Last year, I expressed a wish that CBS in the UK would show the Perry Mason TV series from the beginning. I cannot have been the only one doing so, because CBS Justice started with Season 1, Episode 1 this afternoon. It is possible that clearance of rights may have held up the re-runs, or possibly checking that "thumbnails" of the sponsor's products which appear on the end-titles do not conflict with broadcasting laws in this country. However, neither Beads-O-Bleach, nor Trend detergent ("the brand the smart girls buy"), nor Blue Dutch cleanser, the three featured products of the Purex Corporation, are currently on sale in the UK. There might have been other in-programme product placements which needed weeding out. Indeed, there was a lot of gratuitous offering of cigarettes in today's three episodes, though it was impossible to make out a maker's name.
That is one major contrast with Season 9, currently showing on CBS Justice on weekdays. By 1966, when that last black-and-white series was made, the perils of cigarette smoking had been made known to the American public for two years, by virtue of reports from the US Surgeon-General's office. It would not be until 1971 before there was a complete ban on tobacco advertising on US TV, but clearly network commissioners were already chary.
The early Perry Mason, based on the Erle Stanley Gardner books, was also more tricky - willing to keep witnesses out of the way of the police investigators and even tampering with or faking evidence.
It is not immediately obvious why Burr wanted to take a break, but it is recorded as his decision to make series 9 the last. It could have been an artistic judgment - the scripts were patchy, occasionally having recourse to recycling plots (with names changed) from earlier episodes, there was some sloppiness in production (check for "Goofs", which become more numerous, in the IMDb Web pages for the later series) and Burr's performance itself has become more mechanical. One only has to look at the broadcast frequency - one 52 minute episode per week for eight or nine months - to realise the punishing schedule of television production in those days. The death of Ray Collins (see below) in 1965 may have cast a pall over the series. It is also probable that ill-health, and problems with his weight, were factors in Burr's decision.
Certainly the format of seemingly open-and-shut case demolished as the real perpetrator is unmasked in the courtroom, mechanical or not, continued to be successful. Take Matlock for instance.
Burr followed Perry Mason with Ironside, in which he not only redressed the balance in favour of the police, but also highlighted how a man could hold down a responsible job from a wheelchair, given the right assistance. That assistance included an African-American police officer in the shape of Don Mitchell, in the role of Mark Sanger, probably a breakthrough for US TV in the late 1960s. Ironside also tackled social issues in some of its plot lines. One imagines that as a gay man, perforce closeted for most of his career, he had an instinctive feeling for the underdog. A biographer noted that "throughout his public life Burr was unfailingly generous to charities and gave much of his time (when he wasn’t keeping a grueling work schedule) to public service of one sort or another."
He was certainly generous to other actors. When Ironside was abruptly terminated towards the end of a successful nine-year run, Burr was approached to reprise the Perry Mason role with the benefit of colour and movie production values. He accepted only on the condition that Barbara Hale, the original TV Della Street, also be hired. William Hopper, the actor who played Mason's original investigator Paul Drake, having died, the new role of Paul Drake Jr was created for Hale's son, William Katt. The various series are studded with family connections. The investigator in the TV movies marking the final appearance of Perry Mason was played by William R Moses, the son of Marian McCargo, former US Wightman Cup doubles player, who appeared in both series 8 and series 9. Christian Nyby directed 13 episodes of the black-and-white series; his son, probably better-known for his work on Star Trek, directed 19 of the TV movies. There are other father/mother to daughter/son relationships among the minor actors. Several actors were continuously employed in minor parts such as "courtroom spectator". The most notable "ghost credit" was that of Ray Collins, the respected former Mercury Theatre actor who played the original Lt Tragg. Collins continued to be billed even after COPD prevented him taking an active part.
I am looking forward to Season 9, Episode 30 when the demob-happy production team are said to have planted several in-jokes. One noted feature is the appearance of Erle Stanley Gardner himself, for the first and last time in the series, fittingly as a judge.
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