# The Old "Perry Mason" TV Show **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 26, 2003, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-old-perry-mason-tv-show/191077 "2003-07-26T13:26:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![madcat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@madcat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madcat)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2003, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-old-perry-mason-tv-show/191077/21 "2003-07-28T16:27:59Z")
## quote: ## Originally posted by zen101 And anyone ever notice that Paul Drake had a phone in his convertible? I kid you not, he had some kind of cell phone/radio deal he could call Perry with. > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Earl Snake-Hips Tucker \* > \*\*Joe Mannix also had a phone, and I’d be willing to bet Amos Burke had one, too. \*\* ``` In the old Superman TV series Perry White had one. ``` ---
**Author:** ![Zenster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/cdc98d/32.png) [@Zenster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zenster)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2003, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-old-perry-mason-tv-show/191077/22 "2003-07-28T16:56:35Z")
I believe Gardner himself was at least an attorney if not a district attorney or public defender. He was a pretty deft hand at crafting decent plots with unexpected twists. **Johnny Angel** , makes an excellent point about Mason’s containment of the truth and how it differs in the television series. Probably one of the most misleading things about the show were the constant courtroom confessions as the real culprit broke down on the stand. In reality, this happens with about the frequency of Helen Hayes thrashing Mike Tyson. What Gardner did have was a good estimate of human nature and the ability to portray the nuances of law and evidence rather well. A famous quote by Mason is that; “Every man has a closed chapter in his life.” I think that Burr did a fabulous job of animating Gardner’s charter. The entire cast managed to capture the essence of 1950s Los Angeles quite nicely. I would compare the television show’s casting accuracy with “The Maltese Falcon” for having just the right actors on board to recreate the books’ plot line. Incidentally, (IIRC) at one point, there was a national call-in for a famous two part episode where the public got to decide if Mason won or lost the case. Burr was finally allowed to briefly grasp the laurels for one episode. There were also a very few episodes filmed in color. Bette Davis took the helm as a cantankerous woman attorney in one of them. It’s really rather shocking to watch the show in color. It almost “loses” something in making the chromatic transition. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2003, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-old-perry-mason-tv-show/191077/23 "2003-07-28T21:08:57Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Zenster \* > \*\*I believe Gardner himself was at least an attorney if not a district attorney or public defender. He was a pretty deft hand at crafting decent plots with unexpected twists. \*\* Gardner was a real attorney who worked on several high-profile criminal cases. He was part of the legal team that defended Dr. Sam Sheppard (that was the case that inspired “The Fugitive”), for instance. One of his co-counsels on the Sheppard case was F. Lee Bailey. Years ago, I read a magazine piece in which Bailey evaluated the “realism” of various legal-themed shows, and he mentioned that he’d once asked Gardner, “Have you ever REALLY witnessed a court case in which a witness broke down on the stand and confessed?” Gardner supposedly laughed, and said “Of course not.” ---
**Author:** ![leechbabe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7cd45c/32.png) [@leechbabe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/leechbabe)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2003, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-old-perry-mason-tv-show/191077/24 "2003-07-28T21:45:42Z")
An interesting bit of trivia from the IMDB > [@](#): > > Although we list three spouses for Raymond Burr, the actor’s friends and relatives are adamant that he was married only once - to Isabella Ward - and that he was childless throughout life. Burr apparently made up and promulgated the stories of his fictitious marriages (to real-life women with which he had acted off-Broadway) and even claimed that he had fathered a son by his first wife. But it was all false; he did all this to hide his homosexuality. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-old-perry-mason-tv-show/191077.md?page=1)