting Perry’s client only to find he was innocent. “My job as a prosecutor is to do justice,” Sotomayor quotes the prosecutor as saying. “And justice is served when a guilty man is convicted and an innocent man is not.”<\/p>\n That prosecutor was Hamilton Burger<\/strong>, who lost all but three cases to Perry.\u00a0 Makes you wonder how the guy kept his job.\u00a0 Turns out that William Talman, who played Burger, didn’t<\/em> keep his job.\u00a0 He was fired by CBS March 18, 1960, hours after he entered a not-guilty plea to misdemeanor charges related to his presence at a party<\/strong> that was raided by police for marijuana use. Back then they did not consider marijuana an “essential” business.\u00a0 The shooting schedule was immediately juggled to minimize Talman’s presence on the show.\u00a0 CBS would not relent, even after the charges were dropped.\u00a0 In December 1960, after millions of fans protested, he returned to the show where he would remain until the end of the series.\u00a0 Now that I’ve watched three seasons of the show I think I’ve figured out why he was so inept<\/strong> – every week he used the same line when objecting to Perry’s questioning of his witness: “Your honor, this entire line of questioning is incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial”.\u00a0 Really, every frigging week he says the same thing. \u00a0 Wouldn’t you think he – or the writer’s – could come up with something else?\u00a0 No wonder he lost all those cases.<\/p>\n Della Street and Paul Drake<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n Paul Drake, Perry’s private detective,<\/strong> was the most fun character on the show.\u00a0 He did all the dirty work – sneaking into office buildings, tailing a suspect or flying somewhere to gather background “dirt”.\u00a0 Each week he seemed to get in and out of some perilous situations, often involving a beautiful woman.\u00a0 Drake was played by William Hopper, whose mother was Hedda Hopper<\/strong>, the famous gossip columnist.\u00a0 He was a big hunk of a guy and I always suspected that Della was torn between her crush on Perry and him.\u00a0 Or maybe that was just my youthful imagination.\u00a0 But back to Della.\u00a0 She was played by Barbara Hale and I idolized her when I was growing up.\u00a0 She had wonderful clothes, was smart as a whip<\/strong>, and she always got to stay in the room with Perry when a client spilled their guts. \u00a0 I thought she had the perfect job.\u00a0 Of course, now I realize that she was probably grossly underpaid, especially given that she seemed to be at Perry’s beck and call at all hours of the night.\u00a0 Which makes me wonder how she afforded all those fabulous clothes. Nevertheless, Della was not just a secretary, although she fetched her share of coffee, but someone who Perry listened to and who often gave him the logic or clue needed to solve the case.<\/p>\n I just read that HBO<\/strong> is coming out with a new Perry Mason<\/em> film in June, starring Matthew Rhys as Perry.\u00a0 It will focus on the early days of his career, before he became a high-priced defense attorney.\u00a0 I’ll keep an open mind, but I don’t know how it can possibly be better than the TV show.\u00a0 No Hamilton Burger, no one in the gallery shouting “I did it!\u00a0 I killed him.”<\/strong> at the last minute, and most importantly, no Della Street.\u00a0 Somehow, that just seems wrong.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Suzanne Sparrow Watson Well, here we are…still.\u00a0 I hope you are all doing well and haven’t killed your spouse yet.\u00a0 Okay, that might be a bit drastic but I’ve been influenced by crime TV during my “staycation”.\u00a0 Specifically, I’ve … read more![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/hamilton-burger-260x300.jpg\")
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