23 Astonishing Perry Mason Facts

On September 21, 1957, Perry Mason appeared for the first time on television. The crime-fighting attorney had already solved 51 cases in the pages of Erle Stanley Gardner’s novels and made his debut on movie screens and the radio. Portrayed by Raymond Burr, the legal swashbuckler used dramatic cross-examinations, legal strategies, and surprise witnesses to set the standard for legal dramas for decades.

The Original Series

Photo of lawyer and secretary looking at bullets. — Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) and Della Street (Barbara Hale)

Perry Mason ran for nine seasons, chalking up 271 episodes.
The series had an incredible number of guest stars who went on to become famous actors, including Robert Redford, Dick Clark, Burt Reynolds, Leonard Nimoy, George Takei, Barbara Eden, Marion Ross, Angie Dickinson, James Cobern, and Ryan O’Neal.
The Case of the Substitute Attorneys: occasionally, Raymond Burr was sidelined, usually for medical reasons. When this happened, producers got other high-powered actors to represent Perry’s clients, for example, Bette Davis, Walter Pidgeon, Hugh O’Brian, Michael Rennie, and Mike Connors.
The show got multiple awards and nominations. Raymond Burr was awarded 3 Emmys for playing Perry Mason. Barbara Hale was awarded 2 Emmys for playing Della Street, Mason’s secretary. William Hopper was nominated for an Emmy for playing Private Detective Paul Drake.
Only one episode was broadcast in color. The Case Of The Twice Told Twist was broadcast on CBS in color on February 27, 1966, about 2/3 of the way through season nine.
The show ran in syndication (re-runs) for more than 40 years.

Perry Mason Returns

In 1985, NBC began a series of 30 made-for-TV Perry Mason movies. These sequels to the CBS TV series ran for ten years.
In the made-for-tv movies, William Katt, who played Paul Drake, Jr., was Barbara Hale’s son. He is best known for his lead role in the ‘The Greatest American Hero’ (1981-83) on ABC.
Four TV films were made after Burr’s death in 1993 and subtitled A Perry Mason Mystery. These starred Paul Sorvino and Hal Holbrook, who were filling in for the famous lawyer. Mason assigned them cases or duties over the phone, and the audience only heard their side of the conversation.
Also in 1985, Burr was offered a chance to reprise his role as Steve Martin in the 1956 film Godzilla: King of the Monsters! in a new film, Godzilla 1985. In the 1956 movie, producers took the original Japanese film and made a new version for American audiences. It dubbed most of the Japanese dialogue into English and spliced Burr into the movie by having him interact with Japanese-American body doubles. It worked at the time, but it seems hilariously fake if you watch it today. An animated Raymond Burr lookalike character is also featured in the Pinky and the Brain cartoon Tokyo Grows.
Robert Downey Jr. was interested in starring in a Perry Mason movie in 2011, and he and his wife, Susan Downey, produced HBO’s Perry Mason 2020 series, which ran for two seasons. The series depicts a younger Mason working as a private detective and is far grittier than the network TV shows.

Photo of a man and woman standing in a courtroom. — Movie star Bette Davis as attorney Constant Doyle in “The case of Constant Doyle”

Before the TV Shows, There Were Hollywood Movies

Warner Brothers made six Perry Mason movies from 1934-1937. Warren William starred in the first four films: The Case of the Howling Dog, Curious Bride, Lucky Legs, and Velvet Claws. Ricardo Cortez did the fifth film, The Case of the Black Cat. Author Gardner vehemently objected to casting Cortez as Mason. The studio replaced him with Donald Woods for the last movie, The Case of the Stuttering Bishop. Having learned a valuable lesson from the films, Gardner insisted on creative control for the TV series.

Before the Movies, There Was the Radio Show

How successful was the 1943-1955 radio show? It had more than 3,000 episodes. Three different actors voiced Mason throughout the show. At the end of its run, the series was adapted into The Edge of Night, which ran on television for an additional 30 years.

It All Started with the Books

There are 82 full-length Perry Mason novels penned by Gardner. All of them begin with The Case of the (TCOT). The 1st novel was (TCOT) Velvet Claws. The last novel was (TCOT) Postponed Murder. Here are my favorite Perry Mason titles. Selection is based strictly on the titles; I have not read the books.

The Case of the Counterfeit Eye (1935)

The Case of the Shoplifter’s Shoe (1938)

The Case of the Borrowed Brunette (1946)

The Case of the Fan Dancer’s Horse (1947)

The Case of the Runaway Corpse (1954)

The Case of the Amorous Aunt (1963)

Movie poster showing a man and a woman examining a dead body. — Movie poster for The Case of the Stuttering Bishop staring Ann Dvorak and Donald Woods.

Erle Stanley Gardner got thrown out of law school for boxing. He attended law school at Valparaiso University in Indiana for about a month. The school had no athletic facilities, and Gardner was keen on keeping up his boxing skills, so he arranged sparring matches, some of which happened in his dorm room. When a school official tried to eject one of Gardner’s sparring partners, things got out of hand, and Gardner ended up studying law at law offices in California.
Gardner became a lawyer by passing the bar exam without a law degree. At that time, the only qualification was passing the exam.
He was a one-man fiction factory. In one month, he turned out 224,000 words while still working two days a week at his law practice, according to a 1967 article in the Atlantic. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Gardner wrote nearly 100 detective and mystery novels that sold more than a million copies each, making him the best-selling American writer of his time.
He made one appearance on the original series as Judge Number 2 in the last episode, The Case of the Final Fade-Out.
Gardner wrote under 11 pen names, 12 if you count the book he wrote as Della Street. He wrote under A. A. Fair, Carl Franklin Ruth, Carleton Kendrake, Charles M. Green, Charles J. Kenny, Edward Leaming, Grant Holiday, Kyle Corning, Les Tillray, Robert Parr, Stephen Caldwell, and once as Perry Mason character Della Street.
Gardner launched his version of The Innocence Project called the Court of Last Resort. He wrote a book about it in 1952, earning him an Edgar Award for Best Nonfiction Crime Book. It started as a monthly feature in Argosy magazine and later became a dramatized court TV show on NBC.

Will the Real Perry Mason Please Stand Up?

Was Perry Mason based on a real person? Well, it depends on who you ask.

Some say that Gardner based the character on himself.
Others claim Mason is based on Earle Rogers, who tried 77 murder cases and lost only three. He is said to have astonished medical experts on the witness stand with his technical questions. Rogers once represented Clarence Darrow in a bribery case.
Whether Mason is based on an actual person or not, his name is. It appears that Gardner lifted the name from Perry Mason & Co. of Boston, MA, which published The Youth’s Companion, a magazine he had read as a young man. Was that legal?

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