Perry Mason Episodes

The modern scourge of brain rot claims a popular figure

He was not what first comes to mind at the mention of the description "movie star". Of less than average stature, Peter Falk was not what you would call handsome; he could see out of only one eye (the other was removed when he was three years old because of cancer) and you couldn't describe his physical movements as elegant. But he enjoyed a long and extraordinarily successful career on the stage, in movies and especially, on television. When I heard last week of his death at the age of 83 I reacted with two quite opposite feelings.

First, the positive one. I discovered Peter Falk in 1963, the year television began in Jamaica. I used to write copy, edit film and do interviews for the news broadcasts, but like everybody else I also watched with interest the entertainment programmes carried on the brand-new Jamaica Broadcasting Corporation. One of the early shows was called The Trials of O'Brien, in which Falk played a rumpled, unconventional lawyer.

Daniel O'Brien had a strained relationship with his wife, who was always on the verge of leaving him, and whenever she seemed ready to relent and give him another chance, he did something to upset the whole thing all over again. That was because his lifestyle was somewhat unconventional and because he became so focused on whatever case he was working on. He somehow managed to rise above his self-inflicted setbacks every time and win his cases - not by Perry Mason-type courtroom dramatics, but by painstaking investigation, by deduction and sometimes by accidental good fortune.

To the casual onlooker, Falk's character was a bumbling oaf whose habits annoyed many of the people with whom he came into contact. They looked down on him, reacted with condescension and, to their ultimate chagrin, underestimated him. It was perhaps coincidental, but O'Brien bore an uncanny resemblance to the character for which Falk was to become widely known a decade or so later.

The Trials of O'Brien ran for only 22 episodes, but the new role, Lieutenant Columbo, ran on the NBC and ABC networks from 1971 to 2003. Unlike the usual hour-long TV show, the Columbo programme ran as a movie-length feature of 90 or 120 minutes. Columbo, whose first name we never heard, was, like O'Brien, totally unconcerned about his appearance. He wore a scruffy old raincoat, drove a temperamental old Peugeot and was sometimes accompanied by a sleepy-head basset hound. He referred often to his wife, whom we never saw, and constantly chomped on a cigar butt which never managed to stay lit.

INTERMITTENT SIGNALS: Perry Mason And The Case For Same-Sex Marriage

Classic episodes of Perry Mason have been irresistible to me for about 25 years now, since high school.  Its predictability was part of its appeal, strangely enough.  Episode after episode, the famed Los Angeles attorney, his secretary, Della Street, and private eye Paul Drake would come to the aid of someone falsely accused of murder.  Forty-five minutes' worth of cool cars, Mad Men wardrobes and fresh-off-the-bus-from-Kansas starlets later, Mason would extract the truth from the real culprit. Offscreen, Burr's philanthropy and humanitarianism was impressive, and well-known.  His beneficiaries included countless law students and numerous needy children.  He had the strongest of work ethics, and was reportedly widely admired by Perry Mason's cast and crew.  Barbara Hale (Ms. Street), for one, remained loyal to Burr until his death. I, like most others, did not learn of this fact until years after Burr died in 1993, at age 76.  According to various articles and two biographies, the very private actor fabricated some of his personal life, including possibly more than one marriage.   In the innuendo-only Forties, Fifties and Sixties, the idea of an openly gay celebrity was obviously unthinkable; you couldn't even get Liberace to address the subject.   And for good reason.   Twenty-five years after the public learned of Rock Hudson's preferences, the revelation of an actor's homosexuality still prompts a scandal of minor or major proportions... somehow. I grew up in the Seventies and Eighties, when the terms "homo" and "faggot" were almost as common in school hallways and playgrounds as "dork" or "loser."   That's a difficult environment to forget, especially with my Don Rickles - inspired sense of humor.  Though I've never been on a mission to prove my heterosexuality, you've never seen me at a gay bar or on the sidelines at a Gay Pride parade, either.  You still won't, even though I have gay and lesbian friends... my oldest friend is gay.   Though some of my favorite actors and musicians are gay or lesbian, I will still avert my eyes from two men kissing on television, or in public.  I can't help that; human sexuality has been and will always be a tricky, often unfathomable subject.  It certainly makes for some interesting contradictions.

Perry Mason

Encyclopedia of television

Raymond Burr, a film, radio, and television biography

Crime time - prime time - global time, intercultural studies in crime serials

The detective in American fiction, film, and television