By Elaina Patton. Fictional private detective in the Perry Mason novels and TV series, Kinescopes of Hopper's audition as Perry Mason, along with, Learn how and when to remove this template message, "Perry Mason (19851993), The Perry Mason Mystery (19931995)", Perry Mason: The Case of the Mandarin Murder, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paul_Drake_(character)&oldid=1135390374, Articles needing additional references from May 2015, All articles needing additional references, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 24 January 2023, at 11:06. She continued to make uncredited appearances in movies, until her first credited role in the musical Higher and Higher the same year. The Court feels you are fully capable of looking after your own as well as your clients' interests. In the first Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Velvet Claws, written in the early days of the Great Depression, Della Street is revealed to have come from a wealthy, or at least well-to-do, family that was wiped out by the stock market crash of 1929. Despite dropping out of law school, Erle Stanley Gardner passed the California state bar exam and started working as an attorney in 1911. This was followed by her guest roles in the shows Proudly We Hail and Lux Radio Theatre. [1]:331, A character named Della Street first appeared in Gardner's unpublished novel Reasonable Doubt, where she was a secretary, but not the secretary of the lawyer, Ed Stark. Several instances of sexual tension are seen between Mason and Street in the Gardner novels, multiple glances, kisses, and so on, and several proposals of marriage, all of which Della turned down because, at the time, wives of professional men did not work. The erstwhile lawyer never lost a case in the entire run of the series, from 1957 to 1966. The show was popular enough that in 1956, CBS Radio tried to move it, format intact, to CBS television, but Gardner said no, leading the network to adapt it into the long-running daytime dramaThe Edge of Night. A total of 15 episodes aired before being cancelled halfway through its first season. Greg Warren dared to go where no comedian has gone before. In real life, Erle Stanley Gardner married his secretary Jeanne right before he died, I suppose so she could inherit. But then he investigates and finds the real killer, his loss negated. Lt. Andy Anderson: Police homicide investigator in the CBS-TV series. Weve got to have a girl there immediately., It hit every paper the next day. That got her tryout at RKO. "[citation needed]. Hamilton Burger is the fictional Los Angeles County District Attorney (D.A.) When we meet him in the premiere, Brooks desperately wants to step out of his dads shadow and make a name for himself. The Case of the Curious Bride (1934) is. Actor: Perry Mason. In The Case of the Caretaker's Cat (1935), his principal antagonist, District Attorney Hamilton Burger, says: "You're a better detective than you are a lawyer. She liked the fact that Della was unmarried and without kids so it wouldn't confuse her real-life children. The series was developed and written by Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald and stars Matthew Rhys in the title role. [7], While the Mason novels were largely a form of pulp fiction of the sort that began Gardner's writing career, they are unusual in that the whodunit mysteries usually involved two solutions: a very plausible but inaccurate one in which the authorities believed (wherein Mason's client was guilty) and an entirely alternative (and true) explanation, wherein Mason's client was innocent and another party had committed the crime. Terms of Service apply. Thus there was a need for a great deal of invented material, background, plots, and characters none of which material Gardner incorporated into his ongoing series of Perry Mason novels. Only 15 installments aired before CBS canceled The New Perry Mason, which finished the 1973-74 season as #71 out of 80 shows. Then when production got moving along, Rhys realized his initial aversion to remaking Perry Mason was even more misguided, because he had few concrete, preconceived notions of the show and its main character. The ace lawyer has been a part of the American cultural lexicon for the better part of a century, recently reemerging as a gritty HBO 1930s period piece that stayed faithful to Erle Stanley Garner's Mason novels. Weve all been so lucky to have her for so long, Katt wrote. She married actor Bill Williams in 1946. She was a bladder cancer survivor. Finally, in March 2019, HBO officially ordered a Mason miniseries. [2] These were followed by the best known adaptation, the CBS television series Perry Mason (19571966) starring Raymond Burr. And even then, he would expect to put up a strong and effective defense leading to an acquittal. Perry Mason features in 82 novels and 4 short stories, all of which involve a client being charged with murder, usually involving a preliminary hearing or jury trial. The character was inspired by famed Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Earl Rogers.[1]. The Oliver Twist-inspired February 1966 installment "The Case of the Twice-Told Twist" is otherwise a run-of-the-mill Perry Mason episode, except for the fact that it was produced in full color the only episode in the original series run not presented in black-and-white. Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter. Garry Owen played the investigator, now known simply as Paul Drake, in 1936's The Case of the Black Cat, and Joseph Crehan took over in 1937's The Case of the Stuttering Bishop. Her last on-screen appearance was in a 2000 biographical documentary TV series episode about Raymond Burr in Biography. Begler says shes rooted in Summers, an oil baroness who came out west as a piano teacher and used the small amount of money she had to buy some wells. Gardner described her this way: "Della Street Secretary, twenty-seven, quiet, fast as hell on her feet, had been places. Hugh Marlowe and K. T. Stevens, who played Guy and Alice Munford, were married to each other in real life at the time of the show. In talking with Mason, he generally likes to slouch in an armchair with his back over one arm and his legs over the other. Password must be at least 8 characters and contain: As part of your account, youll receive occasional updates and offers from New York, which you can opt out of anytime. The general theme of the radio series was continued, with a different title and characters, as The Edge of Night.[2]. After they were (barely) bought out and then forced out, the area was razed first in the name of urban renewal and public housing and then, after years in limbo, for a fancy dome-shaped stadium. Erle Stanley Gardner, the creator of Perry Mason in a series of novels, was a very prolific author, who simultaneously employed three secretariesall sistersto keep up with his output. Mason manipulates evidence and witnesses, resulting in the acquittal of the murderer in The Case of the Howling Dog (1934). The 'Real' Perry Mason Didn't Need Law School. For nine seasons, Raymond Burr portrayed Perry Mason (and won two Emmy Awards for his work), alongside Barbara Hale as his devoted secretary and confidante Della Street, William Hopper as Paul Drake, his private detective of choice, and William Talman as Hamilton Burger, the otherwise capable prosecutor that Mason defeated roughly 270 times. At RKO, she met the actor Bill Williams (born Wilhelm Katt), and after making West of the Pecos (1945). First day on the lot, she gets of course they said a starring part. If youre attracted to someone on the yacht, the worst thing you can do is tell Gary. [a][1] "He was perfect as Drake, and we got him," recalled executive producer Gail Patrick Jackson. My job as a prosecutor is do justice and justice is served when a guilty man is convicted and when an innocent man is not." But long before Earle Stanley Gardner's popular books about Perry Mason were adapted for the small screen, they were successfully converted into other media formats. A year later, however, Pizzolatto had dropped out (in favor of a third season of True Detective, with Mahershala Ali), and HBO brought in Weeds and Friday Night Lights writers Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald. By using our Services, you agree to our use of cookies. Erle Stanley Gardner, the creator of Perry Mason in a series of novels, was a very prolific author, who simultaneously employed three secretariesall sistersto keep up with his output. When the family returned to Canada, Raymond's As a young The private social club Jonathan Club has been around since the late-19th century. She later reprised her role of Street in the TV film 'Perry Mason Returns'. . The couple married in June 1946 and stayed together for 46 years until Williams' death on September 21, 1992. In 1957, the CBS television network launched a Perry Mason series based on Gardner's characters, which ran until 1966. From the page to the screen, here's a look into the curious case of Perry Mason. This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. (And it could compete in miniseries categories at the 2021 Emmy Awards, too.) 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His parents, Minerva and William Burr, after 33 years of separation, remarried in 1955. After appearing in such films as The First Yank in Tokyo (1945), The Boy With the Green Hair (1948), The Window (1949) and, with her husband, The Clay Pigeon (1949), Hale delivered perhaps her most notable movie performance in the Columbia sequel Jolson Sings Again (1949), playing a nurse and the singers new wife. Mason's only actual loss came in 1963's "The Case of the Witless Witness," an episode that begins with the attorney losing an appeal on a case that wasn't the focus of that or any other Perry Mason installment. Hale's final appearance in a feature movie was in the 1978 Big Wednesday as Mrs. Barlow. In the episode "The Deadly Verdict," the client is found guilty but Mason discovers evidence at the end of . Perry Mason is most famous for its iterations as television show the intense, courtroom series starring Raymond Burr from the 1950s and 1960s, and the moody, 1930s-set reimagining with Matthew Rhys that debuted on HBO in 2020. with negative connotations), probably because he mercy-killed some comrades who were about to die from a poison gas attack which they were too severely wounded to escape. Almost always, the second half of each novel is devoted to a courtroom scene, during which Mason arrives at the alternative explanation and proves it to the satisfaction of the court. [citation needed], In June 2015, the American Bar Association announced that its new publishing imprint, Ankerwycke, would reissue Gardner's Perry Mason novels. He often smoked cigarettes especially when he had a subject of interest under surveillance. This article about a fictional character from a novel is a stub. [2], "Paul Drake in the Erle Stanley Gardner books was an entirely different character," Hopper said in 1962. I think shell work. Drake is frequently described as "lanky" and slightly "fish-faced" or "pop-eyed". In 1985, Burr and Hale came back for the NBC telefilm Perry Mason Returns to kick things off again. Drake is described as tall and slouching, nondescript (as suits his profession), and frequently wearing an expression of droll humor. Paul Drake, Jr.: Paul Drake's son, also a private investigator, in the first nine Perry Mason television films. By 1993, when Burr signed with NBC for another season of Mason films, he was using a wheelchair full-time because of his failing health. In 1946, Burr made his film This was Jean Gardner, born Agnes Helene Walter. In 1934, just a year after the first Perry Mason novel delighted readers, the first Perry Mason movie, The Case of the Howling Dog, hit movie houses. Even if its set decades before the Dodgers opening game, Perry Masons showrunners know that racism was still rampant in the city at that time.