Book/TV Review - Perry Mason
Are you familiar with television's greatest lawyer? Perry Mason first appeared in print in 1933, the creation of real-life lawyer Erle Stanley Gardner. The man was a writing machine, cranking out over 3,300 words a day, 87 Perry Mason mysteries, and numerous other other books and short stories. He passed away in 1970
That's over 100 books written in less than 40 years. You do the math.
For being the third best selling series of all time, the Mason mysteries have proven difficult to find. I can walk into any used bookstore or antique shop and find dozens books by Gardner's contemporaries. But so far I've only seen three of his out in the wild. My only explanation is that people enjoy them even now (I know I do) and want to hold onto their copies.
What really stands out to me about the Mason mysteries that they are written ready for the screen. If you've ever tried to write a screenplay, you know that one of the biggest challenges is that everything must be shown. Any inner thought or feeling has to be expressed, otherwise the audience can't tell what the characters are thinking.
And that's a limitation Gardner put on himself.
A Perry Mason mystery is written in the third person ("He said" as opposed to "I said" ) and we're never in Mason's head. It makes the stories move at a fast clip, though the danger is that we might feel removed from the characters. Gardner made it work, though, as the actions and dialog make the characters on the page as real and relatable as any we see on screen.
Side note: Gardner did not take this approach with his other popular series, Cool and Lam.
With such a popular character and stories ready to go, it didn't take long for Hollywood to notice. The first movie adaptation came the very next year. Warner Brothers made six films in total.
Of course, many of us were first introduced to the character through the TV series starring Raymond Burr, which ran from 1957 to 1966 (and the later TV movies in the 80's and 90's). Many of the episodes drew inspiration from Gardner's novels and usually retained the original titles.
A notable exception was when CBS changed a title from "The Vagabond Virgin" to "The Vagabond Vixen."
Each hour long episode is broken into two parts. The first half is the introduction of mystery, before things move to the courtroom where Mason inevitably ferrets out the truth. Without the law looking over his shoulder, Mason's methods sometimes stretch the boundaries of the law. Once in the hallowed halls of justice, however, it's all by the book.
Nevertheless, Perry Mason himself remains a force of good and a solid, calming presence.
And if you thought HBO would continue in that spirit with their 2020 revival, I don't know what to tell you. Set in the 1932, this Perry Mason origin story gives us a Mason (played by Matthew Rhys) who is a despicable, pathetic, angry drunk.
Why the change? I suspect because the powers that be at HBO don't think audiences can accept a decent, male, character. The way they portray Mason is how they believe men really are (not how they should be). It's feeding the audience a lie with a character who always stood for the truth. By radically changing the character, they can also subvert the expectations of people who fondly remember Burr's portrayal.
Why Hollywood keeps holding out good things only to give us revolting surprises instead is a mystery not even Perry himself could solve.
Going back to what I said yesterday, a good mystery is about restoring order to chaos, and we find catharsis in watching the process. It's why the original novels and TV series endure, and why HBO's abomination will be forgotten.