Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Please Rise ...

I somehow missed the fact that the wonderful Webzine Salon has inaugurated a new feature called “Re-Viewed” in which writers comment on classic (or at least old) television programs now available in DVD format. Earlier this month, critic Stephanie Zacharek reassessed The Mod Squad. And now comes journalist-novelist Louis Bayard (Mr. Timothy, The Blue Eye) to take the measure of that master of courtroom performance, Perry Mason.

Leaving aside his criminal misrepresentation of Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner as a “bad writer” (he wasn’t that at all--Gardner was an author who understood what his audience wanted, and that was punchy prose, thoroughly twisted plots, and dialogue filled with the gams-and-gats slang-speak of his era), Bayard nicely captures the dramatic appeal of Perry Mason, which ran originally from 1957 to 1966. He writes:
The episodes chosen for the 50th anniversary DVD release boast early appearances by star-hatchlings like Robert Redford, Burt Reynolds and Ryan O’Neal, as well as a bizarre guest-lawyer performance by Bette Davis at her herky-jerkiest. But the shows themselves are still the attraction. Watching them, you may be surprised at how gore-free they are--virtually every murder takes place off-screen--and how unafraid the writers were of boring us with complicated points of law. But there’s a larger and subtler surprise: A show conceived in the Eisenhower era is, for all intents and purposes, a harbinger of 1960s counterculture, the kind of anti-law enforcement, pro-Bill of Rights template that Abbie Hoffman might have scripted.

Note first the story arc of every script, which encourages us to rejoice not in the unmasking of the murderer (who is sometimes sympathetic) but in the vindication of the prime suspect (who is always sympathetic). Note, too, that the show’s least appealing characters are the oily police lieutenant (former Mercury Theatre actor Ray Collins) and the pit-Chihuahua district attorney (William Talman) who, given how often Mason dines on him, is aptly named Hamilton Burger.

In real life, a prosecutor with Burger’s dismal track record would have long ago been sent down to domestic or traffic court. In television’s cruel Sisyphean ritual, Burger is forced to enact the same trajectory of humiliation week after week, beginning always in hope, finishing on a pyre of despair. By the time Perry has staged his final coup de justice, the bleary-eyed Burger can no longer muster the gumption for a single objection. He’s riding a brief to nowhere.
Bayard’s full essay can be found here. I’ve already added Perry Mason--The 50th Anniversary Edition to my Christmas list, though I may not be able to hold out that long to see it. This hasn’t been a good year for regular television, after all.

2 comments:

Ed Gorman said...

I'd forgotten how good your piece on Gardner and the Masons was. Really fine work. While I prefer the A.A. Fairs (with his Whispering Sands western-mysteries novelettes set in the desert) there are some damned good Masons. Until recently I ended my days watching reruns of the early black and white Masons. Relaxing and fun. Now somebody has done taken them off and replaced them with some moronic sit-com. And I do mean moronic.

Anonymous said...

Gardner is a much better writer than he's given credit for -- the Masons are like James M. Cain novels but from an attorney's POV, crisp dialogue, twisty plots and themes of sex and murder and money. That 50th Anniversary set is pretty hit or miss -- you're better off with the sets of the first two seasons, which are predominantly based on Gardner novels. As the series continued, and they ran out of Gardner novels, it remained entertaining; but the Gardner adapations are often astonishing mini-noirs. By the way, Burger is a good prosecutor on the show, beautifully played by the confident William Tallman -- remember, Burger won lots of cases...prosecuting the murderers Mason exposed!