The Perry Mason Book: A Comprehensive Guide to America's Favorite Defender of Justice by Jim Davidson

Author:Jim Davidson [Davidson, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Arts & Photography, Biography, Direction & Production, History & Criticism, Humour & Entertainment, Performing Arts, Television
Amazon: B00OOELV1K
Published: 2014-11-15T06:00:00+00:00

SEASON 8 (1964-1965)

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By the eighth season, Perry Mason had begun to show its age. To be sure, there was no lessening of production values, and the cast and crew still approached their jobs with the same level of professionalism. But the formula had begun to wear thin, and it was getting harder to come up with fresh, new variations.

Raymond Burr was tired of working twelve-hour days, playing the same character every day, and wanted to try something different. He began negotiating for a new series called The Power, to be produced by Don Fedderson, in which he would star as a state governor. The actor reached an understanding with CBS that if he would do another season of Perry Mason, he could follow it with The Power.

“It had some of the same things going for it that Perry did,” he later said. “It was the best damn thing I ever read, the best new show presentation anybody in this business had ever seen.”[852]

But then CBS decided to go with a show called Slattery’s People starring Richard Crenna as a state legislator and didn’t want another series that was so similar. Having already committed himself to Perry Mason by this point, Burr begrudgingly agreed to carry on.

“I’m a paid actor,” he said. “Once having signed a contract, I had a certain obligation...So we made an eighth season of Perry Mason.”[853]

Once again, an illness kept Burr out of commission for a couple of weeks. This time it was an infected tooth, and as before, a couple of guest stars were retained as substitutes. Mike Connors played Joe Kelly in The Case of the Bullied Bowler and Barry Sullivan was Ken Kramer in The Case of the Thermal Thief. The episodes were shot back-to-back in August and September 1964, but to minimize the impact of Burr’s absence, aired more than two months apart. Unlike the previous absences, though, there was no attempt to insert Mason into brief scenes to justify Burr’s star billing. These two were the only episodes of the series that didn’t include Mason at all.

Art Marks recalls how Mike Connors landed the Joe Kelly role: “Mike was an old friend of mine and I was responsible for bringing him in. I thought Mike was a television star and Art [Seid] thought so, too. We talked about how great he’d be in a series.”[854]

Marks and Seid discussed creating a show based on Erle Stanley Gardner’s Lester Leith character, a wealthy amateur detective from Gardner’s pulp magazine days. They thought Connors would be perfect for the role. “We got permission [from CBS] to use him as an attorney in a normal whodunit,” says Marks. “So we cast him as Joe Kelly to see if he could play Lester Leith. The show turned out, I thought, quite good but then we couldn’t sell the network on it.”[855]

It seems that politics and economics got in the way of art. The network didn’t like the idea of sharing profits with Gardner and his Paisano Productions.

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