|
|
Ron Miller's DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 10, No. 10 |
|
Burr's rendition blots out
the real Perry Mason
of TheColumnists.com
Ask anyone born after 1957 to describe Perry Mason, America's most familiar fictional criminal defense lawyer, and they're likely to say he's this sort of sober-faced fat guy in a suit who spends all his time in courtrooms.
In other words, they'll be describing Raymond Burr, the actor who played Perry Mason in hundreds of TV episodes between 1957 and 1966, then returned to the role for a couple dozen made-for-TV movies between 1985 and 1993, when he finally died of cancer. Those TV episodes and movies are always showing somewhere today more than 15 years after Burr's death.
But all that does is show how much TV can influence what we think we know so well.
For instance, lawyer-turned-author Erle Stanley Gardner, who created Perry Mason in 1933 in a novel titled "The Case of the Velvet Claws," hardly ever gave a full physical description of Mason in any of the 80 novels he ultimately wrote about the attorney. Piecing together little bits of description here and there, we can assume Mason was tall like Gardner, had wavy hair like Gardner and rugged features, also like Gardner. And though Gardner often described himself as having "a fat face," he never wrote anything, at least not to my knowledge, that suggested Perry Mason was a tubby character.
In fact, when Raymond Burr was called in to read for a part in the "Perry Mason" TV show, the role they thought he might play was that of D.A. Hamilton Burger because Burr had played the tough D.A. who prosecuted Montgomery Clift for murder in the 1951 movie "A Place in the Sun" and made a strong impression. Burr did read for that role, but also begged a chance to read for the Perry Mason role. Once the producers and Gardner saw Burr do the part, they knew he was the man they wanted.
But, unfortunately, Burr had a serious recurring weight problem and his Perry Mason became progressively more rotund as the show ran on. Finally, when the series ended, Burr's next TV role was the detective "Ironside," who went everywhere in a wheelchair, which spared the viewers from seeing an obese Raymond Burr waddling around the set.
Burr's Perry Mason also was a rather dry and acerbic character. You didn't see him getting tanked up on booze and dancing on tables with a lampshade for a hat. You also didn't see him breaking the law very often. He tended to stay in one place most of the time, sending detective Paul Drake (William Hopper) out to do the real investigating for him. His big scenes were always in the courtroom.
But in "The Case of the Velvet Claws," Perry appears only briefly in courtrooms every now and then and he's always out there doing his own clue-searching. In "The Case of the Howling Dog," first published in 1934, Mason's secretary, Della Street, even tells him, "You take too many chances, Chief. Your love of excitement is going to get you into trouble some day. Why don't you simply handle trial work instead of going out and mixing into the cases the way you do?"
The impression I got from reading the early Perry Mason novels is that he was a young and brash lawyer who saw nothing wrong in working the very fringes of legality. In that first case, for instance, he takes part in an effort to pay off a blackmailer so a scandal won't come out in a tabloid magazine. After reading the very first Perry Mason story, I couldn't ever imagine Raymond Burr playing this action-prone and rather romantic guy.
When Hollywood first took notice of Perry Mason, it was long before television was a reality. Warner Bros. made a deal with Gardner in the early 1930s to turn his novels into movies.
Three different actors played Mason in the six films that resulted from that deal: The first was Warren William, a tall debonair type with a moustache, William was from the then popular bon vivant style of detective hero, patterned after William Powell's portrayal of Nick Charles in MGM's "Thin Man" movies. Before playing Mason, he had played Philo Vance, another upper-crusty gentleman type sleuth, in "The Canary Murder Case."
Then came Ricardo Cortez, a Latin-lover type who was also the first Sam Spade on film, playing that famous gumshoe in the 1931 version of "The Maltese Falcon." Cortez had the antithesis of Mason's "wavy hair." Cortez had the slicked-back, heavily-oiled hair of movie Latin lovers.
Finally there was Donald Woods, an insipid sort of guy who had "B" actor written all over him. He was a sort of "one size fits all" sleuth, but at least didn't look so out of place as Mason as his two predecessors had.
In most of the 1930s Perry Mason movies, Mason drank a lot, which he didn't do so much in the books. Some of the other characters even fared worse than Mason when the movies got hold of them. For example, down-to-Earth detective Paul Drake is called "Spudsy" Drake in the 1936 movie version of "The Case of the Velvet Claws" and is played by comic Eddie Acuff. In one sequence, he even appears dressed as a woman.
Gardner was especially upset with the way Della Street was portrayed in the 1930s movies because she no longer resembled the dedicated office worker he had created, but often was decked out like a showgirl, wearing jewelry that dazzled the eye. In the movie version of "The Case of the Velvet Claws," Della marries Perry Mason--something that never happened in any of the novels--and Della becomes progressively more ticked off as he interrupts their honeymoon to solve a case.
After Burr's first version of Perry Mason ended at CBS, the network tried again with a younger, more physically appealing version of the character in a 1973 series known as "The New Perry Mason." Monte Markham, who took over the role, certainly was supposed to be more appealing to female viewers than Raymond Burr, but the series didn't catch on and lasted only one season.
As unhappy as he was with the earlier screen versions of his Perry Mason stories, Erle Stanley Gardner always claimed to understand that movies change books sometimes for practical reasons that occasionally actually work out. Anyway, he made a ton of money selling his stories to various entertainment outlets and presumably never regretted it.
But if you want the REAL Perry Mason, you may be surprised at how different he is in the novels, which remain quite readable today, as much as 60-70 years after they first were published.
©2009 by Ron Miller. This column first posted Feb. 2, 2009.
TO ACCESS RON MILLER'S ARCHIVE OF COLUMNS ON THIS SITE, CLICK HERE: MILLER ARCHIVE
Ron
Miller is a former nationally syndicated television columnist
and the author of "Mystery! A Celebration," the official
companion book to PBS' "Mystery!" series. He currently
writes about television mysteries for MYSTERY SCENE magazine.
You can comment on this column online. Please address your message to either "The Editors" or Ron Miller. To send an email, click here and don't forget to mention Ron's name: talkback@thecolumnists.com
|
|
|
Archives |
|
|