One of my favorite old shows is Perry Mason and fortunately it's on twice a day here in Memphis. The cast is superb, plots entertaining, Mason and Drake always drove hot cars and Barbara Hale isn't hard to look at either.

Raymond Burr would have been 100 today.

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LIVE FROM THE DAWGHOUSE

A great old show - very well done, in my non-expert view. Unfortunately it is aired quite a bit late for me to stay up to watch it.

One of the best written TV shows ever. I especially enjoy the early years.

Didn't like the show when I was a kid.
Now I try not to miss a episode.
And the shows opening and closing theme music is outstanding.

I liked all those old cop and robber shows as well as the westerns.
Right now the little wife is hung up on "Murder she wrote" along
with Columbo and Diagnosis Murder.

I still enjoy them and at out age some seem "New" !! ??

You know, Barbara Hale just passed away back in January of this year at the age of ninety-four. We had a nice little thread about her on this forum. Click here to read it.

And yes, she was easy to look at. And something I just recently found out...she was married to actor Bill Williams. Williams is known for playing Kit Carson in the television series of the 50s titled The Adventures of Kit Carson. He also made several appearances on Perry Mason.

The poor prosecutor on that show had to realize eventually that Perry Mason's clients are ALWAYS innocent. And the real killer always jumps up in court and impulsively screams out a confession. So he rarely objected or interrupted Mason knowing all this. It's like Columbo. Whoever he suspects is the killer always is. And when Columbo's suspect is confronted, does he say, "Prove it, Lt. Columbo!!"? No. They always verbalize their mistake out loud and confess.

Loved the show. One of the few shows our entire family watched together when I was a kid.

Lt Tragg (Ray Collins) was one of my favorite characters on TV.

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Mike
S&WCA #3065

Perry Mason was one of the few shows my dad was going to watch every week. You best not even think about watching something else. Gunsmoke was another.

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Old Age Ain't For Sissies

I THINK I read that Hamilton won two cases in the course of the run.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

I liked Burr. It wasn't until after his death that I learned of his struggle and self-consciousness of his weight. It bothered him greatly that he couldn't seem to lose weight.

He admitted that he might have been overly sensitive about it but his school classmates, critics, the tabloids and comedians wouldn't leave him alone and it hurt. Burr refused to do the Tonight Show because he was often a target of Carson's.

I like watching the reruns. With my chemo brain, I still get to try to figure out who done it.

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Music/Sports/Beer fan

Perhaps, but Perry no doubt had to provide the proof for him.

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So many S&W's, so few funds!!

If you like to read, you should check out the books by Erle Stanley Gardner. They're all available on Kindle these days. In the early ones especially, Mason was much more of a tough guy than on the TV show, and he wasn't above grabbing Della and putting a lip lock on her.

Always... always, it was the blunt object.

Never missed it as a kid.

But darn.... lots of folks got it with paperweights and objects de art.

Local lore has it that Erle Stanley Gardner modeled the Perry Mason character largely after Park Street, a famous San Antonio criminal lawyer of that time who was one of Gardner's friends. And also why Perry Mason's faithful secretary is named Della Street.

One of my all time favorite shows. I loved all of the characters.

If I am not mistaken, I think Raymond Burr was also a S&W fan!

I agree that Mason is a much tougher, even meaner, character in the books. He often barks out orders, replete with expletives, to Paul Drake, treating the PI as a lowly subordinate. Much different on the TV show where the two are clearly friends.

Della addresses Mason as "Chief" in the books. In a couple of the early TV shows, she also calls him "Chief" but as time went on, it's "Perry". In the later shows, many hints are dropped that they have more than just a professional relationship.

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You're shy a few manners.

I think Erle Stanley Gardener definitely was!

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You're shy a few manners.

I do more hearings than court cases, but never saw anything like any Perry Mason storyline, but it was fun to watch which I suspect is the point.

I love the show. What I find amusing is how Paul Drake in the day of no computers or cell phones could locate anybody Perry needed found and get a complete background check in the blink of an eye.

Well, thanks, sheepdawg!!! First the Ringo Kid has me rewatching "The Untouchables", and now it looks like I'm going to be watching "Perry Mason" as well.

I have a bunch of the original hardbacks thanks to a librarian friend of mine. Seems that Library's don't really want real books any more, so when some well meaning family donates grandpa's book collection to the library, they either have a sale or throw them away. Anyway, my friend knows my reading tastes, and a few years ago he gave me boxes of Earl Stanly Gardner, "The Saint", and a bunch of others, all old original hardbacks from the thirties, forties, and fifties. He still keeps his eyes open for stuff for me.

Another librarian friend of mine gave me the complete hardback set of Zane Grey, the ones with the red and buff hardback bindings. Yeah, libraries don't really care much for real books anymore, they take up valuable space that could be devoted to computers.

But..... Nice heads up on the Perry Mason shows. I'll be looking for them, or maybe get them on DVD or Bluray.

Best Regards, Les

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SWCA 3084, SWHF 495, PGCA 3064

I record the show twice a day and sometimes I will watch on my tablet at work on my lunch hour. When I do this I use earphones for the sound. Try it sometime. Whoever did the sound, both dialog and effects, was very good at their job.

We also watch it as it reminds me of good times spent as a child. Burr had troubles with the truth in reading some of the articles written about him after his death but he was fine at playing a role.

I prefer the opening song with the driving bass to the closing song which is gentler to my ears. Well written and orchestrated music.

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Front sight and squeeze

Enjoyed the show okay, but much preferred Burr in "Ironside". A much more complex character that gave him more room to show his acting chops.

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Oh well, what the hell.

To the people that want to know, Perry Mason is on ME TV.

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LIVE FROM THE DAWGHOUSE

The first edition of the Catalog of S&W has a M-29 on the cover that belonged to Raymond Burr.

Let us not forget that the 1956 "Americanized" version of the original Godzilla, Raymond Burr played an American reporter who essentially narrated the action in English. That was shortly before his run as Perry Mason began.