Mon 26 Apr 2021
A TV Episode Review: PERRY MASON “The Case of the Restless Redhead†(1957).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV mysteries[15] Comments
PERRY MASON “The Case of the Restless Redhead.†CBS, 21 September 1957 (Season 1, Episode 1). Raymond Burr, Barbara Hale, William Hopper, William Talman, Ray Collins. Guest Cast: Whitney Blake, Ralph Clanton, Gloria Henry, Vaughn Taylor. Teleplay: Russell S. Hughes. Based on the novel by Erle Stanley Gardner. Director: William D. Russell. Currently available on DVD and streaming on Paramount Plus.
When a waitress comes home from work, she finds a gun in her cigarette case sitting on her coffee table. In her shoes, what would you do? I’m sure you would call Perry Mason’s office, the same as either you or I would, am I right? Even though it’s late at night, she heads out by car to meet him in his office.
She’s followed by a car driven by a man with a pillow case over his head, with holes cut out for his eyes. When he tries to run her off the road, she uses the gun to fire two shots at him. She misses, but one shot hits the car, which seems to swerve off the road. Telling her story to Mason, he decides to drive out to the spot where all this took place.
Would you be surprised if I told you the police are there first? You shouldn’t be. They are, and they’re trying to find a way to hoist a car up a steep embankment. The driver of the car, found inside, Mason is told, is dead. He has been fatally shot in the head.
The Perry Mason novels always begin with extremely catchy openings, and this first episode of the Perry Mason TV show follows the pattern to perfection. Other familiar themes follow. Mason is not sure whether to believe the girl’s story or not, but when Lt. Tragg comes calling, he has no recourse but to take her on as a client. Della Street is there to comfort her and provide everyone with coffee. (It is now three o’clock in the morning.)
As for the gun, Paul Drake soon discovers that is one of a pair, both bought by the same person at the same time. Mason maneuvers himself into the case personally by obtaining the other of two guns, putting a notch in the barrel with a small file, then shooting it a couple of times at the scene of the crime.
This little trick comes in handy at the preliminary hearing, which ends up with D. A. Hamilton Burger completely befuddled. Now I posit this, if I may. Can you think of a better story line than this to demonstrate to TV audiences everywhere in the country what the rest of the series is going to be like, based on this very first episode? Nor can I.
This synopsis so far does not include the following: Perry’s client was recently acquitted of stealing some jewelry from a movie star who just happens to be the fiancée of the man who bought the two guns, who is being blackmailed by the former husband of the movie star who claims the divorce never went through, and the husband and wife who run the motel where the theft of the aforementioned jewelry took place act very strangely when Mason comes asking questions.
And do you know what? You can actually follow the plot, even with all of these players, and without a scorecard.
April 26th, 2021 at 8:22 pm
I reviewed this episode as part of REDHEAD WEEK on my blog:
http://georgekelley.org/the-case-of-the-restless-redhead-by-erle-stanley-gardner/
The TV version makes a few changes from Erle Stanley Gardner’s novel. Sometime during this pandemic, I intend on watching the enter PERRY MASON TV series. I have a complete set of the episodes.
April 26th, 2021 at 8:26 pm
Thanks for the link, George. Now that you’ve reminded me, I remember your Redhead Week from a year or so back, but not that you did a review of this particular PM episode as part of it.
I’ll have to go back and re-read it.
Mike Nevins also did a review of this episode some four years ago now as part of the monthly column he does for this blog.
And yes, he goes into the differences between the book and novel too. Here’s the link:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=47085
April 27th, 2021 at 9:44 am
Steve, thanks for the link. I occasionally read the ESG book and then watch the PERRY MASON it’s based on.
April 27th, 2021 at 10:17 am
I like doing that, too, but it’s very seldom that I can do one and then find the other.
April 27th, 2021 at 10:04 am
Is it available anywhere else? I couldn’t find it on Amazon Prime. I am really keen to watch these old episodes and see the flirting b/w Paul and Della. Love it when they gang-up against Mason.
April 27th, 2021 at 10:16 am
Neeru, I think Paramount Plus has exclusive rights to the Perry Mason shows. It’s one of the reasons I signed up for it, which I did through Amazon Prime. For a extra monthly fee, of course. I’m also watching the reboots of HAWAII FIVE-O, THE EQUALIZER, and MAGNUM PI, which I missed seeing on network TV. I haven’t yet tried the new MacGUYER serie, though, but it’s there. In any case all of these reboots are extremely formulaic, but still entertaining late in the evening.
April 27th, 2021 at 12:49 pm
In my area, Canton, Oh. Perry Mason is on three times during the day. Once on MeTV and twice on fetv.
April 27th, 2021 at 1:42 pm
Thanks, Chuck. I don’t get METV here, so I never think of it. FETV is new to me.
April 27th, 2021 at 7:42 pm
So many series today take a few episodes to get into the swing, but Mason comes out of the gate full blown and swinging. I can imagne audiences seeing that team for the first time thinking to themselves “Yes, that’s Perry, Della, Paul, Tragg, and Burger exactly as I saw them.”
Gardner’s plot and writing were cinematic in the best ways, lean, clearly plotted for all the twists, the characters just complex enough to be interesting, but far from deep and when you add fine actors, great scripts, strong direction, production values, and that perfect theme …
This must have felt as if it came full born from the head of Zeus.
April 27th, 2021 at 7:56 pm
Precisely. And if at first Perry, Della, Paul, Tragg, and Burger didn’t look exactly look like how readers of the books had pictured them, by the end of this episode, they did. Better casting would have been impossible.
April 30th, 2021 at 7:30 pm
That is certainly one honkin’, prodigious, man-sized case of cigarettes. Big enough to hold fifty Camels and a snub-nosed .38 without crowding
April 30th, 2021 at 8:16 pm
Cigarettes were a major industry back in 1957, both onscreen and off.
May 2nd, 2021 at 11:31 am
I guess it falls to me – again – to point out that “TCOT Restless Redhead” is not the pilot of Perry Mason.
The best available information shows that “Restless Redhead” was (1) the third episode filmed; (2) the second episode to film when formal production started in ’57 (“Moth-Eaten Mink”, the pilot, had filmed the year before); (3) one of at least a dozen episodes that were in the can before the September premiere.
The semi-official story is that Bill Paley didn’t want “Moth-Eaten Mink” to air as the premiere because it didn’t follow what would become the Mason template: among other things, the big reveal didn’t happen in court.
Anyway, CBS had a bunch of shows to choose from when they set up the schedule, and history shows that they (and Paisano Productions) chose wisely (and thank goodness that they hadn’t invented the “story arc” yet – standalones forever!).
While I’m here, some while back some commenters mentioned how “cheap” the earliest episodes look to a modern audience.
Because I’m old enough to remember seeing Perry Mason in its first-run on 17-inch Motorola and Muntz black-&-white sets, in hard-to-tune 525-line NTSC, brought into our homes by a set-top or rooftop antenna that had to be constantly tinkered with in order to get any kind of picture at all – well, so much for “nostalgia”.
Thanks to digital restoration, the 21st-century viewer sees the B&W Masons in far better definition than we oldsters could ever have Back In The Day*tm*.
Even these days, watching a ’57 Mason on DVD can throw a coot like me for a series of curves: “How did they think they’d get away with cardboard set like that?” – but on the old family Muntz, who among us could really tell?
Inexorable Time in its Flight …
May 2nd, 2021 at 11:48 am
Thanks, Mike!
Whether this particular episode was the official pilot or not, the people in charge who chose to run this one first, it served its purpose in that regard very well, as I attempted to say in my review. All of the right ingredients and in full display from the get-go.
And you’re quite right. We now have he luxury of seeing these old shows as they were filmed, not as we saw them with our scrunched up eyes as they showed up on our home screens back in 1957.
Who would even have dreamed that we’d still be talking about them now, back then?
March 31st, 2022 at 8:16 pm
I notice the date–1957. For my money, those earlier Perry Mason’s were always the best. They have that brooding cinema noir feeling about them–reminding me of Raymond Chandler–“The Big Sleep” or “The High Window” or something. And, of course, a younger, trimmer Raymond Burr–cutting just a few corners every now and then–a bit more the quasi-shyster lawyer, a bit less the eminent do-good attorney. But they’re all–well, mostly all–quite good. I love ’em all. Addict that I am!