In Memoriam: Raymond Burr

(An unrelated note, but after going over that experimental piece of Della and Andy conversing at a point when I wasn’t exasperated with it, I decided I captured Andy’s voice after all. So I may finish and post it sometime.)

Today the post is a day early in honor of Raymond Burr, who left us September 12^th, 1993. This year, the post is on time!

Of course, we all know what an incredible actor Raymond was. The quintessential Perry Mason. The perfect Robert Ironside. And he brought many other amazing characters to life, good and bad.

I’ve seen more of Ironside off and on over the past months. I’ve been particularly impressed by Lesson in Terror, in which Raymond has some extensive interaction with Simon Oakland. I still need to discuss that episode at the Simon blog. Simon plays a good guy in it, a close friend of Ironside’s. His son is mixed up with a bunch of teen rebels and has several run-ins and clashes with Ironside, who always gives the right answers to the kid’s queries.

I think my favorite exchange is when they discuss the Boston Tea Party. The kid wonders what Ironside would have done if he had been a policeman during that time and had been at the harbor. Ironside calmly replies that he would have done his duty and arrested the rebels. No matter how important the Boston Tea Party was to the American Revolution in hindsight, Ironside wouldn’t permit breaking the law. An interesting contrast with Perry, who will bend it if he deems it necessary.

Then I discovered an intense and intriguing and chilling gem this very week. While tinkering with that Tumblr account I shared, I learned more about a film called A Cry in the Night. I was able to track it down and watch it. Made in 1956, it features Richard Anderson, Natalie Wood, Raymond Burr, and Edmund O’Brien. Richard is dating Natalie, he’s hurt and she’s kidnapped by Raymond, and Edmund is her (very Simon Oakland-ish) father, the police captain.

Raymond’s character couldn’t be more far removed from Perry and Ironside, or indeed, any other character I’ve seen him play. We all know he often played villains before Perry, but they were generally cold and hard. This kidnapper is a complete mental case.

He is often very childlike. He insists he doesn’t want to hurt anyone and becomes distraught at the idea he might have killed Richard’s character. (He didn’t, thank goodness.) He worries that his prisoner will “get him in trouble.” He’s a Mama’s Boy, still very much tied to her apron strings despite being physically and chronologically an adult. He hates that she always waits up for him to get home from work, and says he hates her, but he seems to love her and hate her all at once.

(She, by the way, idolizes him and can’t believe he would do wrong. But the police finally do convince her that he’s kidnapped someone and that she needs to help them find him in order to save him.)

He displays signs of frightening and disturbing behavior all along, swinging from that to a more gentle soul all in a split-second. He caused a small dog’s death, but insists he hadn’t meant to kill it and had just wanted to stop it from crying all night. When his prisoner expresses her horror, he becomes stuck on the idea that she will feel better about being with him if he just removes the dog’s body.

He’s a pathetic and pitiable creature. He talks of how lonely he is, and how hard it was to always be teased and tormented in school, and how he always wanted to give a girl something nice as a present. He longs for a friend, and tries to recruit Natalie’s character in that capacity. She plays along for a bit but then tries to threaten him with his gun (which is empty). He takes it as a betrayal and becomes violent, forcing her to escape with him when the police arrive.

Her father, overcome by hatred, eventually starts beating him up when he’s cornered by them and Richard’s character. She pleads for him to stop, knowing what a sick mind her abductor has. And instead of fighting back, the kidnapper cries out, “Mother! Mother, help me!” The police captain backs off, realizing he can’t bring himself to further hurt a man in such a mental state.

All in all, it’s just an incredible, chilling, and heartbreaking performance. It’s elevated my opinion of Raymond’s acting abilities even higher than before. Definitely, this is a movie that all Raymond fans need to see. He slips so completely into the character that every move, every word, is entirely believable, even knowing how different the man is from the other roles Raymond has played.

Of course, Perry Mason will likely always remain my favorite of Raymond’s characters. I love most of all to see my favorite actors play good guys, and Perry is the Raymond Burr character I have the strongest connection with. But it’s still very enjoyable to branch out and see the other characters he has portrayed.

Raymond William Stacey Burr: Never gone from the hearts of his fans.

Amory and Andy

QUICK EDIT: For the last couple of hours I've been playing with this: http://lucky-ladybugs-lovelies.tumblr.com/ I'll be posting a lot of random pictures of Perry actors, and some Perry episodic pictures, so it may be of interest to readers here. I do squeal and fangirl a bit, which I try to avoid doing here, but come for the pictures!

This is a problem I’ve been running into repeatedly while working on The Malevolent Mugging. It pertains to episodes as much or more than one fan story, and I thought I might bring some of my ponderings here.

What is Amory Fallon really like?

In The Impatient Partner we see an agonized, highly stressed, and excitable man. He suspects his partner Ned of embezzlement and arson, and worse, trying to murder him in the explosion at the plant. He thinks Ned is having an affair with his wife, Edith. And as his life spirals further out of control, he only becomes more and more upset. Being accused of Ned’s murder does not help.

Well, who wouldn’t be upset under those circumstances?

Most anyone, naturally. But Amory seems to have a knack for making molehills into mountains. Perry points out to him that he could be mistaken on just about every one of his suspicions, which are based around odd coincidences. And his brother-in-law Frank tells Paul that there has never been anything between Edith and Ned, but that it’s a suspicion that keeps building up inside of Amory, tormenting him beyond reason.

The indications are that at least the latter problem has been going on for a long time, only getting worse. We’re never told what triggered it. We only see Amory accusing Edith of the affair while in a highly wound-up state, already stressed from everything else piling on him. Seeing Ned appear on the company building’s back stairs, where Edith came to see Amory, is the last straw. In Amory’s already tortured mind, it’s logical to think that Edith is there for Ned and not him.

Maybe Amory has a bit of an inferiority complex. Maybe he’s just plum paranoid. Maybe it’s a bit of both in addition to the agonies of everything else that’s happening.

In The Malevolent Mugging, I try to explain Amory’s hysteria with the idea that he suspected Ned for a long time of doing shady things with the company, and that his suspicions about Ned and Edith only started after that, while he was already feeling a deep-rooted sense of betrayal. That is possible.

But it’s also equally possible that he suspected the affair first and only later started suspecting Ned of betraying the company. It seems to be hinted at by Frank that the suspicions of the affair have been going on for ages. That could mean it came first, especially if Amory only started suspecting Ned of shady business practices within the past month or two.

We don’t really have a clear picture one way or the other, however, making it fair game for pretty much any idea one wants to come up with.

Edith is frantic to help Amory as everything falls apart around him. She exclaims that his behavior isn’t like him at all. Does that mean that Amory is not generally a high-strung person? Or does it merely mean that it isn’t like him to ignore her and not call her, despite being a high-strung person?

There are some interesting clues in court that may further clarify the matter. Vivian Ames, the secretary to both Amory and Ned, tells in her testimony that Ned wanted her to avoid Amory if she found the file Ned wanted and came to bring it to him. Amory was hanging around the building and had tried to force his way inside Ned’s apartment, Ned said. He had been drinking and was in an ugly mood.

It could be interpreted from that, that Ned knew Amory is not usually like that. Amory rarely drinks, so explaining his especially bad mood as the product of his drinking suggests that it was the only possible explanation. Of course, he was already in a terrible mood before that, but the drinking certainly heightened it. And I wonder if Ned had seen Amory drunk before and was aware that he gets into his worst moods when that happens.

In any case, Amory’s expression when Vivian Ames tells what Ned said is interesting and possibly telling. He looks very mild, very meek, and perhaps somewhat surprised or guilty. He certainly doesn’t look like a high-strung, hysterical person. He looks very sweet and gentle.

Of course, he could be both gentle and anxious, swinging from one persona to the other as his moods change. And he might be realizing in court just how uptight and stressed some of his behavior has been and be feeling guilty over it.

Also, the episode shows us that this is a man descending into desperation and despair. Amory starts the episode much like Andy, in a suit and tie and with his hair perfectly combed. As everything starts to collapse around him and his mood grows worse and worse, we eventually see him drunk and disheveled, with a loosened tie and wild hair (which he later tries to comb at least somewhat to see Perry). By the time he knows Ned has been murdered, he’s taken off his jacket, loosened his tie and his shirt even more, and his hair is a complete mess. Clearly he was running his fingers into it. Would he behave that way if he didn’t have some high-strung tendencies to begin with?

It’s possible, especially if he’s supposed to be a man coming apart at the seams whereas before his life seemed perfectly normal and happy. Everyone reacts differently to high levels of stress; I think each defendant, when their reaction is shown, has a unique way of handling their problems. Amory could either be high-strung in general or just be falling apart in spite of previously showing few to no signs of this. Or he could just become stressed in certain intense situations, rather than being that way much of the time.

Tentatively, I would say that I kind of picture him as being prone to more mild levels of stress in general, but that it becomes intense when things are going extremely wrong. No one other than Edith seems that surprised by Amory’s mood swings, making me conclude that Edith may have been mainly talking about the way Amory treats her and not about him being stressed overall. And she also could have meant that it was unlike him to be stressed to that extreme.

(Also, something interesting and also a bit sad that I noticed. I’m not sure Perry even likes Amory that much. In general, unless I haven’t been paying attention, I thought Perry usually addressed the defendants with their proper titles—Mr., etc.—at least in court. Perry repeatedly refers to Amory as just “Fallon”, both in and out of court. I realize Perry even refers to people he knows and likes on a surname basis, especially Hamilton and Paul, but the key is, he doesn’t do it in more formal situations. And even if on occasion a usage of “Drake” might slip in court, it’s not steady.)

Then there’s a whole other issue. Amory and Andy have some traits and speech patterns that are similar. How does one successfully contrast the two and make them come across as the very different people they are? Not even Amory’s stress levels can fully help there, if we’re taking Andy’s season 8 behavior into the equation. Andy is very capable of becoming stressed as well, albeit he hasn’t ever been shown going to the extreme levels Amory can attain. But we don’t know if he couldn’t eventually get there.

I’ve been tinkering with this issue as well as trying to more fully flesh out Andy’s personality. Steve is honestly less of a mystery to me than Andy. Steve makes sense to me, while Andy, with his series of odd and contradictory behavior, is an intriguing riddle. Which is the real Andy? He’s easy-going. He’s stressed. He’s friendly. He’s stern. He visits Perry and company in connection with cases. He doesn’t associate with Perry and company in social scenes. He’s been on the force for fifteen years, a seasoned and mature man. He idolizes Lieutenant Tragg. He’s usually very sharp. Sometimes he has very cringe-worthy moments.

Putting it down on paper, so to speak, just makes it sound like Andy is a very multi-faceted person. Actually watching his behavior onscreen is what leaves me scratching my head. It’s one thing to make a character multi-faceted; they did that with Steve very well. All of his various behaviors can be ultimately traced back to traits he showed right from his first episode. But with Andy, I really get the feeling that the writers often didn’t know what to do with him, and that they pretty much had him do whatever they wanted at the time, whether or not it made sense with prior characterization. If so, I wonder if that was also a source of frustration to Wesley. Wesley was so good at playing every type of character imaginable, and he did wonders with Andy too, but it must have been exasperating if the writers couldn’t agree on what the character was like.

So rises the dilemma of exactly how to portray Andy and make him multi-faceted but not absolutely inconsistent. Since I am still confused on what is and what is not out-of-character behavior for Andy, the only way I know how to solve the issue is to try to cram in everything the writers wrote for him and try to somehow make it make sense.

It certainly isn’t easy. I tried writing a private, experimental, extended conversation between Della and Andy, just as an exercise. The thing meandered all over the place as I desperately groped for a lost and forgotten train of thought on what they should talk about and had Andy try to explain why he avoids social scenarios with Perry and company. I’m concerned over whether I was really able to give Andy his own unique voice or if it sounds too much like conversations I’ve written between Della and Hamilton.

Andy is easy to write when just keeping to the ideas the writers had about him at first: that he is an amiable but businesslike introvert, seeking to catch the criminals and not liking Perry and Paul’s law-bending, but not trying to trap them in it. Trying to peel back those layers, as well as to add what the writers threw in around season 8, makes it all very complicated. I’m up to the challenge, though. I want to portray a character befitting Wesley’s wonderful depiction, while connecting the dots in a way the writers didn’t.

Andy as I write him has all of the basic traits. His stress in season 8 is explained as coming into play when Tragg was nearly killed and Andy had to temporarily accept many of his responsibilities. He doesn’t join Perry and company in social scenarios—a particularly baffling thing in light of his friendliness—because he holds them at arm’s length, not wanting to become too close due to his concern over not becoming privy to any law-bending activities. And perhaps also because he fears it would become too awkward and straining on their friendship, were he to have to arrest one of them.

I’m not sure if I’ve strung everything together well, particularly on the latter points. But it’s visible for everyone to see that Andy never has lunch or dinner with Perry and company, whereas Steve and even Tragg often do. There has to be some reason for the omission. All I can do is draw on canonical knowledge of Andy and try to knit something out of it.

In the story, Amory muses to Edith on some of the differences between him and Andy. He feels that he would not have been able to concoct such a complex escape plan as Andy did while being held prisoner. He also thinks that if he had, the vicious dogs would have made him surrender. Amory is not a coward; he simply isn’t trained as a police officer and likely would not think of some of the same things Andy would. Amory is a businessman, which is a world likely foreign to Andy.

Amory is rarely in dangerous situations, while Andy faces them every day. Amory says in the episode that when he was nearly killed in the explosion, he stood by his car, shaking, for a few minutes. He, very likely as a common everyman, doesn’t quite know how to handle it. But he does well, all things considered. Instead of hiding away, he immediately sets out to solve the mystery, despite not having any experience in such a field.

In the story, he is held at gunpoint and, mistaken for Andy, told to get his hands in the air, “Cop”. Amory is too alarmed to spend time saying he isn’t a policeman (probably a smart decision, taking the assailant’s mood into consideration), so he puts up his hands and plans to reveal his true identity at that point—although he isn’t given the chance.

Later on, while recovering from the resulting attack, he is stressed by both that and the realization that he is still in danger. Finding out that Andy was abducted by people really wanting Amory doesn’t help. And he is only thrown further into turmoil and conflict by a surprising letter Andy was given that Ned wrote right before he was killed.

Amory never descends into the extreme stress of The Impatient Partner episode, though. Edith is standing by him, and with his faith in her long restored, he has her to lean on for support.

(. . . And who is “The Impatient Partner”, anyway? I’m not sure it’s ever clear whether they mean Amory or Ned.)

I’m planning that Amory will play an active role in the rest of the fic, helping the police and becoming involved in the various convoluted events. He and Andy have only met once so far, and they’ll have many more meetings before it’s over. I’ve tried to contrast them in every one of the scenes in which one or both of them appear. Hopefully it will be even easier to show their differences, in spite of some similarities in speech patterns, in their scenes together.

Regular police in out-of-court and out-of-town episodes

The usual formula of a Perry episode calls for both the police and the district attorney (or someone representing his office) to be present. The police make their investigation and give it to the D.A.’s office, which prosecutes.

If the case never makes it to court, it’s rare for the D.A.’s office to appear at all. Sometimes the police will, while investigating. Also unusual is if the case is being tried out-of-town but the local police put in an appearance.

Perry has done some episodes of both types, but they aren’t very common. After seeing one of them this week, I started pondering on how many out-of-court or out-of-town episodes feature the regular police. There’s a couple where the D.A.’s office even gets involved, too.

As early as the first season, the rare out-of-court idea was in place. Episode 6, The Silent Partner, was the first of that kind ever aired for the series. Tragg actually has an extensive role, appearing when Perry calls him late at night about the girl being poisoned by candy. Tragg and his loaf of Wonder Bread go see. Tragg is very involved with the remainder of the episode, at first grouchy from being disturbed when he was going home, but quickly becoming a vital part of the case.

Hamilton puts in a very brief appearance, after Perry’s client collapses. Hamilton wants to talk to her as soon as she is well enough. Perry is concerned that Hamilton won’t wait that long and threatens him with being charged with murder if he goes too soon and she dies from the stress. Hamilton flings an accusation right back at Perry, saying that Perry deliberately told his client to fire her gun again after using it in the murder. (Actually, it went off by accident, shattering a window.) The reporters are hanging around and gobble it up. (Hmm, the reporters are also a rare sight and should probably get their own post sometime.)

This is first season stuff, Hamilton and Perry at odds with each other worse than usual. I have mixed feelings about the scene; Perry has pulled some terrible law-bending (and occasionally breaking!) stunts, some of which Hamilton is aware of. Considering Perry’s antics in The Restless Redhead and The Mystified Miner, it isn’t hard to see why Hamilton suspects him of other, similar disasters (providing Hamilton learned about those or some that were similar). It’s still tiring when the accusations fly when Perry has settled down, though. But that not being the case here, and everyone still sticking closer to their book roots, the scene is on the other hand interesting to me, even exciting and fascinating, to some level. Compare it to episodes from later seasons and just see the changes in their regular interaction! Such wonderful character development.

That was Hamilton’s only screentime in The Silent Partner. Tragg was an important figure throughout, as the case was puzzled over and wound to its eventual, twisty conclusion.

The next out-of-court episode is #14, The Baited Hook. Hamilton is absent in this one. Tragg is once again prominent, but Perry does not seem to want to work with him this time around. One scene features him and Della even climbing out onto a ledge (!) to avoid Tragg finding that they’ve been poking around where they probably ought not to have been. The epilogue features Perry and Della discussing Tragg rather negatively.

Tragg has some very interesting scenes, particularly with the woman who is eventually uncovered as the murderer. She thinks highly of him, telling Perry Tragg was kind to her daughter while her daughter was being held for the murder. She wants Tragg to be the one to arrest her. Perry then calls Tragg in and she requests that he escort her downstairs by letting her take his arm. Tragg is very gentlemanly and agrees.

I had previously reported that Tragg showed interest in dating this woman, but unless such a scene exists in the uncut version of the episode (which I have not seen), or unless the person who reported it to me was just interpreting things differently than I, I cannot find any trace of such interest on Tragg’s part. I don’t think there was any romantic interest in the scene where he escorts her out after arresting her. And I didn’t think Tragg acted romantically interested when he discussed her with Perry earlier on. Ah well.

These types of episodes being highly uncommon, I’m not sure we see another for several seasons. The one I saw this week was a season 5 out-of-town episode, The Absent Artist, and since the victim was leading a double life but they thought he was killed in Hollywood, I’m not sure why it is an out-of-town one. I thought they only learned he was killed elsewhere during the court case.

Andy has a brief scene in this one, talking with Perry in his office and taking the out-of-town girlfriend of the victim to identify the body in the morgue. He does not appear for the hearing, unless a scene with him being questioned was cut.

Even though The Velvet Claws was the first Perry story written, it took them six seasons to adapt it to the screen. Perry’s encounters with a bewildering and frustrating femme fatale, which eventually lead to her accusing him of murdering her husband because she’s trying to protect the one she thinks really did it, makes for an intense plot. With Perry trapped in a dilemma, this episode never makes it to court. Andy appears in a few scenes after the murder, congenial to Perry as he investigates.

The Fifty Millionth Frenchman, in season 7, features Andy very briefly, even though the court is out of town. The defendant and the victim both live in town, it seems, and Andy has a bottle of pills that pertain to the case, found at the site of the plane crash in Van Nuys. Judging from some plot elements, it sounds like yet another reworking of some Fugitive Nurse elements! That makes the fourth time someone crashed in an airplane like this, the third time when a thermos was involved. The only thing missing is the wrong person’s body being identified first.

Having just learned of Andy’s presence, I went and looked at his part out of curiosity and for this post. I will examine the episode in full later. I’ve been curious about it for a while because of David McCallum. Meanwhile, Andy has a very nice, very friendly scene with Perry, and is very kind with the victim’s widow.

Season 8 brings us the only other out-of-court episode I can think of where both the regular police and the local D.A.’s office are involved. The Careless Kitten, which I’ve long been perplexed over due to Andy’s uptight behavior, features him and Sergeant Brice as well as Hamilton. True, Hamilton only comes very late into the venture, but his appearance is one of my most favorites. Can anyone possibly picture first season Hamilton coming to Perry’s office, sincerely concerned for him and wanting him to stay out of trouble? I could picture first season Hamilton making a façade of being friendly, as he does for the lunch in episode #8, The Crimson Kiss—but not being genuine, as he clearly is in The Careless Kitten.

I’ve been pondering over whether to include The Runaway Racer. They don’t go into a formal courtroom, it’s true, but there is a gathering, some type of inquest if I remember right. It’s very informal, though, not like the inquest scenes in The Carefree Coronary. Still, I am inclined to not include it as part of this specific list.

And I was just about to list The Misguided Model, but I realized that’s off in yet another category, since they do get to local court (albeit briefly) and Deputy D.A. Bill Vincent is present. That category would be called “Episodes in which the local police appear and the local D.A.’s office is involved, including in court, but not specifically Hamilton.” That category would include the great majority of season 4 as a whole, so I opted not to cover that territory. Both Tragg and Steve have been part of those types of episodes, while I don’t think Andy ever has. But Andy gets that other category, “Out-of-town court with regular police appearing”, which I don’t think Tragg or Steve ever has.

On a rather unrelated subject, I was watching The Hateful Hero on MeTV this morning and then laid down for a short nap. I plunged myself right into a strange, strange Perry-related dream, in which I seemed to have become friends with a harmless group of guys acting out what seemed to be an equally harmless trading card game. Later, it changed and it seemed that I had infiltrated them and that they were dangerous. I fled from there, and there seemed to be some confrontation going on between other members and later, the police. I hung out with Lieutenant Tragg, waiting for the outcome (until the dream decided to take the easy way out and have Ray Collins and I and others just watching an episode of Perry that we’d made, without showing the ending). After the plot switch, Ray and I had a nice little visit.

I woke up wishing I could have really met Ray. He, as well as his character Tragg, was very charming and very kind and gracious in the dream. I imagine Ray as really being that way, from all I’ve learned of him.

A very odd dream overall, but very nice. I wonder if I could get a fan story out of that material involving Tragg’s niece Lucy, whom I invented. It might be tricky. Usually I am not fond of it when people create their own characters to be related to established characters. It often doesn’t seem to fit or the new character seems to dominate everything. I try to avoid inventing such characters whenever possible. But Lucy somehow felt right, and I do try to keep her largely in the background. I always want the main focus to be on the canon characters.

And a closing note. The weekend posts will come on schedule, but the next two weekday posts will both be on Wednesdays.

Mystified Miner Musings

Happy Labor Day weekend, everyone!

I saw season 5’s The Mystified Miner again, in full, Friday night. I had wondered if I would feel any different about it, but I didn’t in the least. If anything, I was more irritated than before! And I discovered other things I’d forgotten that irritated me too.

The plot itself is very intense and exciting, between Kathie Browne guesting and a shoebox of money and the two mysteriously appearing and disappearing Amelia Cornings. My most favorite scene is when Perry, Paul, Tragg, Andy, and Brice find the crooks’ hideout and save the real Amelia Corning. It’s quite different from most other episodes! I figured Mrs. Corning was probably dead. It was a thrill to realize she had been kidnapped and was still alive.

This one is based on a book, and if the plot in it is anything like this episode, I stand by my opinion that Gardner really knew to write a good plot. It’s some of the details within said plot that he had some trouble with.

As previously mentioned here more than once, Perry really pulls a doozy of a stunt in this one. Actually, he pulls more than one. Having a lab man go over the car to satisfy himself as to fingerprints and blood? I don’t recall him ever going that far in any other episode. He always respected the police and stood back to let them do whatever they had to with vehicles and homes and whatnot. The only other time I remember him fooling around with a murder scene is in the very first episode, The Restless Redhead, when he fires a gun and makes two new bullet holes in the area so it looks like his client’s gun fired those harmless shots. Good grief, Counselor!

(Then there's the infamous doorbell/buzzer antics in The Curious Bride. If I remember right, that location was across from the murder scene, instead of being the murder scene. It's still an integral part of the case, though. But that time it was brought to everyone's attention, and Perry was testing a witness, so it doesn't seem quite as bad as these other times.)

And then there’s the previously complained-of stunt with the car in this Mystified Miner episode, when he lets the air out of a tire and recruits a bunch of kids to change it, so their fingerprints will be all over the thing. That was terrible!

But you know, I think what annoys me the very most about those antics is something I just realized Friday night. Perry is way better and way cooler than to have to resort to such cheap shyster stunts. Those are the kinds of things he pulled in the early books, I’m told, where he really did come across at least somewhat as a shyster lawyer. I’m not sure why Gardner wanted to do that when he was supposed to be improving the public’s image of lawyers. Well, I suppose he must have succeeded with some people, anyway, or those first books would not have taken off. And I wouldn’t be surprised if he managed to take down some people’s opinions of the police and the district attorney at the same time.

Seriously, though, television Perry’s biggest weapon is his sharp legal mind when he goes to work in the courtroom. And his best “tricks” are his elaborate plans and demonstrations in court to show what really happened. It may turn things into a sideshow, but it is very effective. I am not complaining about those demonstrations, not in the least. This is completely different.

When he proves time and time again that he doesn’t need to do things like messing around with the murder scenes to manipulate his cases in his clients’ favor, to have him suddenly do it feels very, very wrong. Television Perry graduated beyond such stereotypical stunts (as did the book Perry in later volumes). I don’t like seeing him fall back on them, especially after that point in time. Filming a book that may have included such antics is no excuse. If that was the case with the book, the television version should have deviated. (Or been filmed in season 1.)

And then we come to a third thing that annoyed me. The audience is no doubt supposed to feel that Lieutenant Tragg is totally in the wrong by questioning Susan Fisher and Della Street at the station when he realized Perry had neglected to mention certain information involving the murder and the people involved (re: Susan). But I say he’s fully in the right. What’s more, it’s not the first time he’s done it, not by a long shot. And yet Perry is absolutely furious, for one of a handful of times in the series. I don’t think he’s ever treated Tragg more coldly.

I suppose fans of the Perry and Della dynamic might point to that with glee and say that Perry is so angry because Della is being questioned. And . . . well, I have to admit that’s possible. It’s more logical than thinking that the case itself is getting him that tied up in knots. Except that Della has been questioned before. That isn’t a new scenario, either.

. . . I wonder if what Perry is really mad about is that Tragg is sitting at Della’s desk (and answering her phone)? Suddenly Perry’s exclamation of “This time you’ve gone too far!” takes on a whole new meaning. I am amused.

And it’s all supposed to look like Perry really didn’t “obscure” Susan’s fingerprints, as Tragg accuses, since he pulled that stunt with the kids and made more fingerprints instead of wiping the car clean. But he did obscure her prints. He just didn’t do it the way Tragg thought he would. And the way he did it, there’s no way for Tragg to prove anything. Which Perry knows quite well. I suppose the audience is also supposed to think Perry did a wonderful, heroic thing there. But I most strenuously disagree. It was unnecessary and cheap.

Between Perry’s gimmick with the car and calling out the lab man, Hamilton would have been thoroughly justified in bringing charges against Perry in that episode. As it is, Hamilton doesn’t know about the car gag, to my knowledge. No one really does. Tragg is most likely left absolutely bewildered (or else still suspicious of Perry but without a way to prove anything). And since Perry turns the lab evidence over to the police after Susan is arrested, they apparently have no claim on bringing charges against him for that, either. But since Perry knows very well what he’s doing, I say calling out his own lab man is tampering with evidence. The thing with the fingerprints on the car (and moving it at all!) is still what gets on my nerves the most, however.

Also, I don’t like when the judge thinks Hamilton is out of line for one of his objections. Sometimes Hamilton is, I’m willing to admit that. But this time I think he’s in the right. It’s kind of aggravating when the judges side with Perry even in those cases. I think most of the time, though, they’re a little more strict. At least, they sustain Hamilton’s objections more than some people remember, and some of them don’t like Perry’s “fishing trips”. And I remember one judge who comes down pretty hard on both of them. That is certainly interesting.

Perry is a hero to me when he doesn’t resort to stingy shyster tricks to get ahead. I love when he solves the cases and how determined he is to prove his clients innocent. And I adore the little kindnesses he shows and how often he takes on cases where the clients can’t pay much, if anything. But when he pulls things like what he did in this episode, I am most displeased.

I don’t really like the message it sends out, either, considering that Perry is the protagonist, someone to look up to, and is never called out for what he does in this episode. Sometimes other characters, Paul as well as Hamilton and the police, comment negatively on what Perry’s doing. They didn't here; they didn't know (other than what Tragg suspected and couldn't prove). Strange, that the very worst things he’s done are never discovered. Pulling stunts like that is not okay, folks. And said stunts shouldn’t be done by a good guy who’s proven himself way better than that, unless they’re going to do something fascinating and possibly character-developing with the angle and say that he got extremely desperate that time. (Sort of a “Stumbling/Fallen Hero” storyline, where the act would be treated as bad.) And it doesn’t seem like he would have become that desperate; the case wasn’t any more serious than the great majority of the rest of them.

Even if they were going to use that angle, though, it could still be construed as out-of-character behavior if it wasn’t written right. I might actually be really interested in seeing one that was written well. (Although it would be very depressing, I’m sure, even if it managed to have a hopeful ending.) I love both of the episodes where Perry has moral dilemmas. I’d rather see him make the right choice in the end, though, as he does in the existing moral dilemma episodes, instead of choosing to pull a Mystified Miner stunt.

If The Mystified Miner had been filmed for season 1, it would make a lot more sense, characterization-wise, but I’d still be just as irritated with Perry’s stunts. And I can’t say I really would have wanted it to be season 1 instead of 5, for at least one reason: Andy.

In Memoriam: Wesley Lau

This is memorial post two of two for today. If you come for the first time and see this post at the top, please scroll down to also see the first one.

Ah, Wesley Lau. I find it intriguing how I’m always lukewarm about replacements but almost always end up loving them. Wesley and his Perry characters Amory Fallon and Lieutenant Anderson have touched me deeply over the past months. Wesley managed to become my second-favorite Perry actor, along with William Talman.

Both William and Wesley were highly talented and highly underrated. They played everything from cowboys to killers (as Wesley said about himself), and everything in between! I’ve delighted to view them in the various movies and television series in which they took part.

I first had an inkling of how multi-faceted Wesley was when I saw his portrayal of the agonized, stressed Amory Fallon, a character so different from Lieutenant Anderson and yet still possessing some of the same mannerisms and speech patterns (possibly because they’re Wesley’s own). As I began to view his various guest-spots on television shows, I became more and more aware of just how incredible an actor he was.

Just as an example, I viewed the first of two Peter Gunn episodes in which he takes part. He plays Joe Scully, a male nurse and assistant to an invalid woman. The woman is mysteriously shot and Joe flees, terrified that he will be implicated. When Peter finally tracks him down, he finds a frightened, guilt-stricken, timid man, domineered by his cold-hearted wife. Apparently Joe was part of a plot to con the woman out of her money. It had worked; she named him in her will. But he is a changed man. Although he originally became her nurse with those ulterior motives in mind, he came to honestly care about her. When he found out she was going to be shot and killed, he was horrified.

Overall it’s a rather depressing episode. The woman wasn’t killed when she was shot, but for some reason, they had it mentioned in the epilogue that she later died. Peter and Lieutenant Jacoby are talking and it’s mentioned that she was never told the truth about Joe.

I was left a little uncertain as to why they seemed to be painting Joe as such a horrid person. Even if he started work with ulterior motives, it’s a beautiful thing that his attitude changed. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the episode, but perhaps the thing was that he didn’t try to stop the shooting even though he knew it was planned? If so, that is definitely horrid. But I can’t remember if he did nothing at all or if he tried to stop it.

EDIT: I saw the episode again and most emphatically confirm that Joe knew nothing of the plan at all. He wanted to divorce his wife, who really was a wretch, and marry the woman he was taking care of. That was when his wife decided to kill her, not because of jealousy, but because she wanted the money from the inheritance, which she could still get if she framed Joe for the murder. Joe knew nothing about any of it until Louise, the woman, was shot.

And I decided I had to give him and Louise a happy ending, because the whole thing was just too depressing and horrible for them. I wrote a short follow-up to the episode.

In any case, Joe is a character worlds apart from honest, upright, serious Lieutenant Anderson.

And Emil Sande is worlds apart from both of them.

A mercenary merchant based in San Antonio, Emil is smooth-talking, snarky, and absolutely doesn’t get along with Davy Crockett’s easy-going manner in The Alamo. He’s also set his sights on the lovely young Graciela (whose complete name is really a mouthful) and wants to marry her, for reasons unknown. He already seems to own her family’s property, and he tries to convince her to marry him because he knows she wants to get it back and he tells that’s the only way she’ll manage to retrieve any of it. A very self-assured sort, he tells her that she’ll eventually say Yes, even if she deliberates over it for a while. It’s practical and logical and she’ll come to that conclusion.

He’s right about that. Graciela, despite not liking him, determines to go through with the marriage. She would have, if not for a chain of events that happens that same night.

Graciela supports the rebellion and the fight for Texas independence. She takes quite a shine to Davy (as he does to her) and ends up telling him about the weapons Emil had stashed for General Santa Anna under the church. When Davy and his rebel group go to get them, Emil is waiting. While trying to keep them from taking his stockpile, he’s killed by Davy throwing Jim Bowie’s knife.

Something about the character appealed to me. Naturally Wesley’s portrayal had a lot to do with that. And I just couldn’t feel that he deserved death. I felt very sorry for him when Davy had to kill him in self-defense. I mean, these people are coming in to take his stuff. What’s Emil going to do but fight back?

There’s also some very interesting things I discovered while reading between the lines. I wonder both if he was really as bad as all that and what the extent of the relationship was between him and Graciela. When Davy wonders if she would like him to throw Emil out of her house because she doesn’t seem to like his company, she tells him that she is in no danger. Emil is apparently close enough to her to call her by her first name (albeit not by the nickname her closest friends use). And when Davy tells Graciela that Emil is dead, she says his death isn’t worth tears and yet she cries anyway (although she attributes it to feeling overwhelmed by so many things happening to her lately).

Emil is a character. Davy has to press and press to get him to pay the boy who takes Graciela’s luggage up to her house. The scene is highly amusing. Davy keeps wanting to talk to him, and Emil keeps opening the door for two seconds, doing what he thinks Davy wants, and then shutting the door again. But he doesn’t stick around long enough, so Davy keeps knocking and the cycle repeats. Emil is finally so annoyed that he answers the door with his gun.

I was so fascinated by the character and determined to refuse to accept his death that I immediately started a project of connected scenes or vignettes, exploring the idea of what if he was not dead, but badly injured, and he survived. And what if he slowly began to have a change of heart as he was nursed back to health?

It’s a very interesting project. Mostly it consists of soliloquies and dialogues involving Emil and Graciela, with the occasional action-oriented scene. Emil is a lot of fun to write. His snarky and smooth speech patterns are unique and amusing. And without too many scenes in the movie to go on for other personality elements, I borrowed traits from some of Wesley’s other characters for other scenes. He is confused and frustrated over his changing attitudes and conflicted feelings, and any stressed scenes are based on Amory Fallon’s behavior. Whenever a bit of a long-buried kind side surfaces, that is also based on either Amory or Andy. Then, at other times, I gather all the various knowledge I have about any of Wesley’s characters that would fit and try to create something a little bit different and new. I definitely want Emil to sound like one of Wesley’s characters, as well he should.

I’d really like to mention his character Staff Meeker in the Law of the Plainsman episode Stella, but this post is getting quite long. Staff is quite adorable, though. He does participate in a bank robbery, but he doesn’t want to and he doesn’t hurt anyone. He seems very timid and shy and gentle. He only became involved in the robbery because his tough wife wanted to and she wanted the money. His wife, Stella, and her brothers were the ones calling the shots.

Gah, Stella treats him cruel. When they’re arguing about the robbery and the money and how reluctant he is to do anything about it (one brother says they had to force him just to strap on a gun), he finally exclaims, “Why did you marry me?!” Stella replies that she was lonely and he was there and asked her. And she says he’s nothing. Oh goodness, he looks so crushed. He says in despair, “I love you!”

Stella finally softens after talking with the show’s awesome main character, an Apache federal marshal. When the brothers come back after recovering the money which was hidden, they corner the marshal and are treating him cruel. Then they want Stella to shoot him. Staff protests, and between him and the marshal, Stella is finally convinced to side with them and not with her brothers. Staff is hurt in a fight with one of the brothers, but is alright. The marshal promises to testify in his and Stella’s behalf at their trial.

We never really do see if Stella treats Staff any better, though. I think I ought to write a little scene of them talking in jail.

I could go on for pages if I tried to discuss all of Wesley’s variously fascinating characters. I am also highly intrigued by his character Carl Armory from the Bonanza episode Her Brother’s Keeper. I’m writing a vignette series about him and his sister, too. And I even wrote a silly addendum to an equally silly episode of a show called The Law and Mr. Jones. I was most unsatisfied with the episode’s conclusion and I endeavored to “fix” it in a way that would please me.

I imagine it’s very unnatural to become so fascinated by minor and/or oneshot characters. And yet on the other hand, the production crew often has specific people in mind for the parts because they want them to attract the audience’s attention. I like to think it’s a tribute to them, the scriptwriters, and of course the actors, when a character is portrayed so well that someone is intrigued and wants there to be more of that character. That’s how some oneshot characters ended up recurring or even becoming cast regulars, after all.

I have been considering off and on making some websites for specific Perry actors as Crystal and I have done for Simon Oakland. I would like to start with Wesley, since I feel he sometimes is lost in the shuffle when he wasn’t one of the original Core Five cast members. Hardly anything is actually known about Wesley, either, and whether that’s because his family honestly wants it that way or because information has simply been lost to time, we have no idea. But if it’s the latter, then I say it’s high-time that information is found and Wesley is properly honored as one of the great character actors of the Golden Age of Television.

Wesley Albert Lau: Passed away August 30^th, 1984. Still sorely missed and well-loved.

In Memoriam: William Talman

This is memorial post one of two for today. If anyone happens to stumble in when this post is at the top, please check back to find the other one too. This one is going up first because William left us first.

I’ve been pondering on what to write about for both of these memorial posts. I chat a lot about the wonderful characters the actors have brought to life, both on Perry and elsewhere, but I like to discuss other aspects too, when possible. And for William Talman especially, I’ve talked at length about many of his movie and television characters aside from Hamilton.

One I haven’t mentioned is his very last role, in an episode of The Invaders. The series involves aliens who have come to Earth and assumed human identities. William plays one of the aliens. And he doesn’t have near enough screen time, to my way of thinking.

The character is a bad fellow; in the first minutes alone he and another alien kill a guy in a truck and take it over. He’s a mysterious figure until his final scene, where it’s revealed that he took on the name and occupation of a colonel.

One very unique thing about his role is that the audience does not hear him speak until that last scene. Until he was shown talking in a phone booth (his words not penetrating the glass), I wondered if he spoke at all or if the character could speak.

Alas, he ends up killed during a battle. It all comes full-circle; his earliest movie roles were bad guys, and they all seemed to get killed off. But it’s both sad and eerie that his final role also involves the character dying. The episode aired in 1967. William died August 30^th, 1968.

Several of his good guy characters haven’t survived the movies or television series, either. As previously mentioned, his very honest and upright characters in both The Racket and One Minute to Zero were killed, as was an outlaw trying to turn his life around in an episode of Tales of Wells Fargo.

I don’t like seeing characters played by my favorite actors dying, particularly when they’re wonderful characters. Sometimes I rebel and try to “fix” it in fan stories so they don’t die. I have a short and completed story for The Racket where Officer Johnson lives and was only said to be dead to the murderer so he or someone else couldn’t come back and finish the job. And I have been working off and on with stories for One Minute to Zero and the Tales of Wells Fargo episode. The latter I never did get very far into, but I established the character as being badly wounded but alive.

The One Minute to Zero piece, by contrast, I got farther into but still have not finished. I had to do a couple of things I’d never done before in order to get Colonel John Parker to live as well as to have the other story elements I wanted. I brought things to the end of the Korean War with everyone still thinking him dead, and the main character, Colonel Steve Janowski, is still haunted by that death, which he witnessed in the film. In actuality Colonel Parker was barely alive but taken with the rest of the dead. Somehow along the way he ended up in a Korean hospital (something I still need to better explain), and although he physically recovered, he remained in a state of catatonic shock until the female lead, Linda Day, stumbled across him. Seeing her jerked him back to awareness. I still need to write about his wife and children learning he’s alive.

Sometimes I wonder what William and the other actors whose characters I do this with would think if they’re aware that I’ve been tinkering with some of their characters’ deaths like this. I wonder if they wouldn’t like it, feeling like the deaths were the way things were supposed to be, or if they’d be more entertained and amused than anything else.

As much as I don’t want to accept the Perry reunion movies as canon, I do appreciate that nothing was said in the films about the absent characters being dead. (I have even been told that Paul was never actually said to be dead.) It would make me even less likely to want to so much as see the films if Hamilton and Tragg and Andy and Paul were all declared as departed from this life. The beloved Perry characters, as far as I’m concerned, are immortal and will forever live in the fans’ imaginations solving cases together.

There’s a lovely poem circulating among the Sherlock Holmes fans, the gist of it being that for the fans, it’s always 1895 and Holmes and Watson are together, solving crimes, just as it should be. That’s quite how I feel about the Perry characters, minus the idea of a date in the past. To me they are not only immortal but adaptable, and can just as easily solve crimes in the present day.

Of course, for me the reason why the characters are so beloved is in a large part due to the actors who played them. William’s Hamilton is the perfect depiction of the character, so three-dimensional and balanced beyond what he was in the books. He definitely became identified with the character, so much so that even while the show was originally on, people started addressing him as “Burger.”

I imagine that happens a lot with actors who play very iconic and beloved characters. I watched a short interview a couple of weeks ago where Richard Anderson was addressed as “Mr. Goldman” and he responded without a thought.

I know that William obviously connected with his character Hamilton very deeply; he even made that comment once that he knew more about Hamilton than Gardner did. Which I can believe; Gardner never seemed too interested in exploring Hamilton’s character, since he left him so one-dimensional.

And William had a lovely sense of humor. In all the articles I’ve read about him, he took a very good attitude towards life and the oddities found therein. And he was a very good sport about Hamilton always losing. He pretty much had to be, once he realized Gardner’s formula would never be changed. In one article he made an amusing remark about considering the vast losing streak a thing of pride due to its immense length. It certainly was quite a record.

I hope that wherever William and the other departed Perry actors are, they are happy about the continuing popularity and remembrance of the show and their characters. I am convinced that such interest will continue to endure, just as interest in well-written novels from the 18^th century and talented actors and actresses from the beginning of the film era has endured.

William certainly deserves a place among the talented actors. I have seen him play cold psychopaths, upright federal marshals, bitter and troubled Cavalry officers, determined district attorneys, and many other incredible characters each so varied and different from all the rest. It is always a delight to see him handle a part; he always knew just what it needed.

William Whitney Talman, Jr.: Passed away August 30^th, 1968. Gone but never forgotten; always remembered and loved.

Notable Guest-Stars: Simon Oakland

It’s strange to think about, but tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of this blog’s opening post. And it won’t be long before we hit the 100 posts mark. Since Simon Oakland is a wonderful guest-star on Perry, and rather directly responsible for this blog even existing, I decided it was high-time to give Simon his own tribute post.

Simon was born August 28^th, 1915, the same year William Talman was born. Information about him is hard to come by; Crystal and I have collected pretty much all that we could gather on our website (which will be getting updated this week along with our Simon blog): http://sites.google.com/site/unofficialsimonoaklandtribute/home I wrote the biography, piecing together bits that we’d found, and we both contributed the articles we discovered.

Simon appeared on stage before moving to movies and television, but we sadly have only very scant information on that point in his life. It’s also been said that he was a violinist. I wish some footage existed of that!

Concerning movies and television, he is often remembered for playing the villains. However, while he did take on many roles of that type, he also played many protagonists and misunderstood characters as well. Even many of the villains are so three-dimensional, they still have good in them. One of the articles we found outright mentions that Simon approached his characters wanting to make them three-dimensional and human. He certainly succeeded! He could play any part to perfection, making the viewers really believe in the character.

On Perry Simon appeared twice, once as a bad guy, once as a good guy, and both times ending up the murder victim. Poor characters.

His first appearance was in season 3’s The Frantic Flyer, which happened to be arguably the first time I ever saw Simon anywhere. His character Howard Walters was certainly a wretched sort; as if it wasn’t bad enough that he arranged for the robbery of the safe at the company where he worked as the trusted general manager, he was having an affair with his accomplice and killed the company president’s son so there would be a body discovered and hopefully identified as his when his burned plane was found.

It was such a tangled web all around. His accomplice was a wicked little thing too. She was carrying on with someone else, who planned with her to kill Howard and take the money for themselves. And the guy who ended up being the murderer was the man who had nursed Howard to health when he broke his leg parachuting from the plane. He wanted the money.

In spite of everything, I did feel sorry for Howard. He honestly loved that Janice witch and would have been crushed to learn that she had planned to betray him. But on the other hand, I suppose he really got what he deserved. He definitely was a horrid person, especially on the matter of murdering the president’s ne’er-do-well son. (Whose name, by the way, was Andy Taylor, something that amuses this Andy Griffith Show fan every time.)

I also felt really sorry for Howard’s poor wife in the mess. She honestly loved him and kept trying in vain to see that their marriage stayed alive. But she was brushed off for whatever reason. We weren’t told why the marriage went sour, and in the end, I imagine it’s not a critical detail. But I hope she found someone decent after the episode’s events.

Simon returned in season 4 for The Misguided Missile, which, of course, I’ve talked of several times. Simon played Captain Michael Caldwell, who really can’t be characterized as a bad guy just because he has a grudge against Perry’s friend Major Jerry Reynolds. We don’t even know if it wasn’t at least somewhat justified. He could have been telling the truth about never receiving Jerry’s order, just as Jerry could be telling the truth about sending it. If no one believed Caldwell, including Jerry (who may or may not have been a friend), that would have definitely been enough to make him bitter and wonder if Jerry was really the good man he was praised up as being. When other characters talk about their last encounters with him, they mention how he raved about having the proof that Jerry was not a great hero. I had the feeling that he honestly believed what he said, rather than just pretending to think Jerry was awful in order to cover his own irresponsibility.

By all appearances, Caldwell is a serious and efficient man just trying to do his job—namely, investigating the failed launch of the titular object. He even tells one of the parties involved that his job isn’t to hurt people but to get at the truth—no matter who gets hurt when the truth comes out. That sounds quite similar to what Perry tells his clients and their families and friends.

Caldwell is murdered because he’s too close to the truth. And because, according to the lunatic Dan Morgan, Caldwell “wouldn’t let the missile fly.” The launch for the next one would have been stopped once Caldwell’s investigatory findings about Morgan’s criminal activities became known. And so Morgan murders him and then does the very stupid thing of leaving the body right on the missile range, which nearly stops the launch in the morning anyway.

Caldwell is one of the very few characters murdered for trying to be honest and upright.

On the one hand I wish we’d been told more about Caldwell and Jerry’s past. On the other, perhaps I prefer it the way it was left, so extremely ambiguous and without proclaiming Caldwell a liar. That opens the door for fan story explorations, as I did with both The Case of the Captain’s Ghost and the unrelated The Case of the Spectral Stalker.

It was my desire to look up Simon’s guest-spots last year that led to a rekindling of my interest in Perry—this time a much stronger interest than even before, although the seeds were certainly planted those years earlier. And at least partially from my labor of love on the Simon website and blog, the idea for a Perry blog emerged.

We lost Simon on August 29^th, 1983, another wonderful man and excellent actor gone far too soon. We salute you, Simon. You and your amazing characters are still remembered and loved.