Thu 21 Feb 2019
Mystery Movie Review: PLEASE MURDER ME! (1956).
Posted by Steve under Mystery movies , Reviews[11] Comments
PLEASE MURDER ME!. Distributors Corporation of America, 1956. Angela Lansbury, Raymond Burr, Dick Foran, John Dehner, Lamont Johnson. Director: Peter Godfrey.
Before his role of a lifetime came along as TV’s Perry Mason, Raymond Burr did not have many leading roles in the movies, but here he is in Please Murder Me! as the second billed actor. I have no idea if this is the case, but it’s fun to speculate: If the people who were in charge of casting the role of Mason happened to have seen this movie, they would have said “He’s our guy!,” and signed him up on the spot.
He plays a lawyer in this one, if you hadn’t realized that already, but with a twist. His client is the woman he is in love with (Angela Lansbury), and she is charged with having killed her husband. She claims it was in self-defense, but the D.A. (John Dehner) is making an awfully good case that it was premeditated murder, when Burr’s character makes a confession that turns everything upside down.
It has already been established to the viewer that the dead man was Burr’s best friend, but the friendship has been permanently ruined when Burr tells the husband that he has fallen in love with his wife, and that he will be representing her in terms of a divorce.
This is not as complicated as perhaps I have made it sound, or maybe it is. It is the basis for a very good movie, one that I can definitely recommend. It really ought to have an official release.
While I could not discern any particular chemistry between Burr and Angela Lansbury, they are both well chosen for their respective roles. Before making this film Burr usually played villains, and if I say heavies, he was, but he had definitely slimmed down by the time he appeared in this one.
A late entry noir, and one defintely worth watching.
February 22nd, 2019 at 12:12 am
Raymond Burr: We knew him, and he was easy to talk with and forthcoming. Perry Mason was something, in hindsight, he wished he had not done. Nothing wrong with the show, or the people on it, but he hated learning these long blocks of legal jargon. I suggested the resulting career was worth it, and he said, it was happening anyway, in film. Many years after that conversation, Claude and I were with Don and Rebecca Weis, and she asked Don who the best actor he’d ever worked with was. Don said, without a moments hesitation, Alan Alda, but Raymond Burr was the best reader.
February 22nd, 2019 at 5:01 am
The story’s oft told, but deserves a reprise:
When Paisano Productions (Erle Stanley Gardner’s company) was putting Perry Mason together (about the time this movie was made), CBS wanted a Name Star for the part.
Raymond Burr’s agents sent him in to test for Hamilton Burger; Burr went along, provided that he also be allowed to test for Mason.
Both tests can be found on the 50th Anniversary DVD set; we don’t know which is the one that led Uncle Erle to stand up in the screening room and shout “That’s Perry Mason!” –
– but that’s the Official Story.
If memory serves, DCA was the very bottom of Poverty Row at that point; both Lansbury and Burr were in career slow periods then (Broadway and Mason would have only been prospects).
Fortunately, both futures turned out just fine.
February 22nd, 2019 at 11:22 am
In the years 1955 and 1956 Raymond Burr appeared in a total of ten films. There is no way in the world that amount of work can be considered a downturn.
Lansbury is different, but even she did okay.
February 22nd, 2019 at 7:17 pm
If it wasn’t before, Burr’s film career was pretty much assured after A PLACE IN THE SUN and REAR WINDOW, and I can imagine he wondered at times what his film career would have been like if he hadn’t done MASON, many actors who moved to television had divided feelings about it.
Considering the second half hour of most Mason episodes have Burr on screen and delivering complex dialogue for most of the running time it had to have been trying (pun intended) at times compared to movie work.
I doubt there were a lot of offers for leading roles being offered Burr though, and a chance at MASON had to be attractive if he was looking to escape the “heavy”/character actor parts he usually played.
But Burr wouldn’t be the first actor to have mixed feelings about being that closely identified with a role like Perry Mason. Having a role take over your life must be difficult, and for most actors it has to be hard knowing no matter what you do in the future everything will be judged by that no matter how wealthy it makes you. Basil Rathbone and Sean Connery are both examples of the phenomenon.
This little film is a decent time passer, great cast, but not much more than an episode of a television anthology series or a B programmer despite a few nods to noir. Burr does show he could handle a lead role though.
I really doubt this had anything to do with his getting the call for Mason though. As pointed out they originally wanted him for Burger, and if anything they were thinking of his stunning portrayal of the handicapped prosecutor in A PLACE IN THE SUN, one of his finest screen performances.
February 22nd, 2019 at 8:03 pm
Barry
You’re certainly right about the number of movies Burr made in the two years just before PERRY MASON. I think this is the complete list:
1957 Affair in Havana
1957 Crime of Passion
1956 Ride the High Iron
1956 A Cry in the Night
1956 Secret of Treasure Mountain
1956 Great Day in the Morning
1956 Godzilla, King of the Monsters!
1956 The Brass Legend
1956 Please Murder Me!
I don’t know most of these movies, or what kinds of roles he had in each, but at the time I think he may have been happy to to get the Mason part. As time went on, as you and David suggest, not so much. Obviously you knew him, and that counts for a lot, but personally I think his presence as an actor, in roles in which he was not a heavy, was better fit for TV, where he was an instant fan favorite, not only as Mason but later on as Ironside as well.
Did he ever say anything to you about the IRONSIDE series?
February 22nd, 2019 at 8:08 pm
David
I know the odds against Burr’s role in PLEASE MURDER ME! having anything to do with being chosen as Perry Mason are very high, but take another look at the first photo image, and I’m sure you can see what had me thinking that way.
February 22nd, 2019 at 8:18 pm
Re Ironside. Not really. he owned that show and Don directed quite a few episodes, the same issues did not evolve, no courtroom stuff week-to-week and the reference to being a good reader, his use of cards and/or a teleprompter.
As for the parts he played in the films you listed, all significant.In fact, even as a child of say ten, the guys in the neighborhood all recognized him in things like Station West, Adventures of Don Juan.
Later on, as David pointed out, he did an important turn in A Place In The Sun, add Rear Window. He was never a small part actor, and he was also never a bona fide movie star. On television, he was, though.
February 22nd, 2019 at 8:41 pm
I have little understanding of what sort of “career” Burr had pre-1957, what audiences thought about him, or studio executives.
But I do have an ARTISTIC understanding of what Burr’s films and film roles look like today, to current film lovers and film historians.
Burr played in a remarkably large number of movies that today seem like good films, artistically speaking. In turn, these films were very often made by directors now seen as prestigious “auteurs”. His work with Hitchcock (Rear Window) and George Stevens (A Place in the Sun) are key examples. But so are Desperate & Raw Deal (Anthony Mann), Ruthless (Edgar G. Ulmer), The Blue Gardenia (Fritz Lang!!!), Horizons West (Budd Boetticher) and Great Day in the Morning (Jacques Tourneur). He usually gave terrific performances in these, in supporting roles and most often as villains. You could add films by Gordon Douglas, Joseph M. Newman, Gerd Oswald and others.
February 22nd, 2019 at 9:00 pm
Absolutely, Mike. So glad you mentioned Ruthless, an atypical part. He has one scene, and you can see why he signed on for it. Sweet and weak, not words usually associated with his characters.
February 22nd, 2019 at 10:32 pm
Burr seemed to have great presence in person. Not only did Gardner pick him for Mason, but Howard Hughes saw him an ordered the entire end of HIS KIND OF WOMAN reshot for a third time with Burr as the villain.
He wasn’t a “movie star” as Barry says, but at one time the studios promoted a “romance” between Burr and Natalie Wood, so he was far from an anonymous character actor or bad guy. Still, while work is work, I have to say those ten films Steve lists are far from major work for a man who played opposite Errol Flynn, James Stewart, Montgomery Clift, Van Heflin, and Robert Mitchum and worked for directors like Hitchcock and Stevens.
February 22nd, 2019 at 10:50 pm
In the Natalie Wood picture, Cry In The Nigh, Raymond’s name is up there with hers, Edmond O’Brien and Brian Donlevy, which seems about right. Great Day In The Morning, a highly regarded western which I do not care for at all, Was a Tourneur picture with Virginia Mayo, Robert Stack and Ruth Roman, so not the cinematic equivalent of Cheeze wiz. Steve did not list You’re Never Too Young, Dean and Jerry, or A Man Alone, pretty good western with Ray Milland, Ward Bond….
The only way too judge working in these films, or someone’s career, is not in hind sight, but what was going on at the moment, and how much money they earned.