As The Writer’s Almanac reminds us, it was 120 years ago today that Erle Stanley Gardner took his first experimental breath in Malden, Massachusetts. As a boy, he moved west with his family to California, taught himself to be a lawyer, and eventually abandoned that profession in favor of writing crime and mystery fiction.
Restless and prolific, and willing to work under a variety of pseudonyms, Gardner penned more than 80 novels about a skillful Los Angeles attorney named Perry Mason, 29 others featuring private eyes Bertha Cool and Donald Lam (beginning with The Bigger They Come in 1939), and myriad short stories starring lesser-known protagonists such as “gentleman thief” Lester Leith and “Phantom Crook” Ed Jenkins. He died in 1970, but is still recognized as one of the best-selling American authors of all time. And the 1957-1966 Perry Mason TV series, based on his characters, has evidently influenced generations of young people to become lawyers. Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama’s first nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, spoke during her confirmation hearings this week about watching Perry Mason “all of the time” as a little girl.
READ MORE: “Perry Mason Never Dies,” by Stephen Bowie (The Classic TV History Blog).
Friday, July 17, 2009
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