99 Fun Facts About Perry Mason

Besides being an author, what was the creator of Perry Mason by profession?

A lawyer. In one case he had Chinese shopkeepers swap places before the police came to arrest them, then used the mix-ups to discredit the officers' identifications in court.

In legal slang, a trial's 'Perry Mason moment' is a dramatic what?

Revelation. Mason's witnesses cracked on the stand almost weekly, but real trials rarely see such a surprise, because each side must show the other its evidence before the trial.

Earl Rogers, the real-life model for Perry Mason, defended which famous attorney on a 1912 jury-bribery charge?

Clarence Darrow. America's most famous defender was himself accused of trying to bribe jurors in a union bombing case, and Rogers won his acquittal even though the pair quarrelled over tactics.

Perry Mason shares his name with the publisher of which magazine Gardner read as a boy?

Youth's Companion. Gardner is said to have borrowed the name from its publisher, Perry Mason and Company, and in 1892 the magazine launched the Pledge of Allegiance in its drive to fly a flag over every school.

What was the first Perry Mason novel, published in 1933?

The Case of the Velvet Claws. Della warns on page one that the new client looks like a phoney, and with the book's sale Gardner gave up his day job to write full time.

In which city does Perry Mason practise law in Gardner's novels and the CBS series?

Los Angeles. HBO's 2020 series kept the city but moved the story back to the early 1930s, the Depression years in which Gardner's first Mason novels appeared.

In which 1935 novel does Mason's client own a bloodshot glass prosthesis?

The Case of the Counterfeit Eye. The client keeps a set of glass eyes, one bloodshot for mornings after, and the book's Mason bends the law to save him in ways his scrupulous TV self never would.

How did Gardner produce most of his Perry Mason novels?

Dictation. He called the operation his fiction factory, talking out chapters on long trips into the desert while a pool of secretaries turned them into manuscripts.

What yearly word quota did Gardner set himself while writing for pulp magazines?

1,200,000 words. That is almost 3,300 words for every day of the year, and he wrote them at night after putting in a full day at his regular job.

Gardner founded which 1940s organisation to help people imprisoned unfairly?

The Court of Last Resort. It began in 1948 as a magazine column in which Gardner and a panel of detectives and forensic experts reopened the cases of prisoners who swore they were innocent.

Under which pseudonym did Gardner publish many of his non-Mason novels?

A. A. Fair. The name went on his Cool and Lam detective novels, and in 1950 he even signed a magazine story as his own character Della Street.

Gardner spent his last three decades on a ranch in which Southern California town?

Temecula. His Rancho del Paisano there gave its name to Paisano Productions, the company he set up so that he, not a studio, would control Perry Mason on television.

Which future star played a corpse in a 1935 Perry Mason film?

Errol Flynn. In The Case of the Curious Bride the future Robin Hood is seen only as a murder victim and in a brief flashback, without a single line to speak.

In the 1936 film of the first novel, what does Mason do that never happens in the books?

Marries Della Street. The film opens with their wedding and a murder case cuts the honeymoon short, whereas in Gardner's novels she turns down every proposal he makes.

Gardner sold Perry Mason's radio rights to which soap-making giant, which ran it as a daytime serial?

Procter & Gamble. Daytime serials backed by soap makers are why the genre is called soap opera, and this one ran five days a week for twelve years.

The Perry Mason radio serial became which long-running TV soap after Gardner withheld his name?

The Edge of Night. Denied Gardner's blessing, the radio show's writer rebuilt it around a thinly veiled Mason called Mike Karr, played by John Larkin, the voice of Perry on radio.

In 1965 CBS moved Perry Mason to Sundays against which hit western?

Bonanza. Mason had out-rated the Cartwrights head-to-head until their network moved them in 1961, but this time the top-rated western won, and CBS cancelled Mason after that season.

Raymond Burr originally read for which role before landing the part of Perry Mason?

Hamilton Burger. The producer first saw Burr as the district attorney, but he bargained for a test as Mason too, and Gardner leapt up in the screening room shouting, "That's Perry Mason!"

Perry Mason's producer admired Raymond Burr's courtroom turn in which 1951 film?

A Place in the Sun. His limping prosecutor, who hounds Montgomery Clift's character in court, earned Burr his Mason screen test, though he was told to lose weight before taking it.

Who played Della Street opposite Raymond Burr?

Barbara Hale. She was weighing retirement to raise her three children when the part came up, said yes on learning her old friend Burr would star, and went on playing Della until 1995.

When surgery kept Raymond Burr off the Perry Mason set, which film legend carried an episode as a guest attorney?

Bette Davis. She was the first of four guest stars who each carried an episode as an attorney friend of Mason's, with Burr filming only a few scenes before his operation.

TV's Paul Drake was the son of which famous Hollywood gossip columnist?

Hedda Hopper. William Hopper left films after war service and sold cars for eight years, and when director William Wellman coaxed him back he suspected his mother had arranged the offer.

Which actor played Perry Mason's perpetually losing rival, the district attorney, in the CBS series?

William Talman. Dying of lung cancer in 1968, the heavy smoker filmed a television appeal urging viewers to quit, and TV's most famous loser closed it with the words "Don't be a loser."

Which Citizen Kane actor played homicide's Lieutenant Tragg in the CBS Perry Mason series?

Ray Collins. When emphysema forced him off the show in 1964, the producers kept his name in the opening credits for another season and a half, knowing he still watched every week.

In Perry Mason's final episode in 1966, which famous TV host is unmasked as the killer?

Dick Clark. His character confesses in court, in a finale set on a TV soundstage so that the show's real crew could appear on camera one last time.

What is the title of Fred Steiner's famous Perry Mason theme?

Park Avenue Beat. Steiner said he wanted music that projected two sides of Mason at once, his suave sophistication and the underlying toughness that let him go head-to-head with criminals.

Which band covered the Perry Mason theme on their 1980 album Made in America?

The Blues Brothers. On the album the theme follows Randy Newman's "Guilty" and runs into "Riot in Cell Block No. 9", so the three tracks play out a crime, a trial and a jail sentence.

Asked by a fan why Mason won every case, what did Burr reply she only saw?

The cases he tried on Saturday. The joke rested on the schedule: CBS showed Perry Mason on Saturday evenings for its first five seasons, before moving it to Thursdays in 1962.

What set the 1966 Perry Mason episode The Case of the Twice-Told Twist apart from the other 270?

It was filmed in colour. CBS chief William Paley ordered the test to see how a tenth season might look, then cancelled the series anyway.

In the 1966 finale of Perry Mason, creator Erle Stanley Gardner made his acting debut as what?

A judge. He presides over Mason's last trial, and he is not the only insider on screen: the show's producer has a cameo and members of its crew play the witnesses.

Which cartoon spoofed Perry Mason as 'Perry Masonry'?

The Flintstones. In a 1963 episode the Rubbles go to court to adopt Bamm-Bamm and find the unbeatable Perry Masonry arguing for the other side.

In 1960 Perry Mason won the first Silver Gavel Award for TV drama from which body?

The American Bar Association. It later became Mason's publisher as well: in 2015 its Ankerwycke imprint began bringing Gardner's Perry Mason novels back into print.

Which future Supreme Court justice said Perry Mason inspired her to become a prosecutor?

Sonia Sotomayor. She told senators at her 2009 confirmation hearing that the show ignited her passion, and recalled the scene in which the beaten prosecutor says his job is done when justice is served.

Perry Mason star Raymond Burr built his career in Hollywood, but in which country was he born?

Canada. He was born in New Westminster, British Columbia, and became a Californian only at six, when his parents split up and his American mother took the children to Vallejo.

Before Perry Mason, Burr played the suspected murderer in which Alfred Hitchcock film?

Rear Window. Burr spent a decade playing hoodlums and killers, here the neighbour James Stewart spies on, before television recast him as the man who defends the accused.

After Perry Mason, Burr starred as a wheelchair-using detective in which long-running series?

Ironside. Burr had complained of feeling trapped by Mason's workload, yet barely a year after it ended he signed on for another weekly series, which kept him busy until 1975.

Away from the Perry Mason set, Raymond Burr was a devoted grower and breeder of which flowers?

Orchids. He bred well over a thousand new varieties, and by the end of the series was telling reporters he would rather be gardening than playing Mason.

Which heavy metal singer released a 1995 single called 'Perry Mason'?

Ozzy Osbourne. It was the first single from Ozzmosis, the comeback album that ended the retirement he had announced four years earlier, with Rick Wakeman of Yes on keyboards.

Before Perry Mason, Raymond Burr was edited into the American version of which Japanese monster movie?

Godzilla. His scenes were shot separately and spliced into the Japanese film, so he and the monster never share a frame, and he came back for a sequel thirty years later.

Perry Mason ran on CBS, but which rival network aired the 1985 comeback movie Perry Mason Returns?

NBC. Burr's comeback, nearly twenty years on, was one of the highest-rated TV movies of its season, and the one-off reunion grew into a run of films that lasted a decade.

Which actor, son of the Della Street actress, played Paul Drake Jr. in the Perry Mason TV movies?

William Katt. Acting opposite his real mother was nothing new: three years earlier she had played his character's mother on his own series, The Greatest American Hero.

Who plays Perry Mason in the HBO series that premiered in June 2020?

Matthew Rhys. Robert Downey Jr. had planned to play the part himself, and stayed on as executive producer when the Welsh actor took over.

In the HBO series, what is Perry Mason's job when the story begins?

Private investigator. When his employer dies mid-case, Della forges proof that Mason was the man's apprentice, and a friendly deputy district attorney helps him cheat his way through the bar exam.

Which actor plays Della Street in the HBO Perry Mason?

Juliet Rylance. Her Della works not for Mason but for the attorney who employs him, has no patience for his moping, and has to hide her relationship with a woman.

In the HBO series, Paul Drake is introduced as what?

A beat cop. Chris Chalk plays him as a Black patrolman whose authority lasts only until a white officer shows up, a long way from the detective-agency owner of Gardner's books.

Who plays attorney E.B. Jonathan in HBO's Perry Mason?

John Lithgow. His struggling E.B. dies midway through the first season, and that death is what forces Mason to take over the defence himself.

Which actor played radio preacher Sister Alice McKeegan in season one of HBO's series?

Tatiana Maslany. Her radio evangelist leads a church with a cult following and promises its congregation a miracle: she will raise a murdered baby from the dead.

Perry Mason is remembered for swaying juries, but in which proceeding does he usually clear his CBS clients?

A preliminary hearing. The reason was mostly money: with no jury box to fill, the producers saved the cost of twelve extras in nearly every episode.

Rich from Perry Mason, Raymond Burr bought his own island in which South Pacific nation?

Fiji. He bought the island of Naitauba while Mason was still on the air and planned to retire there, but he never did, and in the end he sold it in 1983.

Which Marvel film star was originally cast as HBO's Perry Mason before staying on only as an executive producer?

Robert Downey Jr. withdrew in 2018 because of his film schedule, though his company Team Downey went on producing the series.

Shortly before he died, the actor who played Perry Mason's rival prosecutor filmed a pioneering TV plea against what?

Smoking had given him lung cancer, and he asked that his American Cancer Society spot, the first by a Hollywood actor, be shown only after his death.

Which 1950s sitcom's rerun success persuaded Perry Mason's producer to shoot on film instead of broadcasting live?

I Love Lucy had shown what filmed repeats were worth, so the producer turned down the network's wish for a live weekly hour.

Later episodes of CBS's Perry Mason were filmed at Hollywood studios once owned by which silent film star?

Charlie Chaplin's former lot hosted the later seasons; earlier interiors were shot on Stage 8 at a 20th Century-Fox studio.

Which sport distracted the young Erle Stanley Gardner so much that his university suspended him after about a month?

Boxing cut short his time at Valparaiso University in Indiana, so he went home to California and finished his studies on his own.

What did Perry Mason's producer tell Raymond Burr he must do before she would test him for the title role?

Lose weight, she said: he was perfect for the part but at least 60 pounds too heavy, so Burr dieted hard for a month and then won the role.

Which Irish rock band based their 1975 song Suicide on a Perry Mason episode, The Case of the Lover's Leap?

Thin Lizzy put the track on their album Fighting, having played it as early as 1973, when Eric Bell was still the band's guitarist.

A 2014 study of which streaming service's genre tags found Raymond Burr named in more of them than any other actor?

Netflix had more micro-genres starring Burr than any other actor, and the executive who conceived the tagging system could not explain why.

On which comedian's TV show did Raymond Burr play Perry Mason in a 1961 dream about a murdered rooster?

Jack Benny dreamed he was on trial for killing the bird, and three Perry Mason regulars joined Burr to fill out the courtroom.

Which legal drama's episode Chicanery has a character compare a witness-stand collapse to a Perry Mason confession?

Better Call Saul nods to the old series several times; here Chuck McGill accuses Jimmy of trying to make him crack like one of Mason's exposed killers.

Which future Smokey and the Bandit star had an early TV role as Chuck Blair in a 1962 Perry Mason episode?

Burt Reynolds took the small part in the same year he joined Gunsmoke as Quint Asper, long before his 1970s run as a box-office draw.

Which future Oscar-winning director acted in the 1960 Perry Mason episode The Case of the Treacherous Toupée?

Robert Redford played Richard Hart in the fourth-season opener, twenty years before his first film as a director, Ordinary People, won him an Academy Award.

Which future Star Trek actor played Pete Chennery in the 1963 Perry Mason episode The Case of the Shoplifter's Shoe?

Leonard Nimoy spent years as a jobbing character actor, playing more than 50 small parts before Mr. Spock made him famous three years later.

To cut costs, many of Raymond Burr's later Perry Mason TV movies were both filmed and set in which city?

Denver took over from the fourth film on, although a courtroom wall in the opening titles went on displaying a California county seal.

After Raymond Burr's death, which Goodfellas actor led the first Perry Mason Mystery film as Anthony Caruso?

Paul Sorvino stepped in for The Case of the Wicked Wives, playing a friend who takes the case while Mason is said to be out of town.

In HBO's Perry Mason, what kind of family property is the hard-up hero struggling to hold on to?

A dairy farm that has been in the family for at least two earlier generations is nearly all he has left after his divorce.

Raymond Burr raised funds for a Florida museum devoted to which natural collectibles, donating many from his own island?

Seashells were among his many collections: he chaired the first capital campaign of the Bailey-Matthews museum on Sanibel and gave it his cowries and cones.

HBO's Perry Mason moved the story about twenty years earlier than the CBS series, into which era of American history?

The Great Depression setting matches the era of Gardner's earliest novels; the story opens in 1932 with Mason broke, divorced and scarred by his war service.

Which Lord of the Rings actor plays supermarket owner Sunny Gryce in the second season of HBO's Perry Mason?

Sean Astin's feuding grocer is a client Mason represents, a long way from loyal Samwise Gamgee.

Erle Stanley Gardner kept three secretaries busy at once and later married one; how were the three women related?

Sisters, all three: he married one of them, Jean, after his first wife died, and friends believed she was the model for Mason's loyal secretary.

Joan Alexander, radio's voice of Perry Mason's secretary, was more famous for playing which comic-book reporter?

Lois Lane was her signature part, on the Superman radio serial; she was the second of three actresses to play Mason's secretary regularly on air.

Fred Steiner, composer of the Perry Mason theme, also wrote the main theme for which 1960s cartoon series?

The Bullwinkle Show marched to a Steiner tune as well, and he later scored more of the original Star Trek than any other composer.

Raymond Burr claimed that his first wife died in the 1943 air disaster that killed which Hollywood star?

Leslie Howard's death was real, but no evidence exists of the marriage or of the actress bride Burr described, one of several invented details in his life story.

Which famous film composer's library music was used, uncredited, in around 100 episodes of CBS's Perry Mason?

Bernard Herrmann, the man behind the Psycho score, went unnamed because his cues came from the CBS music library and were edited into each score.

Which future blockbuster film director was behind the camera for Perry Mason's The Case of the Missing Button?

Richard Donner spent the 1960s directing television before The Omen, Superman and the Lethal Weapon films made his name in cinemas.

Which former film actress, who had studied law, was the executive producer behind CBS's Perry Mason?

Gail Patrick, who played opposite Carole Lombard in My Man Godfrey, was the only woman working as an executive producer in prime time during the show's run.

Perry Mason's 1956 pilot film, later aired as the thirteenth episode, was titled The Case of the what?

Moth-Eaten Mink was shot in a film noir style the series soon softened; its plot turns on a pawn ticket hidden in a waitress's fur.

Which actor, later a regular on The Six Million Dollar Man, played Lieutenant Steve Drumm in Perry Mason's final season?

Richard Anderson joined as the homicide detective for the ninth and last season, then returned in 1985 in a different role in the first reunion movie.

Which future TV detective star filled in for Raymond Burr as defender Joe Kelly in a 1964 Perry Mason episode?

Mike Connors, three years away from Mannix, had been one of the actors considered for Mason himself when the series was being cast.

In which US city did station KPTV make Perry Mason reruns at noon a weekday tradition from 1970 until 2012?

Portland's habit ran so deep that a station manager hired in 2008 was free to change any local programme except the midday Mason.

Where, by his producer's account, did Raymond Burr keep key lines written during Perry Mason's gruelling first year?

On his shirt cuffs, she recalled: Burr was in almost every scene early on, and said he got up at three each morning to learn the day's lines.

By what name is Perry Mason's rarely seen switchboard operator, played on CBS by Connie Cezon, known?

Gertie Lade, an incurable romantic, first appeared in the 1939 novel The Case of the Rolling Bones and resurfaced in the 1973 revival.

At which downtown address, in Suite 904, does Perry Mason keep his law offices on the CBS series?

The Brent Building was played on screen by the newly finished Superior Oil Company headquarters, a 1956 tower that has since become a hotel.

Which actor starred in four of the six Perry Mason films that Warner Bros. released in the 1930s?

Warren William, later dubbed the King of Pre-Code, was the screen's first Mason and went on to play the Lone Wolf in nine films.

Warner Bros. made the first Perry Mason film in 1934 from Erle Stanley Gardner's novel The Case of the what?

Howling Dog opens with a millionaire so rattled by a neighbour's German Shepherd that he asks Mason to draw up his will.

Which actor took over the title role when CBS revived the series in 1973 as The New Perry Mason?

Monte Markham lasted just 15 episodes: the revival was cancelled at midseason after trailing The Wonderful World of Disney and The F.B.I. in its slot.

Which crime-drama showrunner was first hired to write HBO's Perry Mason but left in 2017 for his own series?

Nic Pizzolatto quit to make the third season of True Detective, and Rolin Jones and Ron Fitzgerald took over the scripts.

Which English novelist declared in 1949 that Perry Mason's creator was the best living American writer?

Evelyn Waugh was one of Gardner's many overseas admirers; by his death in 1970, Gardner was the best-selling American author of the century.

Which part of Mexico did Erle Stanley Gardner explore by truck and helicopter and describe in a series of travel books?

Baja California fascinated him all his life, and after his death in 1970 his ashes were scattered over the peninsula.

Under a pen name, Erle Stanley Gardner wrote thirty novels about which detective agency, run by a widow named Bertha?

Cool and Lam pair the heavyset Bertha Cool with Donald Lam, a small, nervy and ingenious man with legal training whom she hires in the first book.

In which California coastal city was Erle Stanley Gardner working when his first Perry Mason novel appeared?

Ventura was his base from 1921, and the Pierpont Inn near his old office is the setting for much of Mason's 1933 debut.

In the first Perry Mason novel, which event had ruined the wealthy family of Mason's secretary?

The 1929 stock market crash forced her into a secretary's job; an unpublished earlier draft had given her a past in a carnival sideshow instead.

Raymond Burr grew wine grapes and spent his final years on a ranch in which California county?

Sonoma was home to his Dry Creek Valley estate, where he grew Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay; after his death it was renamed Raymond Burr Vineyards.

Which Warner Bros. star was signed to play Perry Mason without a screen test before Raymond Burr won the part?

Efrem Zimbalist Jr. lost the job once Burr's test stunned the producers, and went on to solve cases in 77 Sunset Strip and The F.B.I. instead.

Which company, formed by Erle Stanley Gardner with his agent and the agent's actress wife, produced CBS's Perry Mason?

Paisano Productions kept a 60 per cent interest in the films, and shared its name with Gardner's home, Rancho del Paisano.

Which Ida Lupino thriller convinced Perry Mason's producer to cast its killer as the show's rival prosecutor?

The Hitch-Hiker cast him as a sadistic killer holding two ordinary men at gunpoint, and the producer said she simply had to have him.

At which upscale restaurant do Perry Mason and his colleagues gather to wind up cases in the show's final season?

Clay's Grill gets a mention in the first season too, but its owner Terrance Clay, played by Dan Tobin, only appears in the ninth.

On the CBS series, Perry Mason mentions wartime service at Ulithi atoll with which branch of the armed forces?

The Navy past comes up in The Case of the Misguided Missile, when Mason defends an old war buddy accused of murder at a missile base.

Which future Best Actress Oscar winner played Gladys Doyle in Perry Mason's The Case of the Mythical Monkeys?

Louise Fletcher made two guest appearances in 1960, fifteen years before she played Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Which actor from HBO's political drama The Newsroom plays Paul Drake in the network's Perry Mason series?

Chris Chalk's Drake is married to Clara, played by Diarra Kilpatrick, who became a series regular in the second season.