Perry Mason Trivia
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49 free Perry Mason trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Perry Mason won almost every case he ever tried, which Raymond Burr once explained by telling a fan she only saw the cases he tried on Saturday. The character began in Erle Stanley Gardner's 1933 novel The Case of the Velvet Claws, spent twelve years on radio, nine seasons on CBS, thirty TV movies on NBC and two seasons as an HBO origin story. This trivia about Perry Mason covers the books, the cast, the theme music, the famous lost cases and the people behind the camera. Every answer is sourced and explained.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Besides being an author, what was the creator of Perry Mason by profession?
A lawyer
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.
Q 02In legal slang, a trial's 'Perry Mason moment' is a dramatic what?
Revelation
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.
Q 03Earl Rogers, the real-life model for Perry Mason, defended which famous attorney on a 1912 jury-bribery charge?
Clarence Darrow
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.
Q 04Perry Mason shares his name with the publisher of which magazine Gardner read as a boy?
Youth's Companion
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.
Q 05What was the first Perry Mason novel, published in 1933?
The Case of the Velvet Claws
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.
Q 06In which city does Perry Mason practise law in Gardner's novels and the CBS series?
Los Angeles
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.
Q 07In which 1935 novel does Mason's client own a bloodshot glass prosthesis?
The Case of the Counterfeit Eye
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.
Q 08How did Gardner produce most of his Perry Mason novels?
Dictation
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.
Q 09What yearly word quota did Gardner set himself while writing for pulp magazines?
1,200,000 words
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.
Q 10Gardner founded which 1940s organisation to help people imprisoned unfairly?
The Court of Last Resort
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.
Q 11Under which pseudonym did Gardner publish many of his non-Mason novels?
A. A. Fair
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.
Q 12Gardner spent his last three decades on a ranch in which Southern California town?
Temecula
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.
Q 13Which future star played a corpse in a 1935 Perry Mason film?
Errol Flynn
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.
Q 21When surgery kept Raymond Burr off the Perry Mason set, which film legend carried an episode as a guest attorney?
Bette Davis
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.
Q 22TV's Paul Drake was the son of which famous Hollywood gossip columnist?
Hedda Hopper
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.
Q 23Which actor played Perry Mason's perpetually losing rival, the district attorney, in the CBS series?
William Talman
Q 14In the 1936 film of the first novel, what does Mason do that never happens in the books?
Marries Della Street
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.
Q 15Gardner sold Perry Mason's radio rights to which soap-making giant, which ran it as a daytime serial?
Procter & Gamble
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.
Q 16The Perry Mason radio serial became which long-running TV soap after Gardner withheld his name?
The Edge of Night
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.
Q 17In 1965 CBS moved Perry Mason to Sundays against which hit western?
Bonanza
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.
Q 18Raymond Burr originally read for which role before landing the part of Perry Mason?
Hamilton Burger
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!"
Q 19Perry Mason's producer admired Raymond Burr's courtroom turn in which 1951 film?
A Place in the Sun
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.
Q 20Who played Della Street opposite Raymond Burr?
Barbara Hale
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.
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."
Q 24Which Citizen Kane actor played homicide's Lieutenant Tragg in the CBS Perry Mason series?
Ray Collins
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.
Q 25In Perry Mason's final episode in 1966, which famous TV host is unmasked as the killer?
Dick Clark
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.
Q 26What is the title of Fred Steiner's famous Perry Mason theme?
Park Avenue Beat
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.
Q 27Which band covered the Perry Mason theme on their 1980 album Made in America?
The Blues Brothers
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.
Q 28Asked by a fan why Mason won every case, what did Burr reply she only saw?
The cases he tried on Saturday
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.
Q 29What set the 1966 Perry Mason episode The Case of the Twice-Told Twist apart from the other 270?
It was filmed in colour
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.
Q 30In the 1966 finale of Perry Mason, creator Erle Stanley Gardner made his acting debut as what?
A judge
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.