Perry Mason

[chessiegal]

14 minutes ago, Maverick said:

 I think that's when the Caesar cut was becoming popular for men.  

What the hell was it doing on Jim West in the 1870s? 🤣

[Maverick]

 With those pants, who was looking at his hair??

[Fool to cry]

The flat hair suited Raymond Burr more as Ironside and it was grey. Watching Ironside it's very clear in the early episodes they were trying to distinguish him from Perry Mason. He's very cantankerous and irascible, barking orders to his team like an old timey newspaper editor. By season 2 though he's back to that more thoughtful, professorial Perry demeanor. I like to think they sold Burr on the role by saying it's a cop show but he doesn't have to do any running!  Watching I also realize how more fake sets look in color than black and white back then!

[Milburn Stone]

6 hours ago, Fool to cry said:

I like to think they sold Burr on the role by saying it's a cop show but he doesn't have to do any running! 

I think you're absolutely right. I remember a couple of years ago seeing an S1 episode in which Perry actually was running, and I thought, "Oh, that's not a good idea at all."

[Egg McMuffin]

9 hours ago, Fool to cry said:

Watching I also realize how more fake sets look in color than black and white back then!

Oh yeah. See Gunsmoke for a great example of this. They got away with the fake outdoor Dodge City set in the black and white episodes. But in color - ugh.

[peacheslatour]

11 hours ago, Egg McMuffin said:

Oh yeah. See Gunsmoke for a great example of this. They got away with the fake outdoor Dodge City set in the black and white episodes. But in color - ugh.

Have you ever seen the Addams Family set in color? It's shocking.

 

[chessiegal]

Speaking of Della's hairstyle, watching a Season 1 episode aired in 1957, and Della is wearing her hair the same as my mother at that time. 💗

[dttruman]

Does anyone know who the actors or actresses were that were Triple Crown Winners? A Triple Crown Winner is a person that was a murder victim, the killer, and also the accused (or defendant) in different episodes of course.

[GHScorpiosRule]

1 minute ago, dttruman said:

Does anyone know who the actors or actresses were that were Triple Crown Winners? A Triple Crown Winner is a person that was a murder victim, the killer, and also the accused (or defendant) in different episodes of course.

Right off the bat, Denver Pyles comes to mind.

[dttruman]

3 hours ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

Right off the bat, Denver Pyles comes to mind.

I can remember him as a defendant and the murder, but I can't remember him as a victim. I remember him on so many episodes

Edited February 2, 2022 by dttruman

[chessiegal]

IMBd says Pyle was on 6 episodes of Perry Mason.

IMDb Denver Pyle

[Schnickelfritz]

21 hours ago, dttruman said:

Does anyone know who the actors or actresses were that were Triple Crown Winners? A Triple Crown Winner is a person that was a murder victim, the killer, and also the accused (or defendant) in different episodes of course.

According to

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/PerryMason

 

Eleven actors have played the defendant, the murderer, and the murder victim on the series: Robert Armstrong; John Conte; Robert H. Harris; Stacy Harris; Hugh Marlow; Mala Powers; Denver Pyle; Herbert Rudley; Vaughn Taylor; Bill Williams; and H. M. Wynant. Pyle appeared as a defendant and murder victim in the same episode, "The Case of the Final Fadeout."

[peacheslatour]

16 minutes ago, Schnickelfritz said:

According to

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/PerryMason

 

Eleven actors have played the defendant, the murderer, and the murder victim on the series: Robert Armstrong; John Conte; Robert H. Harris; Stacy Harris; Hugh Marlow; Mala Powers; Denver Pyle; Herbert Rudley; Vaughn Taylor; Bill Williams; and H. M. Wynant. Pyle appeared as a defendant and murder victim in the same episode, "The Case of the Final Fadeout."

I wish they had squeezed Patricia Barry in there somewhere. She was my favorite guest star.

[dttruman]

2 hours ago, Schnickelfritz said:

"The Case of the Final Fadeout."

Thank you so much! I couldn't think of that episode!

I remember some of the Bill Williams episodes, because he was married to Della Street (Barbara Hale). He was on trial for murdering his partner when they were setting a trap with an oil well to catch a thief. He was the murder victim, when he tried to murder a woman who shows up at a town as the long lost daughter (and heiress) of a deceased rich resident.

[dttruman]

2 hours ago, peacheslatour said:

I wish they had squeezed Patricia Barry in there somewhere. She was my favorite guest star.

Yeah I remember her, she even did a couple of episodes of Murder She Wrote.

I can remember her as a murder and as a defendant. The last one was just on MEtv. She was accused of killing her husband, "Velvet Claw" or something like that. As for her being the murder, that where she framed a kid (who was in love with her) and his grandfather was wise to her. That kid became sort of a regular on Perry Mason for a while.

[peacheslatour]

4 minutes ago, dttruman said:

Yeah I remember her, she even did a couple of episodes of Murder She Wrote.

I can remember her as a murder and as a defendant. The last one was just on MEtv. She was accused of killing her husband, "Velvet Claw" or something like that. As for her being the murder, that where she framed a kid (who was in love with her) and his grandfather was wise to her. That kid became sort of a regular on Perry Mason for a while.

I think it was The Case of the Frantic Flyer where she plays a compulsive liar whom Perry is kind of half in love with much to Della's amusement.

[dttruman]

2 hours ago, peacheslatour said:

I think it was The Case of the Frantic Flyer where she plays a compulsive liar whom Perry is kind of half in love with much to Della's amusement.

No it had "Velvet Claw" in the title and it was about a scandal magazine with the name of "Spicey Bits"

[GHScorpiosRule]

4 minutes ago, dttruman said:

No it had "Velvet Claw" in the title and it was about a scandal magazine with the name of "Spicey Bits"

That was it. “The Case of the Velvet Claws.”

[dttruman]

2 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

That was it. “The Case of the Velvet Claws.”

That's it! What also stood out  was that Barry lady gave Perry a decent slap, not one of those fake ones.

[peacheslatour]

I'm just watching The Case of the Witless Witness. It's got both Larry Tate and Uncle Fester.

[GHScorpiosRule]

Speaking of Perry Mason, he came to me in a dream last night! And it was PERRY, not Raymond!

I meant to say this about "The Case of the Constant Doyle" which starred Bette Davis as the top guest star and who was the defense attorney. She filmed this a year after she did Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and I have to say, even back then, make-up did a fantastic job of making her look as rough as Baby Jane did, because Better looked Freakin' FANTASTIC in this episode.

[peacheslatour]

3 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

Speaking of Perry Mason, he came to me in a dream last night! And it was PERRY, not Raymond!

I meant to say this about "The Case of the Constant Doyle" which starred Bette Davis as the top guest star and who was the defense attorney. She filmed this a year after she did Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? and I have to say, even back then, make-up did a fantastic job of making her look as rough as Baby Jane did, because Better looked Freakin' FANTASTIC in this episode.

She was only 54 when she made WEHTBJ.

[GHScorpiosRule]

3 minutes ago, peacheslatour said:

She was only 54 when she made WEHTBJ.

I know, but the make up job made her look lots older. In addition to crazy as a whackadoo!

[peacheslatour]

3 minutes ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

I know, but the make up job made her look lots older. In addition to crazy as a whackadoo!

Oh yeah! I think she was incredibly brave to play that role and boy did she sell it!

[dttruman]

4 hours ago, peacheslatour said:

I'm just watching The Case of the Witless Witness. It's got both Larry Tate and Uncle Fester.

You might say they cut their teeth as guest stars on Perry Mason, until they got their own reoccurring or starring roles on sitcoms

[chessiegal]

3 minutes ago, dttruman said:

You might say they cut their teeth as guest stars on Perry Mason, until they got their own reoccurring or starring roles on sitcoms

Jackie Coogan started acting when he was a child.

Quote

Charlie Chaplin's film classic The Kid (1921) made him one of the first child stars in the history of Hollywood. He later sued his mother and stepfather over his squandered film earnings and provoked California to enact the first known legal protection for the earnings of child performers, the California Child Actors Bill, widely known as the Coogan Act.[3] Coogan continued to act throughout his life, later earning renewed fame in middle age portraying Uncle Fester in the 1960s television series The Addams Family.

 

[peacheslatour]

What was up with Perry's office decor? Was that paneling or wallpaper? Why is his desk made of wicker?

[chessiegal]

From the one colorized episode, the walls look like paneling. The desk sides looked like peg board to me. I guess it was supposed to be modern/edgy. My husband always comments on the tiki mask on the wall.

, ,

[Egg McMuffin]

Not colorized - real color! I wish we had a real color episode of other B&W series like I Love Lucy and Leave it to Beaver. There’s a real color episode of Burns and Allen that was done as a test, but it’s always shown in B&W in syndication.

[chessiegal]

Yes, real color - I misspoke (mistyped?). I believe I read they were experimenting in the event the series was renewed.

[dttruman]

On 2/10/2022 at 12:22 AM, Egg McMuffin said:

Not colorized - real color! I wish we had a real color episode of other B&W series like I Love Lucy and Leave it to Beaver. There’s a real color episode of Burns and Allen that was done as a test, but it’s always shown in B&W in syndication.

 

On 2/10/2022 at 10:17 AM, chessiegal said:

Yes, real color - I misspoke (mistyped?). I believe I read they were experimenting in the event the series was renewed.

For what it is worth, I found this, an NY Times article "A computerized process by which black-and-white film is transferred to videotape and then, frame by frame, transformed into color, colorization is expensive and time-consuming. The average cost ranges from $2,000 to $3,000 per minute of film, depending on the complexity of the footage."

Edited February 15, 2022 by dttruman

[Egg McMuffin]

Computer colorization has come a long way since the 80s, but it still looks off. There’s a person with a YouTube channel who has done the best ones I’ve ever seen. Here’s a clip of a short I Love Lucy scene that he colorized (much better than the ones CBS sometimes shows).

[dttruman]

1 hour ago, Egg McMuffin said:

Computer colorization has come a long way since the 80s, but it still looks off. There’s a person with a YouTube channel who has done the best ones I’ve ever seen. Here’s a clip of a short I Love Lucy scene that he colorized (much better than the ones CBS sometimes shows).

That's damn good! Thank you for pointing that out

[Egg McMuffin]

You’re very welcome. Check out others from the same poster, like the Munsters and the Addams Family. They have done an amazing job.

[Milburn Stone]

23 hours ago, chessiegal said:

Yes, real color - I misspoke (mistyped?). I believe I read they were experimenting in the event the series was renewed.

That's close to what I've read. Here's the story I saw. CBS required them to shoot in color as a condition of renewing the series. At this point in television history, CBS (which was way behind NBC in color programming) was going to go virtually all-color and didn't want the show if the creators insisted on black-and-white. The color episode was a test to prove the viability (or not) of Perry Mason in color. Obviously the resulting verdict by TPTB was either that the show didn't "work" in color or that color wasn't enough to make the show relevant.

[GHScorpiosRule]

2 hours ago, Milburn Stone said:

That's close to what I've read. Here's the story I saw. CBS required them to shoot in color as a condition of renewing the series. At this point in television history, CBS (which was way behind NBC in color programming) was going to go virtually all-color and didn't want the show if the creators insisted on black-and-white. The color episode was a test to prove the viability (or not) of Perry Mason in color. Obviously the resulting verdict by TPTB was either that the show didn't "work" in color or that color wasn't enough to make the show relevant.

There’s also the FACT that Raymond wanted to leave after season seven, but stuck around through nine. Even if the show was renewed, who would have played Perry? Without Raymond, there is no show.

[Egg McMuffin]

The issue with converting to color was that there were a certain amount of fixed costs associated: reshooting stock footage, repainting the sets, new wardrobe, color cameras, different makeup, etc. Production companies often didn’t want to make that type of investment for a single season. That’s why we saw a lot of shows that otherwise would have gotten an additional session end in 1966: Munsters, Addams Family, Patty Duke Show. They were marginal in the ratings to begin with and the cost of color pushed them to the cancellation column.

Perry was trailing off in the ratings in its ninth season. It just wasn’t worth it for them to convert it to color.

[dttruman]

3 hours ago, Egg McMuffin said:

The issue with converting to color was that there were a certain amount of fixed costs associated: reshooting stock footage, repainting the sets, new wardrobe, color cameras, different makeup, etc. Production companies often didn’t want to make that type of investment for a single season. That’s why we saw a lot of shows that otherwise would have gotten an additional session end in 1966: Munsters, Addams Family, Patty Duke Show. They were marginal in the ratings to begin with and the cost of color pushed them to the cancellation column.

I guess these were the years of experimentation. The television had only been around for some 10 or so years and they didn't know if it was a fad or how popular it would be. When they did, their next major improvements of movies were to colorize everything and projection Remember all the previews that showed the movies in Cinemascope and Technicolor

[chessiegal]

I read somewhere, can't find it now, that CBS was changing to shows in color around 1966 to compete with NBC. This was in relation to The Wild Wild West on CBS, that was black and white its first season in 1965, then went to color in 1966 (and what glorious colors it was). There was a comment that NBC was pushing color to get people to buy RCA color televisions. I don't see a parent company connection between NBC and RCA in the mid 60s. GE originally, then later, but not then. But I could be wrong.

[GHScorpiosRule]

1 minute ago, chessiegal said:

I read somewhere, can't find it now, that CBS was changing to shows in color around 1966 to compete with NBC. This was in relation to The Wild Wild West on CBS, that was black and white its first season in 1965, then went to color in 1966 (and what glorious colors it was). There was a comment that NBC was pushing color to get people to buy RCA color televisions. I don't see a parent company connection between NBC and RCA in the mid 60s. GE originally, then later, but not then. But I could be wrong.

I think Barbara Hale talked about it in the special features interview in the 25th Anniversary DVD. The interview was from one of those Emmy interviews.

[peacheslatour]

14 minutes ago, chessiegal said:

I read somewhere, can't find it now, that CBS was changing to shows in color around 1966 to compete with NBC. This was in relation to The Wild Wild West on CBS, that was black and white its first season in 1965, then went to color in 1966 (and what glorious colors it was). There was a comment that NBC was pushing color to get people to buy RCA color televisions. I don't see a parent company connection between NBC and RCA in the mid 60s. GE originally, then later, but not then. But I could be wrong.

NBC was at the forefront of color programming because its parent company RCA manufactured the most successful line of color sets in the 1950s and, at the end of August 1956, announced that in comparison with 1955–56 (when only three of its regularly scheduled programs were broadcast in color) the 1956–57 season would feature 17 series in color.[85] By 1959 RCA was the only remaining major manufacturer of color sets.[86] CBS and ABC, which were not affiliated with set manufacturers and were not eager to promote their competitor's product, dragged their feet into color.

[chessiegal]

Ah, so RCA owned NBC. Well, if Raymond Burr wanted out 2 years earlier, that's a natural end.

My husband likes the early years of Perry because they have a film noir feel.

[peacheslatour]

25 minutes ago, chessiegal said:

Ah, so RCA owned NBC. Well, if Raymond Burr wanted out 2 years earlier, that's a natural end.

My husband likes the early years of Perry because they have a film noir feel.

I like that about them too. I'd say your husband has good taste but you knew that!

[dttruman]

59 minutes ago, chessiegal said:

Ah, so RCA owned NBC. Well, if Raymond Burr wanted out 2 years earlier, that's a natural end.

My husband likes the early years of Perry because they have a film noir feel.

Was Burr interested doing another series that was colorized? If so, that explains why he jumped to NBC to do Ironside when finished with Perry Mason.

[GHScorpiosRule]

3 minutes ago, dttruman said:

Was Burr interested doing another series that was colorized? If so, that explains why he jumped to NBC to do Ironside when finished with Perry Mason.

Nope. Not from the interviews I’d read. This is just speculation, but he may have agreed as Ironside was wheelchair bound and it would have been easier on him due to his back issues?

[peacheslatour]

1 hour ago, GHScorpiosRule said:

Nope. Not from the interviews I’d read. This is just speculation, but he may have agreed as Ironside was wheelchair bound and it would have been easier on him due to his back issues?

Yes, It was apparent he was having health problems, hence all the guest stars subbing for him on his cases. Bette Davis, Walter Pidgeon and Michael Rennie. There were a couple more.

[Milburn Stone]

Some posts on this thread are making me realize how old I am. :) Confusion between color film and colorized film (not the same thing!) is something no child of the fifties and sixties could have, because the introduction of color TV, and its promotion and expansion, was such a big deal then. Similarly, no one who was around then would have any doubt that NBC was the broadcasting arm of RCA. I have to remind myself that these decades, to a young adult of today, are the equivalent of the Roaring Twenties to me. I know something about the 1920s, and would probably get a B on a quiz of the cultural events of that decade--but would not ace it!

Edited February 12, 2022 by Milburn Stone

[chessiegal]

24 minutes ago, Milburn Stone said:

Some posts on this thread are making me realize how old I am. :) Confusion between color film and colorized film (not the same thing!) is something no child of the fifties and sixties could have, because the introduction of color TV, and its promotion and expansion, was such a big deal then. Similarly, no one who was around then would have any doubt that NBC was the broadcasting arm of RCA. I have to remind myself that these decades, to a young adult of today, are the equivalent of the Roaring Twenties to me. I know something about the 1920s, and would probably get a B on a quiz of the cultural events of that decade--but would not ace it!

Now you're making me feel stupid. I was born in 1950! 

[Milburn Stone]

49 minutes ago, chessiegal said:

Now you're making me feel stupid. I was born in 1950! 

This is one of those times I wasn't sure which emoji to pick. My apologies in any case. :)

 

Edited February 12, 2022 by Milburn Stone

[chessiegal]

When I watch episodes from the 1950s I wonder if we watched them when they first aired. My father worked nights so mom controlled the tv. She hated Westerns, said they were too violent and would give me nightmares. 😄 She favored comedies and variety shows. I don't remember her watching Perry Mason, but there are plenty of things I've discovered that I don't remember from pulling out her diaries. 🤷‍♂️