Mon 15 Aug 2011
A TV Review by Mike Tooney: PERRY MASON “The Case of the Bogus Books.”
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[11] Comments
“The Case of the Bogus Books.” An episode of Perry Mason (Season 6, Episode 1). First air date: 27 September 1962. Cast: Raymond Burr, Barbara Hale, William Hopper, William Talman, Ray Collins, Wesley Lau, Phyllis Love (the accused), Adam West, John Abbott, H. M. Wynant, Joby Baker, Allison Hayes, Woodrow Parfrey, Maurice Manson, Tenen Holtz, Kenneth MacDonald (the judge), Michael Fox (not to be confused with Michael J. Fox). Writer: Jonathan Latimer. Director: Arthur Marks.
Locked-room puzzles rarely turn up on TV, and the Perry Mason series of 271 episodes had very few. In this case, however, a bookshop owner, Joseph Kraft [Maurice Manson], is found dead in a sealed basement room, with a lamp still burning and the radio still on but the gas heater off, and a handful of dead flies on the window sill.
Perry’s client, Ellen Corby [Phyllis Love] had been fired earlier by the dead man after a rare book went missing. Although she was sure the book was marked at $8, Kraft claimed that it was valued at $7000.
The death, however, looks like suicide, and the police initially view it as such. But Perry Mason suspects murder. Unfortunately, every circumstantial clue will point to his client — as they always do.
The locked-room problem, which isn’t the main focus of this episode, is partially cleared up in about ten minutes. I say “partially” because Mason will later perform a courtroom demonstration with flies that will change everyone’s mind, not about the CAUSE of death but the TIME of death, thereby exonerating his client and a multitude of likely suspects and narrowing it down, employing the classic Golden Age Detection trope of the TIME TABLE, to just one person — the murderer.
This one had a fine cast of TV’s best character actors from the ’50s and ’60s: handsome Adam West (Batman); reliable H. M. Wynant; beautiful but evil Allison Hayes (Attack of the 50-Foot Woman); ubiquitous Maurice Manson; intellectual John Abbott; shifty Woodrow Parfrey (whom my wife calls “Woodrow the Weasel”); and durable Kenneth MacDonald as the judge, in one of his 32 appearances as the magistrate in the Perry Mason series.
Note: The rare book at the heart of this story is a first edition of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne, published in nine different volumes from 1759 to 1767. If you’d like to know what the rare books’ prices mentioned in this episode would be in today’s dollars, multiply them by 10 or 11 times.
I couldn’t locate “The Case of the Bogus Books” online. Perhaps someone else will have better luck.
August 16th, 2011 at 10:01 am
The DVD for season six and this episode is scheduled to be released October 4th, 2011.
August 16th, 2011 at 12:03 pm
I should reach that point sometime. Right now I’m watching Season One, Part Two. Judy and I watch a few shows together — we’re working our way through NCIS, HAWAII FIVE-O and MATLOCK right now — but she doesn’t care for PERRY MASON, so I watch that alone, along with BURN NOTICE, MIDSOMMER MYSTERIES and DR. WHO.
With lots more in the wings.
August 16th, 2011 at 12:08 pm
I forgot to mention that one big pleasure I get from watching PERRY MASON is trying to identify the various players, some of whom were on Old Radio, making it easy to recognize the voices but not the faces.
In “Bogus Books” making an ID for Allison Hayes might be an interesting challenge, without forewarning!
August 16th, 2011 at 2:30 pm
Nice review. I’ve got the whole series, thanks to the collector-to-collector on-line market, and will dig this one out. I’m having fun watching the series is a sort of unusual way. Quite of the few episodes were adaptations of Mason novels. I’m watching the series episodes that were based on the novels in the order that the novels were published. It’s interesting to watch some of the earlier Black Mask-influenced novels being smoothed out and retooled for the Burr/Saturday Evening Post era. One of the great detective TV Shows. (Oh and I did watch the last season episodes written by Robert Leslie Bellem…not very good.)
August 16th, 2011 at 2:57 pm
The Perry Mason TV episodes based on the novels didn’t always follow the book. I remember reading THE CASE OF THE SINGING SKIRT and then watching the TV version. Plenty of changes!
August 16th, 2011 at 4:13 pm
I am currently watching the TV episodes twice a day on MeTV. I have always enjoyed the books as well as the television series.
August 16th, 2011 at 4:52 pm
Chuck — Same here. MeTV is where I caught “The Case of the Bogus Books” for the first time since I initially watched it back in 1962. We haven’t purchased the PERRY MASON series on video just yet.
We gave up cable/satellite two years ago, and everything we view these days comes through a tabletop antenna.
Fortunately, stations like MeTV and RTV still exist to serve people like us who balk at paying nearly two grand a year for television programming. Those old shows from the ’50s and ’60s are real nostalgia trips.
The down side, however, is having to put up with commercials. I don’t know if it’s true, but somebody recently claimed online that at least six minutes of ANY program will always disappear just to make room for the ads. I DO know that on a recent PERRY MASON, the name of one of those great character actors was listed in the closing credits, but he never appeared on screen!
August 16th, 2011 at 6:31 pm
Mike, today’s network first run half hour show has around 18 to 20 minutes of program and the hour show has around 44 minutes. Syndicated programs have nearly always has more commercials.
The bigger problem is today’s dramas have six act breaks instead of four of the past. This causes some strange program breaks for commercials.
This is the advantage of studio released DVD or downloading vs the collector to collector market and YouTube where in many cases the syndicated reruns are used to copy.
August 16th, 2011 at 7:08 pm
michael — You wrote:
“The bigger problem is today’s dramas have six act breaks instead of four of the past. This causes some strange program breaks for commercials.”
You have to wonder how writers can produce anything coherent under those conditions.
Another problem is for the viewer to be “yanked out” of the situation on the screen. I find it nearly impossible to “get involved” in the drama when I’m regularly ejected from it at 12 or 15 minute intervals (or, sometimes, even more often). The “willing suspension of disbelief” is constantly being undermined.
Add to that those pop-up “bugs”, some of them animated, touting upcoming shows, and I find it nearly impossible to get much enjoyment out of TV dramas. (With comedies the problem isn’t so acute.)
Am I wrong in hoping that DVDs will always have the original, uncut, as-originally-broadcast presentations?
August 20th, 2011 at 12:03 pm
This episode was written by Jonathan Latimer who dabbled in the locked room convention with his own Bill Crane detective novels. Looking forward to the release of this season and hoping Netflix will carry it as they do all the other Mason DVDs.
Before the huge digital TV changeover I used to watch our Chicago area MeTV and loved all the Perry Mason shows. Now their signal is only obtainable through digital cable which I cannot afford. My ignominious digital antenna has never been able to pick it up.
April 16th, 2020 at 12:58 am
The downside of MeTV (and most of the other cable channels showing TV series from the 1950s & 1960s) is that all of the episodes are heavily cut to make room for an avalanche of annoying commercials. One of the Perry Mason episodes lists one of my favorite character actresses (Barbara Pepper)in the credits but in the version shown on MeTV, she is nowhere to be seen! Even worse is the Hallmark channel’s presentation of “The Golden Girls”. Not only have the episodes been ruthlessly shortened but censored as well! When originally shown in the late 1980s, it was not a problem when Bea Arthur in one episode tells an obnoxious woman to “go to hell”. But Hallmark sees fit to bleep the “hell” from this well-deserved remark. Give me a break!