Perry Mason: Five Season Pack

Being born in 1955, I was only a child when this series first aired, though I can remember seeing some reruns in the sixties. However, by the time I was in high school I was a fan of Erle Stanley Gardner's books, both the Mason books and the Cool/Lam books written under the A.A. Fair name. Over the decades, occasionally I'd come across the odd episode of this series on late night TV, but the quality of the broadcast combined with ridiculous editing and digital speed-up to maximize commercial space made some of them senseless. Therefore, recently when I tried to view one on cable I was driven to Amazon here, where I found this enormous number of episodes in a five season pack, and I ordered it.

What a pleasure it has been! The quality is amazing for television that was done fifty-plus years ago. There are a few out-of-focus scenes in closeups, but I notice because I'm a long-term photo nut, and few others would ever see that. As happens with black and white when it is really well done in TV and movies, after a couple of minutes one easily forgets this isn't color. The cinematography is amazingly good, particularly with film of the day.

Part of what makes this package such an amazing buy is the sheer number of hours of entertainment here. In today's skewed media, it's easy to forget that a TV season used to be 35-39 episodes starting each fall. Nowadays, sometimes we get as few as 5 or so before the network starts repeating them. The staggering amount of work to crank out a quality series like this, year after year, is so admirable. I'm not sure we even have the talent in LA anymore to do this. These truly are like little movies. Oh, it's no War and Peace, but then neither is Dancing with the Tramps, or whatever.

I've already bought the two sixth season DVD's, even though I'm only on season 3 of these. There are an awful lot of hours of entertainment here. The bonus is looking at all those neat fifties cars and beautiful women dressed with an effort that women won't make now. No regrets investing the money on these; probably by the time I get to the end I'll have forgotten the solutions to the earlier ones! Thanks to CBS for preserving the masters.

Excellent quality, much better than I had expected. If your a Perry Mason Fan, this is a must buy! Keep them coming....

Perry Mason Seasons 1-5 DVD

The "Perry Mason" TV show lasted nine seasons, a record in that era. Few TV series lasted longer. Erle Stanley Gardner was "the World's Greatest Author" in his time, his books outsold the combined totals of his competitors. His stories were as stylized as baseball games. Season 1 used 36 of his novels for its 39 episodes, Season 2 used 15 of his novels for the 30 episodes. That was over half of his Perry Mason novels. The original novels are better. The films were the simplified and condensed versions of the novels, or new material. The later episodes became a formula where someone would confess in court at the end of the story. No story ever dealt with a false confession as in the 1947 movie "Boomerang". In its day "Perry Mason" was criticized for never losing a case. What is the record for most police TV shows?

Gardner's novels educated the readers by using examples from law and science or new technology. He dedicated novels to an important person in medicine or law. Gardner founded "The Court of Last Resort" to exonerate the convicted innocent. Gardner's stories warned of the dangers of invalid eyewitness identification, drawing the wrong conclusions from circumstantial evidence (guilt by inference), or prematurely accusing a suspect before all the evidence was gathered and evaluated. Some of this stories made the point that while ballistics can identify the gun that fired a bullet it cannot tell when it was fired (before or after the crime). "Perry Mason" advised his clients to never lie to the police, it was better to say nothing except call for a lawyer. There is a famous crime with these elements. You can read about Sacco & Vanzetti where they were convicted of robbery and murder in spite of their alibis. Many believed they were innocent and were convicted as part of the repression of the 1920s.

Erle Stanley Gardner generally avoided politics in this "Perry Mason" novels. Some of the "A.A. Fair" novels used political corruption in their stories. The 1967 novel "The Case of the Queenly Contestant" was publicized for the remark that a bullet found on a stretcher was not proof of anything. Dr. Milton Halpern was blacklisted by the government for criticizing the autopsy of JFK for its lack of an experienced medical examiner. A book written about the TV show said William Talman was not the first choice for DA Hamilton Burger. Raymond Burr played a DA in "A Place in the Sun" and a villain in earlier films like "Borderline". The Prosecutor in the Sacco & Vanzetti case was Frederick Katzmann, did he resemble William Talman?
There is a Perry Mason Television Book on this series, you can find it on the Internet.