Perry Mason Babies

In yesterday's New York Times, Alessandra Stanley discusses Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's mention of the fictional Perry Mason as an influence on her. Newly sworn Senator Al Franken also noted that as a child, he liked watching Mason (as played by Raymond Burr) hunt down the real perpetrator of the crime of which his innocent client was accused.

Perry Mason's nine year dominance might lead one to believe that no other television lawyers existed in television land during the late 1950s and early 1960s but as Ms. Stanley points out, the iconic series The Defenders aired during that period, as did a number of other shows. Yet we remember Perry Mason. Why should that be? Ms. Stanley suggests that today's Generation Ys and others will remember other tv lawyers, perhaps Ally McBeal, whom I discuss here, or Denny Crane. Both, I would note, creations of the clever and quirky David E. Kelley, whose tv shows, I suggest represent a particular cultural period.

But Mason, particularly as interpreted by Burr, who originally planned to audition for the part of Hamilton Burger, represents the lawyer we all wish we could hire for ourselves if we were in trouble. Thoughtful, tough, calm, reliable, unflappable, competent in far more areas of the law than any one of us could ever hope to be (but above all in the criminal law), but ultimately ethical and thus untouchable, he will help us even if we lie to him. He doesn't doubt his clients, because as we see in every single episode, his clients are NEVER guilty. Except in one episode (The Case of the Terrified Typist, when the client turns out to have been using someone else's name--a legal problem that results in a mistrial) the clients are uniformly innocent. Perry Mason saves the innocent client from what is everyone's worst nightmare--conviction and incarceration, or execution. In a society in which we now know to a certainty that innocent people have been and are being condemned to death for crimes they have not committed, Perry Mason represents the innocent person's last, best hope. He is the SuperLawyer that a young person, watching television in the late 50s and early 60s, and dreaming of a legal career, most wants to emulate. He believes in the law, and he knows not just how the law can be used, but how it must be used, in order to fulfill its highest promise, in order to bring about justice.

Perry Mason is not the only character who understands what the law can and must be. I have been watching the episodes as they have been released on DVDs, and I have noticed that other characters in the legal system also exhibit these traits. Even though Mason's constant adversaries, the district attorneys, wait for him at every turn, they also uphold the highest standards of the law. While his most constant nemesis, Hamilton Burger (William Talman), watches him carefully, pouncing every time he thinks Mason has "concealed evidence" or "tricked the court," he also waives any objection if he thinks Mason is on the track of the real killer and close to proving a fraud upon the court. Another upholder of justice is Lieutenant Arthur Tragg (Ray Collins), who always testifies truthfully. No episode ever shows Lt. Tragg in any kind of deceitful or underhanded activity. And a fair number of episodes end by showing Mason, Tragg, Burger, Street, and Drake together discussing a just-concluded case, or going out for dinner or drinks, a kind of camaraderie that we rarely see suggested in today's legal dramas. If it were suggested, the suggestion would be that something nefarious or unethical would be afoot. The principals involved in the show (the recurring characters) are clearly devoted to the law as a profession, as a calling. That notion underlies their unstated motivations in every episode. And I believe it comes through so clearly that the audience, particular the young audience that watched so faithfully during the fifties and sixties, absorbed it to the extent that a great many of us decided that we too wanted to be, if not lawyers, then involved somehow in bringing about justice or making the world a better place.

Finally, the judges, more often than not, seem willing to give Mason the benefit of the doubt. Although they sustain objections from the prosecution, they sometimes let Mason chase what look like rabbits if in doing so he will get to the truth of the matter, even though they are careful to give reasons for their rulings. After all, while the prosecution is serving the cause of justice, it also has the power of the state to do so. Mason in serving the cause of his client has only his knowledge of the law, his faithful and discreet secretary Della Street, honest and effective private investigator Paul Drake, and on and off one or two law clerks to help him. Some Perry Mason judges seem "defendant-friendly," putting their thumbs on the scales of the legal system to help him out. Perhaps part of what attracted Judge Sotomayor, Senator Frankel, and so many of the rest of us about the Perry Mason series is the image of the hero working within the legal system for his client, and trusting that system to vindicate them both.