49 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.