Birthday post for William Hopper and news

I wanted to make sure to get in one more post in January. As an anonymous reader hastened to inform me, I neglected to put up a post for William Hopper’s birthday on Monday. This year, it wasn’t for lack of remembering, but lack of physical capability to make the post. I was feeling miserable all that day. Then Tuesday was rather busy, as has been the rest of the week, but I decided I must make sure to get William H. acknowledged before the month is out.

This is a real milestone birthday for our William H.; he would have been 100 this year! (William Talman and Simon Oakland celebrate the same milestone this year as well.) It’s really quite incredible to think that it’s been that many years. I wish I really had a decent tribute to give, but I haven’t seen any more of his movies yet, nor have I gleaned new insight into Paul-centric episodes or scenes since the last time I posted on that matter.

The best I can do is mention my geeky excitement when I was watching The Stars and Stripes Forever, the biopic for John Philip Sousa, and they mentioned the actor DeWolf Hopper was going to star in a musical play Sousa was writing the music for. I figured that must be William H.’s father, considering his full name is William DeWolf Hopper, Jr., and looking him up, I find that is true. So it was fun to find a little Perry-related connection in that film.

Also, looking up things further, it says that William H. first appeared in one of his father’s silent movies, Sunshine Dad, as a baby. That’s pretty adorable.

William H. had a very illustrious career in the motion picture business during the late 1930s and off and on through parts of the 1940s and 1950s, before he became Paul Drake on Perry Mason in 1957. And it wasn’t just B-grade movies, either; he has quite the impressive resumé—even though many of his early roles were bit parts. Among other well-known films, he appeared in Stagecoach, The Maltese Falcon, Knute Rockne, and Yankee Doodle Dandy! I knew about his later role in Rebel Without a Cause, but I was unaware of these earlier roles. I am excited. It’s been years since I’ve seen The Maltese Falcon; it looks like it’s time I saw it again. And on the B-movie circuit, he was in two of the Bonita Granville Nancy Drew movies. While I did not care for her version of the character, I would definitely be interested in seeing those films to see William H.

I still find it interesting that William H. originally auditioned for the role of Perry Mason himself when they started putting the show together. I really enjoyed his screen test when I saw it on the 50^th Anniversary DVD set, but he just didn’t give off a Perry vibe to me. I guess the producers agreed, since they determined he would be the perfect Paul Drake instead. That was definitely a bit of casting genius!

While I’ll admit that I didn’t think Albert Stratton in The New Perry Mason did a poor job as Paul, it will always be William Hopper’s Paul who is the iconic version of the character. He’s ideal! Smooth, intelligent, always with an eye for a beautiful lady and bewilderment over some of Perry’s desires (“A couple of dozen flies?!”), William H.’s Paul delivers many classic lines and hilarious expressions. And of course, he often brings in the evidence Perry needs to cinch a case just in time.

I love whenever the show devotes a bit more time to showing Paul operating, instead of just having Paul tell Perry things about the investigation after the fact. Every now and then the show would allow some spotlighting of Paul’s work, something that became more prominent later on as Raymond Burr grew tired of always carrying the majority of the show. Mid-series episodes such as The Barefaced Witness, The Impatient Partner, and The Glamorous Ghost are excellent Paul investigation vehicles. Later ventures such as The Bullied Bowler, The Feather Cloak, and The Carefree Coronary also involve Paul as a particularly key figure.

When out-of-town investigating needs doing, Perry often sends Paul instead of going himself. Sometimes Paul’s adventures are off-screen; other times, we see him in assorted locales such as New Orleans, Boston, and Mexico. It would make a good post just to focus on Paul’s travels sometime. I’ll have to start collecting information for such a post.

Paul is such a ladies’ man that another good post subject would be all the times he’s mentioned having dates, shows interest in particular ladies, or is actually shown on dates. Then again, that could take volumes. Paul has an interesting social life, when given the chance to have it.

Paul always adds so much spice to the show. I always enjoy seeing more of his investigations and would have liked to have seen more. There could never be too many private-eye series! Lately I’ve been enjoying a lot of Darren McGavin’s private-eye vehicle Mike Hammer, and it occurs to me how much fun it would have been had there been a series focusing more on Paul’s investigations than on the legal elements. But I love Perry Mason for what it is, and I love Paul for being a part of what it is. There is certainly a big, lonely gap in the reunion movies where Paul should be. No actor could quite fill it.

Happy belated birthday to a wonderful actor and a wonderful man, William Hopper! 100 years of being aware of his existence in the world is a milestone indeed.

And now for a bit of news. I probably shouldn’t have this in the same post, but I’d like to get it out here before any more time goes by. I still wish that there was a Perry video or computer game with all the latest graphics. It would be so fun to see the cast rendered in 3D, possibly even controllable for levels. Imagine playing out investigation levels as Paul! Going to court as Perry and Hamilton! Playing mini puzzle games with Della or Tragg, Andy, and Steve sorting through information! There are so many possibilities.

The old DOS text-based computer game remains the one time Perry ventured into such media. There may be some nice pictures of Paul in that; I’m unsure, as I’ve only seen the first 16 minutes of game play. All I recall is some nice renditions of Hamilton and Tragg. However, for anyone who understands how to work a text-based DOS game, it is now possible to find out the answers to this and any other questions revolving around said game! The Internet Archive has been adding old DOS games to be legally played online for free, and the 1985 Perry game The Mandarin Murder is among them! My friend Crystal Rose (who runs the Simon Oakland blog with me) discovered it here:

https://archive.org/details/msdos_Perry_Mason_-_The_Case_of_the_Mandarin_Murder_1986

I’m looking forward to giving it a try, although I don’t know how handy I’ll be at playing a text-based game.

Also, I do have what appears to be news on the Perry movie front. There is a promo running for MeTV’s current Mystery Movie feature on weeknights, and Perry as he appears in the 1980s and 1990s movies is part of that promo. It looks like at some point, MeTV will indeed air some of the Perry movies as part of their line-up. They seem to rotate each week, so we should get a whole week of Perry movies sometime soon. That should be interesting: a late-night Perry episode followed by a Perry movie.

Perry-related Memorabilia

As a collector, I am absolutely thrilled and delighted by memorabilia for my favorite things. Naturally, this started me wondering what kinds of merchandise had been released for Perry Mason. Eliminating all talk of the original books, I will focus solely on what I’m aware was released for the television series. Also, I won’t really make too much mention of the videos and DVDs; surely we all know about those. And they’re not exactly what I would consider memorabilia; videos and DVDs, as far as I’m concerned, are a must. It’s mainly the fun but unnecessary little (or big) collectibles that I see as memorabilia.

Unfortunately, it’s very difficult to learn much of anything about the collectibles that do exist. Some of them are extremely rare. And even with those more common, people don’t seem to provide a great deal of helpful information about them.

There were two items called Mystery Magazines released by comic company Dell during 1964. I really don’t understand why they were called such; they were just regular-length comic books. “Mystery Magazine” implies something much bigger and more exclusive, at least to my way of thinking.

I can’t learn anything about issue #1, other than what’s written on the cover picture: “A gun! A glass eye! Perry Mason must solve the case with only two clues…” It sounds like either an original story or possibly an adaption of a book that was never an episode. (Anyone know of a storyline involving a glass eye?)

Issue #2, according to my scant findings, was an adaption of episode #5 The Sulky Girl. There are scans available on this website: http://comics.ha.com/c/item.zx?saleNo=7063&lotIdNo=127010 for at least a few of the pages, but you have to join in order to see them properly. The artwork looks fairly good, from what I can see, but I don’t want to judge the storyline until I can examine the entire adaption (if that ever happens).

The comics seem to be among the most expensive of the memorabilia. When I see issues listed, they can go as high as several hundred dollars.

This article here: http://vintages-antiques-collectibles.knoji.com/perry-mason-tv-show-memorabilia-values/ mentions a drinking glass with the show’s logo and a picture of Lady Justice. That sounds interesting, but I confess I’ve never been very interested in merchandise with only a logo on it. I want characters’ pictures!

And then there are the games. It seems Perry Mason was a fairly popular thing to adapt into games.

Around 1959 we had something called The Case of the Missing Suspect. Instead of me trying to explain all the rules, here’s the extent of the information I’ve found on it (which isn’t much): http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/5633/perry-mason-game-case-of-the-missing-suspect It sounds quite fun. Eight different cases to solve, clues, questioning witnesses, trying to find the missing suspects. . . . It reminds me a little bit of Clue.

Then in the eighties, there were two more games: the afore-mentioned computer game and another board game. I’m assuming the reunion movies are what sparked the interest enough to do this. To my relief, the games take place in the television series universe instead of the movie universe, and hence, seem to feature all of the original characters in some form or another.

The board game was just called The Perry Mason Game. http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3688/the-perry-mason-game Hamilton made it onto the cover and the board itself, which geekily pleases me! It sounds like in this game, you actually act out being in court, which is awesome. And someone tells me that there are two mysteries for the game: The Stuttering Bishop (book version?) and The Tandem Target. (I also wonder if Andy is around, even if unnamed, since he was very prominent in The Tandem Target episode.) It actually is referred to as being like Clue.

(… And excuse me, I have to interrupt this entry to cheer. My area finally has a MeTV affiliate! It just started this week. YES! A station that won’t skip seasons seven and eight of Perry! And so many other oldies shows are now open to me! I’m so excited right now! Now I have all three of the broadcast oldies channels: Me, Antenna, and THIS!)

Ahem. Okay, sorry. Now, if I can concentrate long enough to go on with what I was saying. . . . (Which is starting to look unlikely. . . .)

The computer game, being made in 1985, was for DOS. Hence, it was mostly text. They did occasionally insert illustrations, from the sixteen minutes I saw of someone’s walkthrough (which only got them to the beginning of the court case). Della looked the most like herself in her illustration. I think they were trying to portray William Talman’s and Ray Collin’s versions of Hamilton and Tragg in the illustrations, too, although I wasn’t quite sure. And Tragg’s description, as previously mentioned, did not sound like Ray’s Tragg. There was also a Sergeant, but it wasn’t Brice. (Poor, neglected Brice.) It was someone I’d never heard of. Why didn’t they just use Brice?

And as for the gameplay, well, apparently you type commands and then receive descriptions based on those commands. For instance, if you want to read a suspect’s dossier, you type something like “Read ____’s File.” If you’re searching a room, you type the locations where you look. It’s very interesting. If you type something that doesn’t make sense, you’ll be told to try again, “Counselor”. Being mostly text-based, it’s really like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, leaving much to the imagination.

It’s fascinating and intriguing, to see how they handled things back then, but I can’t help wishing they would get the bright idea to make a Perry computer game now. Wouldn’t that be awesome? There’s so many innovations in 3D technology, they could really come up with models that look like the characters from the series! (If they could get permission to use the likenesses, of course.) I would so buy a game like that!

Heck, I’d buy the original game, if we had a working computer with the disk drive to fit the size of disk it came on. (And if I could buy it for a decent price.) Come to think of it, I think at least one of those computers does still work.

There have been non-fiction books written about Perry. I suppose the most well-known is The Perry Mason TV Show Book. Despite its inaccuracies, and me having some serious disagreements over some of the authors’ personal opinions on characters, I love the book and am often going back to re-read parts of it. I’m not sure why they decided to put it online, but I was thrilled the first time I found it there years ago. http://www.perrymasontvshowbook.com/

Some time ago, I noticed this little thing on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Perry-Mason-Milestones-Thomas-Leitch/dp/0814331211/ref=wl_it_dp_o_piT1_S_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=2ELK10PKQ7BY2&coliid=I29J1HLKFX9P3B But I’ve searched high and low and I can’t find any real information on it. Does anyone know what it is and how good it is?

Then there were, of course, articles and books written on some of the actors involved with the series. A couple of books were done about Raymond Burr, but I question the level of their accuracy and I won’t get into that here. There are a few old magazines with articles listed on that list of ten bits of memorabilia. I imagine there are others. I’ve got a few old TV Guides with full and half page ads for some of the reunion movies. And even though I don’t consider them canon, I find that neat.

There are quite a few 1950s and 1960s articles written about Perry and the cast members that can be found in old newspaper archives, as demonstrated to me by someone from the Perry Yahoo Group. He very graciously typed up many of them for the members to read. The originals were taken from online newspaper scans here: http://www.fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html (And hopefully there are other articles of interest to be found there as well.) I highly encourage perusal!

Now, where the video and DVD releases are concerned, of course Columbia House released theirs before CBS did any of their boxsets. Columbia, unfortunately, did not get around to releasing all of them, and they never released in any specific order. At least, not to my knowledge, even though they do have themed tapes for some series. But Columbia’s releases are important for one little thing: there are a few episodes of seasons 7, 8, and 9 available from them that are not currently available anywhere else (unless you have Me or another channel that shows those seasons in full!). This well-known and well-loved website lists which ones were released: http://www.storrer.com/masongardner/pmesg.htm

CBS has currently released up to all of season 6. I am highly anticipating the first half of season 7 this month!

There are other kinds of memorabilia. There are press photographs, both signed and unsigned, available on eBay and other locations. I like checking eBay every now and then to see what’s available. There’s quite an impressive selection!

There are scripts and props and things like Emmy Award statuettes. I would love some scripts of the episodes I particularly adore. So far I haven’t located any of those, but this website does have copies of three out-of-town season 8 episodes, if you just want the script contents and don’t care about having an original: http://www.crossovers.net/makeitgoaway/ I’ve communicated with the people before and got hold of a copy of a Monkees script. I have been very impressed with their services!

You can find a purchasable and downloadable MP3 of the theme song, Park Avenue Beat, at Amazon.com and probably on iTunes as well. It’s a full-length version, very interesting.

CBS has a site where they sell T-shirts of many CBS series: http://www.shoptvcity.com Unfortunately, there aren’t any of Perry! They mostly just have logo stuff too, but some series do feature character shirts! I’ve emailed asking about the possibility of Perry shirts in the future. If all of the interested fans could show them that there’s a definite market for Perry shirts, perhaps they would make some.

If anyone is aware of any other Perry memorabilia, let me know! Meanwhile, I’m dancing off to Livejournal to squeal over having MeTV at long last.

In Memoriam: Ray Collins

The reason for the post being a day early this week is that it was on July 11^th, 1965, when Ray Collins passed away.

While pondering on exactly what sort of content this post should have, I’ve been re-reading some biographical information. Wow, he was one amazing man! By all accounts, he kept very busy from the time he first started acting on the stage, at age 14. And later on he had quite a career in radio, too, performing in various adaptions of literary classics and other things.

There are many movies he was in that I have yet to see. And some I saw so many years ago that I remember very little of them now and have need to see them again.

I’ve been thinking on Lieutenant Tragg of late, too. Upon re-watching The Loquacious Liar I discovered that I have been mis-stating the number of years Tragg says he’s been on the police force. I have no idea how I remembered thirty years as almost twenty-five. Nor do I have any idea exactly how I am going to repair all such references in stories. I’ll be very subtly trying to change it here and there in past stories, since no one else seems to have noticed or commented on the mistake.

Tragg’s life before he was on the force is a closed book. I think the mention of him being around for thirty years might be the most background information we ever have on him. That, and his sad admission that after all this time, informing someone of a loved one’s death has never gotten easier. While Tragg has a lot of great screentime in The Clumsy Clown, I love that little scene in The Loquacious Liar most. It’s certainly one of his best and most compassionate scenes, along with scenes in The Fugitive Nurse from season 1 and The Hateful Hero from season 6.

I might go so far as to say that those four episodes, and also The Moth-Eaten Mink, may just be the five best Tragg episodes across the entire series. But then again, there’s so many wonderful episodes with Tragg in seven seasons that it’s difficult to narrow it down! Tragg is prominent in The Moth-Eaten Mink, The Fugitive Nurse, and The Clumsy Clown, but The Hateful Hero is really Andy’s episode, and I don’t recall if The Loquacious Liar featured Tragg more than usual. So perhaps those latter two would instead count among a list of the best Tragg scenes, rather than Tragg episodes overall.

Come to think of it, Tragg never really got a spotlight episode, per se. I should give him a spotlight story. I try to rotate among the cast, and the Andy/Amory Fallon mystery is still planned to be next. Tragg will certainly play a large part in that, being as close to Andy as he is, but I should also have one where Tragg is the central character.

I became advised of the existence of a Perry computer game made in 1985 (possibly to promote the first reunion film, I wonder?), and yesterday I looked it up. Perry Mason: The Case of the Mandarin Murder is a fascinating early effort at a mystery and detective game along the lines of the popular Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes games today. It deserves an in-depth post all its own, so for now I will just focus on what’s seen of Tragg in what I saw of someone’s walkthrough of the first sixteen minutes of the game. (That’s viewable on YouTube, for anyone interested in having a look!) I will also mention that the time period was clearly moved to the present-day of that time (the 1980s, but what I saw could also double as our present-day), and without harming characters or plot, much to my delight!

The game seems to be a curious mixture of the books and the television series. Having seen very little of the game (I wonder if that person will upload his walkthrough of the rest of it), I base that opinion mostly on the description of Lieutenant Tragg. The only thing that really sounded like Ray Collins’ Tragg was the inclusion of his whimsical smile. Otherwise, it sounded like a Tragg I don’t really know. He was mentioned as being as tall as Perry, with a suit five years out of style and yellowed teeth from years of cigar smoking.

Tragg smoking cigars? That’s an image I’m having a hard time calling to mind—so much so that it’s amusing me more than anything else. It sounds so very out-of-character for Ray’s Tragg. I can’t recall him ever lighting a cigar.

(None of the characters smoke at all in my stories, by the way. Despite the present-day setting I give them, I tried to move everything of the time period over from the series, right down to the fedoras. But smoking cigarettes is about the one thing I refused to bring over. Yes, trying to picture Tragg with a cigar amuses me because it sounds so ridiculously out-of-character, but the general act of anyone smoking cigars or cigarettes doesn’t amuse me one bit.)

And a suit five years out of style? Well, I suppose as a modern viewer I wouldn’t be a good judge, but I always thought Tragg was a snappy and up-to-date dresser. I just can’t see him wearing something so long out of style. Although on the other hand, Tragg is stubborn and wants his own way, and if he had a suit that he thought was especially neat, I can picture him insisting on continuing to wear it whether it went out of style or not.

As for being as tall as Perry, well, I’m pretty sure that does come from the books. In addition to being around Perry’s age (a notation not mentioned in the game).

As Hamilton begins questioning Tragg, he asks how long Tragg has been on the police force. Tragg says it’s been twenty years, and also mentions that he has been the Chief of the Homicide division for some time.

(Can a lieutenant be the chief of a division? I’m curious. I thought the captains were the ones over the divisions. Upon looking up the query here: http://www.lapdonline.org/join_the_team/content_basic_view/9127, it seems the game’s answer was likely incorrect, or at least, very simplified at best.)

Concerning the twenty years bit, I suppose one could decide that the game’s events simply take place long before the events of the TV series, since in the first episode all of the Core Five (Perry, Della, Paul, Hamilton, and Tragg) already know each other quite well. But considering how the game’s Tragg just doesn’t quite gel with Ray’s, I’d be more inclined to say that the game created a separate “universe” to play in, not fully part of either the book or the television universes.

The game Tragg actually sounded fairly similar to Ray’s Tragg when he spoke at an earlier point in the game. It was mainly the descriptions that threw me off.

Despite liking Dane Clark’s Tragg, of course it’s Ray’s interpretation that instantly comes to mind when I think of the character. Ray Collins was iconic in that role.

So much so that on his headstone, it even bills him as Lt. Tragg under his name.

I know you’re shining wherever you are right now, Ray. And down here, we still love and miss you. You will always be our Lieutenant Tragg.