- I've been watching it since childhood. The early seasons were before my time, but they have shown them in reruns on various stations ever since. MeTV is showing it at 9am & 10:30pm (CST) now. Earlier seasons are best, gets fairly ridiculous as it goes into last seasons. But the finale is really good, with Dick Clark as the murderer, and a young gorgeous James Stacy as the victim.
- I love it! Every once in a while there's an actor at the beginning of his/her career. And they are good whodunits. Love seeing this old show.
- Perry was a tootsie fruit. And a fat one at that.
He and Richard Decon used to get it on between takes, when they'd run from set to set and make out in the closets.
Can you imagine that? Ew.
- It has possibly the moodiest theme music ever.
- This isn't a hetero forum r3, we're not creeped-out that Raymond Burr was gay. It's cool that a good actor like Burr was gay.
- Edith Bunker loved that show.
- I've been watching too on MeTV and it seems different from what I remembered. As said previously, very nourish and Della was also more involved thanI remembered in executing some of Perry's defense schemes. Also, there are real legal principles involved and referenced,
- Erle Stanley Gardner was a consultant on the show. I just read on Wiki that a DA in Arizona used an examination from one of his books to get a conviction.
- [quote]very nourish
Raymond Burr was a pretty well nourished guy.
- I'm embarrassed for R3
- I did laugh at R3s use of the phrase "tootsie fruit". Who are you, Archie Bunker?
Maude%20Finley
- I like black and white series.
- I'm 30 and didn't know anything about the show, but love film noir. So I was driving around TV one day and discovered it. It has all the noir hooks and characters. Great stuff.
- I've always loved the show - but the theme music has creeped me out since I was a kid. I still mute it.
I personally think the idea of Perry and Paul Drake getting it on is quite enticing. I had a crush on both of them as a youngster.
- They have the longer eps on Netflix! YOWSA!
- Della (Barbara Hale) and my Mom were friends from the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. Both studied drawing there in the early 40's and both made a good living as runway and print fashion models. She married a guy they both knew named Bill Williams, who was an actor.
- FYI, they just have the DVD versions on Netflix, they are not streaming.
- they are streaming too
- Yes, scariest theme music ever! I was terrified as a young gayling watching the show in reruns. The black and white, Burr's big, kohl-lined eyes and that dramatic music!
- They are streaming? I can't find them in streaming on Netflix Where?
- "Every once in a while there's an actor at the beginning of his/her career"
I saw one with a young Daniel J. Travanti. He was pretty hot.
- One of the greatest TV show themes ever!
- Travanti is gay, too. He was also on an early episode of Flipper. Brian Kelly and Travanti - hot!
- My granny used to watch the reruns in the '70s before her "stories" would come on. As a babygay, I always imagined a chorus line of hard-boiled dance-hall girls doing a world-weary bump-and-grind to the theme song.
The '80s TV movies sucked, BTW.
- I've become addicted too. Just got MeTV on Time Warner, and they have PM on from 11:30pm-12:30. The show is totally addictive, and am surprised how well the show holds up. And yes, it's fun watching for up and comming actors at the birth of their careers.
- Best to watch on ME Tv - the episodes on Hallmark Channel are heavily edited and time compressed.
I especially like the episodes that feature Burr's friend Allison Hayes in a supporting role:
"The Case of the Bogus Books" and "The Case of the Captain's Coins" and a couple of others.
Perry and Paul also drove GREAT cars!
Trippy
- Also loved when Hugh O'Brian filled in for his friend Raymond while he was sick during the 1962 or so season. Hugh as his hottest.
- I like it too. In fact, there is nothing on broadcast TV but holiday bullshit, so I am spending the evening watching one episode after another on DVDs.
I am watching Joanna Moore (Tatum's Mom)right now. Mason loses this case, but the defendant is an imposter, and it is overturned. I just saw a very young Nancy Kulp as a maid. Very young Robert Redford is in an episode with a good deal of comic relief.
I am very curious about the regular character added to the series, David Gideon, played by Karl Held. Apparently he did not go over with viewers, because the situation did not last very long. Knowing that Burr was homosexual, that William Talman lived an unusual lifestyle and was arrested and then fired for a while under the morals clause, and that Erle Stanley Gardner lived under circumstances which made him also seem to be homosexual, I just wonder if Karl Held either blackmailed himself onto the show, or sucked and fucked his way onto the cast.
- I got a disc from season one a while ago. Just to watch an episode or two of the famous show. I thought it would be horribly dated. It obviously was dated but in a good way. I was hooked. I burned my way through all that netflix had very quickly.
I love how they wrote Della. One of the earliest strong female characters. She was always in the thick of it but was never working to meet a man, didn't have a crush on any of the male leads. Was one of the guys.
- Well in the earlier novels, Della and Perry were an item, but on the TV series it was more ambiguous. In the very early episodes Della would massage Perry's neck when he was tired and there seemed to be something between them. A couple of times, another woman would "come on" to Perry, and Della would cut her off. Most of the time, Perry came across as asexual. Paul Drake would flirt with Della, and it was written into several episodes that old Lt. Tragg had a big crush on Della. Della was written as a strong woman, and sometimes Perry would ask her opinion about a prospective client. Even though there were never any homosexual characters on TV in that era, I loved how virtually everybody in this series is single, and that is treated as a normal everyday state of being, without anybody constantly talking about it. A few years later when they started showing homosexual characters on TV, they were shown as horrible perverted villains. By contrast the transsexuals were good people who just happened to be men trapped in a woman's body, and needed to have their plumbing reworked by doctors. I didn't buy it then, and I don't buy it now.
- The b/w ones are great. The Perry Masons from the 1990s were just an embarrassment, however.
- "A few years later when they started showing homosexual characters on TV, they were shown as horrible perverted villains. By contrast the transsexuals were good people who just happened to be men trapped in a woman's body, and needed to have their plumbing reworked by doctors. I didn't buy it then, and I don't buy it now."
So it's wrong to stereotype some types of people, but not others? Okay, then.
- Raymond Burr was pretty trim at the very beginning of the show. His girth grew during the show's many seasons.
- I watch it, too. But what drives me crazy is that Perry ALWAYS wins. Hamilton Berger would have been fired if he lost that much.
Plus - he's always up against Hamilton Berger, as if LA has only one ADA.
And after years of Law and Order, the courtroom scenes play rather ridiculously. So many things that wouldn't be allowed in a real courtroom. And half the time the real killer, once identified, just stands up in the back and tells their story, not from the witness stand.
- Bill Hopper, Hedda's son who plays Paul Drake, was supposedly a big old
'mo himself.
- Raymond Burr bought a winery in Sonoma County and lived there a long while. They sell some of his personal belongings in the tasting room, mainly serving dishes and kitchen items. You can go on tours of his orchid gardens. My mother loved Perry Mason, I used to watch it with her.
White gloves
- Burr left his longtime companion nothing in the will. the longtime companion was a pretty good sport about it though, said he didn't want to be seen as having been kept.
- I think Perry only wins the cases that we see. I would assume that he lost cases that were offscreen or went up against DAs who weren't Hamilton Berger on the days that we don't see.
- Well, R32, I guess it upsets me to know that a lot of perfectly good men have had pefectly good genitals cut off and died early death from taking female hormones because of "transsexual" propaganda. The first time I saw this was a "Medical Center" where Robert Reed was the guest star who had the so-called sex change. I was out of line to put it on this Perry Mason thread.
R30
- they won the battle but gays won the war. how many transexuals are in prime time forty years later? i'm not implying that a war was necessitated but it would be good to have transgendered in commercials and as major characters in today's entertainment.
- Trans story lines were easier to film. All they had to do was throw Mr. Brady into a dress.
Gay stories would involve men hugging and kissing and flirting with each other -- something still badly handled to this day, and mostly in comedy.
- Barbara Hale and Bill Williams' son is William Katt, who starred in The Greatest American Hero on TV and played Sissy Spacek's handsome, goodhearted prom date in Carrie. She may have been a telekinetic nut job, but she had very good taste.
- He was a sexy daddy on Perry Mason but a young William Hopper was one of the all time beauties.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e2/William_Hopper_by_Van_Vechten.jpg/220px-William_Hopper_by_Van_Vechten.jpg
- As was Barbara Hale
http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2pe7okHLd1rradsmo1_400.jpg
- Yes, Della was a beauty and had a great voice.
- My father was obsessed with this show and would watch it over and over, so I've seen many a Perry Mason ep. I never liked it a fraction as much as he did. I never cared for Raymond Burr ever since he killed his wife while he was living across the way from Jimmy Stewart. The bastard!
- I recently finished watching all the available episodes on the CBS site, and while not the complete collection, there's plenty to entertain you.
in the Case of the Stuttering Bishop, an early Datalounger plays a role
http://www.cbs.com/classics/perry_mason/video/%3Fpid%3DNDJt3KB8YcDR%26vs%3DDefault%26play%3Dtrue
- r37
You mean he embezzled off Burr without Burr ever catching on. Why be mad about not getting something you already have.
- Well, I thought that he had left Robert Benevides the bulk of his estate. But they were in business together, and he had probably given him more than enough for the rest of his life, even if he did not want to mention him in the will. Better to be survived by a male business partner than by a male domestic partner.
- Raymond always had a weight problem.
http://www.briansdriveintheater.com/raymondburr.html
- Another vote for scariest theme music ever. I'd be in bed when the show started and you'd hear those opening burst of brass. Duh DUHHH da DUH!!! And then it would segue into kind of a swinging stripjoint type tune (Picture Della removing her bullett bra). I was another kid cringing in my bed until that theme music stopped. I had no idea Paul Drake was Hedda Hopper's son.
- I have been LOLing over the comments here about dreaded memories of the theme music!
So true for any gaylings who were youngsters when the series was originally shown in the evenings during bedtime.
dance hall girls doing a bum and grind stripping off their bullet bras
- I" guess it upsets me to know that a lot of perfectly good men have had pefectly good genitals cut off and died early death from taking female hormones because of "transsexual" propaganda"
Propaganda? LOL. I guess acknowledging that trans people exists is propaganda. You sound like a very dumb conservative Republican.
- PM was welldone, not like the crap they put out now. Pure dreck. It is fun to see the actors before they made it. Besides its so deliciously campy
- What exactly did Della Street (the best name ever) do? I don't think she was his secretary, because she was usually in court with him and they're always mentioning another lady in the office answering phones and whatnot. Other than allowing Perry and Paul Drake to spit-roast her after each case, what was her role?
- His legal secretary. We did see it but you know she pushed Gertie around.
- r50
You're a racist, just because someone is overweight doesn't make him a bad person.
- It's nothing compared to Murder, She Wrote.
Seth%20Hazlett%2C%20MD
- Links R28 about Talman and Gardner. Burr and the actor who played Paul Drake were gay, but don't know where you are getting this other stuff.
and%20do%20you%20think%20%20Barbara%20Hale%20was%20a%20lesbian
- R34, Burger was not an ADA. He was the DA, the big cheese. So he was voted into office. Plus, he obviously won all his other cases against other attorneys, which we never saw.
- Barbara Hale was always underrated. Beautiful woman, great voice and presence and at least as good an actress as many who had bigger careers.
- STILL gives me the chills.
http://youtu.be/PA9t1nSGXXE
- Barbara Hale, 90, at an autograph show in August:
http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DPPTx2gxDywc
- Barbara Hale for the Amana Radarange. (Partner and I have one of this vintage, and it's built like a tank.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DauSzyKg4bHE
- As Barbara Hale was happily married and raising a family during shooting, I'm sure she was very grateful to have such a cushy and prominent role on a consistently winning TV series. Plus, I loved her wardrobe!
- She looks incredibly good in R63's link.
Who are the people--presumably former performers?--sitting on either side of her?
- TO the poster who wondered what exactly did Della Street do: I think she was Perry Mason's legal secretary but (a) in those days and (b) in a one-man office, legal secretaries often functioned as ersatz paralegals, too.
- Erle Stanley Gardner makes a surprise appearance on What's My Line?
He certainly seemed masculine to me!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJuJZ6KPPBg
Dorothy Kilgallen
- Perry is awesome. I love the way the killers just confess in open court, not from the witness stand, but from the audience gallery. Perry zeros in on a line of questioning and they just can't take it. I also love the post case wrap up with Perry, Della and Paul Drake. I'm sure that is when they take turns pounding Della, DP style.
- What am I, chopped liver?
[Theme at 3:48.]
http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dhik_-Wqjrgk
Gene%20Barry
- What a great looking 90 year old.
- LOVED Burke's Law!!!
IIRC it was the first TV series with an all-star guest lineup. So it was always fun trying to guess whodunnit.
And the guests would come from Golden Age Hollywood and the newer generation so it appealed to all family members.
- R72 I bought the first season of "Burke's" on DVD.
re: "Perry"- On yesterday's METV morning episode, Victor Buono was one of the guests. I always check out the episode on IMDB and found out he was on four different episodes (as different characters.) Since both he and Ray-Ray Burr were chub-gays, I wonder what they sat around discussing during breaks in filming: Rentboys? Caftans? Lube? Joan Crawford vs. Bette Davis (Buono was in "Baby Jane," and Davis subbed for Burr on "Perry.")
- PM has become my new guilty pleasure. I watch it every night on MeTV from 11:30-12:30 before going to sleep. The roster of guest stars is amazing, and the writing is pretty solid most of the time. The show holds up really well.
Having said that, did anyone catch that Bette Davis episode the other night in which she played the defense attorney? I found it unwatchable, and turned it off about half-way through. Did Perry, Della, et al even appear in that episode? The next episode, which was much more watchable, featured Michael Rennie as the defense attorney. Burr appeared in a couple of scenes in a hospital room that were obviously filmed at some other time...supposedly Perry was having surgery to explain his absence from most of the ep. Was Burr off doing a film during these episodes?
- Yes, Perry and Della were both in the Bette episode. Perry was in the hospital, too. I think Burr was in the hospital in real life at the time. The Hugh O'Brian fill-in episode is on tonight.
Did anyone catch the MeTV morning "Perry" today? Bruce Bennett from "Mildred Pierce" was on, and Paul Drake went undercover as (I kid you not) ROD STEELE! If that's not a gay porn name, I've never heard one!
- Anyone looking for a young William Hopper (Paul Drake) in action, he's in a movie on TCM at noon EST called adventurous blonde. From 1937, he would have been in his early 20's.
- I love Lt. Tragg. His crotchety old guy schtick is great.
- I think the only other things I've seen Barbara Hale in were Airport, as Dean martin's long suffering wife, and that Amana Radar-range commercial, where her voice is really deep
- Barbara Hale usually comes off as part of the furniture. She can be in a scene and never have a line. And if she does get to speak, it's never anything meaningful...just some throwaway dialogue to recap the plot thus far. She is very attractive, but that role hardly took any acting chops.
- [quote]Who are the people--presumably former performers?--sitting on either side of her?
I had the same question re R63's link. Very interesting, I reecognize the Asian lady from Flower Drum Song, but not the others.
- Come on, ou guys.... The Asian is just Jeanne Cooper's (uninterested) assistant (or perhaps, based on the smock, her nurse) and the old man with the VERY runny nose is there for Barbara, either a friend or boyfriend.
Barbara looks ASTONISHINGLY GOOD for her age and for having smoked hundreds and hundreds of cartons of cigarettes. Jeanne, not so much.
Do any straight people attend these things? The fag prattling on at the end of the clip was beyond embarrassing.
- Why R81. Gays don't need straight opinions mixed in with ours to make things embarrass free.
- Id love to watch the Hugh O'Brian episode tonight. What channel and what time, please?
- Sorry R83, but that was last night on MeTV. It will come around again in the rotation, but in the meantime you might find it on Hulu or some other free TV site. O'Brian is sexy, but his deep voice does not sound natural. I wonder if he is an ephebophile after reading about his youth organization.
- Thanks, r84, but what days, time and what channel are the Perry Masons on anyway?
- MeTV. It's on one of your broadcast stations, and may or may not be on cable (it's not on mine.) You can go to metvnetwork.com and find who carries it in your market.
Perry is on at 10;00 AM and 11:30 PM each weekday. (Eastern/Pacific). I believe Hallmark or Hallmark Movie Channel also shows episodes, but not on a consistent basis.
- Perry Mason marathon this Sunday on Hallmark Movie Channel. 10:00 AM E/P
When they did this a few months ago, they were the two-hour Perry Mason movies from the '80s. These are the original b&w shows from the series.
- Whenever I can, I watch these on MeTV at 9:00am central, and at 10:30pm central. It is the highlight of my TV watching everyday that I am able to take the time. The early seasons are the best, and as time goes on they started recycling the plots. Even so, a few of the mid-'60s episodes are interesting. Della was a doll, but the regular male stars are not very attractive to me. Sometimes the guest star is smokin' hot, some male, some female, sometimes both in one episode.
- OK, so everyone thinks that either Perry and Della were doing it or Paul and Della were doing it or Perry and Paul were doing it, but the truth is...
Gertie (the secretary in the outer office - often referenced, never seen) was actually doing Perry!
Of course Della was gettin some from Paul... a back door man if there ever was... think of how he always sauntered in, confidently, through the door into Perry's private office, bypassing Gertie's front office.
Gertie%27s%20discarded%20garters
- [quote]I also love the post case wrap up with Perry, Della and Paul Drake. I'm sure that is when they take turns pounding Della, DP style.
More like that's when Perry and Paul go at each other while Della takes pictures.
- William Hopper and Raymond Burr were both gay and closeted.
- Was "Radar Range" an early term for "Microwave oven"?
- Have you ever noticed that they always talking about photostat? Is a photostat like a copy on the Xerox?
- R92, not a generic term, it's what the Amana company named their first microwaves.
- R90 Do you think Perry, Paul and Della did bareback DAP and DVP?
- I like Lt. Anderson, the much hotter, younger detective. In fact, Lt. Tragg was only in it for a couple of years, although they kept his name in the credits.
- Tonight on MeTV: Perry loses a case!
- haha, they actually had Perry lose a case the other night. It happened in the opening scene in which the judge whom before he was trying a case becomes involved in the main murder mystery. Perry winds up defending the judge and of course wins the case.
- This morning MeTV telecast the ONLY Perry Mason episode ever filmed IN COLOR! And it was a real hoot! While Perry and Della are taking a short trip on the Angel's Flight funicular in downtown LA, some "hoodlums" (including Kevin O'Neal, Ryan's midget brother) strip Perry's convertible. The entire plot was based on "Oliver Twist," with Victor Buono playing the Fagin character, and a character actually named Bill Sikes!
The funniest part was when Paul Drake had to go to Mexico. Instead of using Mexico or a studio backlot, the entire sequence was clearly filmed on Olvera Street!
- Sorry I forgot to post this on a more timely basis, but the last episode (as referenced in R1) was on MeTV this morning. Wow, James Stacy was HOT. He looked a little like Robert Conrad. Too bad about what happened to him later.
Anyway, since they've run the entire cycle, the very FIRST episode is on tomorrow morning.
- Paul Drake was always so angry and snarky. Is it because he was a bitter closet case who yearned to fuck Perry?
- I don't think Perry would've put up much of a fight.
Gertie
- You beat me to it, R100. That is one of my favorite episodes, as I think that the woman playing Winifred Glover is very interesting, and a young Dick Clark as well as Jim Stacy provide eye candy, while the behind the scenes portion is also very interesting. When I saw the last episode on MeTV this morning, I remembered this thread, and I intended to bump it up and report that they start over with Episode #1 tomorrow morning. 9AM central every morning on MeTV
- [quote] the woman playing Winifred Glover
The wonderful Estelle Winwood, who was hysterical in "Murder by Death."
Did you notice that "Jackson Sidemark," the fictitious producer played by Denver Pyle, was a combination of PM's producers' names? Gail Patrick Jackson, Arthur Marks, and Art Seid? And that Erle Stanley Gardner himself played the judge in the second trial?
- Paul was always cracking jokes and trying to get into Della's pants. But Della's cooch was only for Perry.
- Paul's penis only pointed in one direction, and that was toward the boys.
- Paul Drake had to go home every night to Hedda Hopper. That's what made him angry and snarky.
Louella P.
- R104, I knew about Erle Stanley Gardner being the judge, but I didn't know about the name "Jackson Sidemark". In the first season, which starts tomorrow morning, there was a character named Jackson who was another attorney in Mason's office, and I always figured his name was based on Gail Patrick Jackson. He disappeared without explanation after the first season, and in fact he was mentioned more often than he was shown.
- I think Della's cooch was reserved for Gertie.
- R107 I don't think he lived with Mom.
- William Hopper was in his 40s when he did Perry Mason. I doubt he went home to his mother every night.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:William_Hopper_by_Van_Vechten.jpg
- I just got a Leaf antenna and am finally able to watch MeTV. I freaking love it!! AntennaTV as well.
- OMG!! Hopper was gorgeous when he was young! Why didn't Hedda's connections make him a star when he was in his twenties?
- Antenna sucks today ... they're showing a bunch of crappy old movies (Ginger Rogers and Cornel Wilde?) instead of their regular schedule. I miss Adam-12!
- [quote]I love Lt. Tragg. His crotchety old guy schtick is great.
Me too. The actor, Ray Collins, was a member of Orson Welles' "Mercury Theatre" & played 3 roles in "The War Of The Worlds" radio broadcast on Halloween 1938.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Collins_%28actor%29
- I always imagined Barbara Hale as Lois Lane when I read the Superman comics as a kid.
- R115 He was in "Citizen Kane," too.
What I never understood is why the guys who succeeded Ray Collins (Wesley Lau, and then Richard Anderson) never got "up-front" billing with the rest of the regulars.
- I'm watching the show in order. Season 1 and 2, Burr seems to be keeping his weight in check. He's not a wispy thin waif or anything, but by Season 3 he appears to eating more and exercising left. I wonder how much of this was the closet?
- I was surprised to learn that Gail Patrick Jackson was the same Gail Patrick who appeared in many films, including "My Man Godfrey" and "Stage Door."
- Anyone read the novels the show was based on?
- Hallmark HD plays great quality prints of the show, but crudely whittles down the opening credits and legendary theme song!! Stupid...
- I just read about the scandal involving the guy who played William Talman. Apparently he went to this crazy sex/drug party. The party was busted, he was arrested and CBS fired him.
- R-89 Gertie was seen, she was played by Connie Cezan (sp?) who was also in 3 Stooges episodes. The book "Lucy in the afternoon" says Hedda told her close friend Lucy (Ball) that William's heart was broken because he was in love with a happily married man. Lastly, the dish was that Raymond really liked the fiji boys.
- On this morning's MeTV episode, Della was dialing with a pencil!
- R123, I've never seen an episode that included Gertie. Can you tell me much about the character? Was she similar to Della in that no nonsense, can-take-care-of-herself manner?
Wow - Gertie actually made appearances on PM!
Dish about that character... if you can.
R89%20-%20truly%20surprised
- They're now playing really old ones and it's more of a hoot than it's been 'til now. Saw Gertie and Perry was actually flirting with a character! He was hilarious and it's easy to see how the shows developed the main characters and the plots to build on their respective strengths. Suffice it to say Perry stopped flirting.
