Mildred Crest (Ruth Lee) is dumped by her boyfriend Bob Wallis who has embezzled money from the firm where they both work and has framed her for it. Realising the police will soon be after her, she makes a run for it and picks up a hitchhiker in her car, a young woman calling herself Fern Driscoll. She pulls a gun on Mildred and the car crashes off of the road and into a ravine catching fire. Mildred is thrown clear, but Fern was burnt to death. Arriving in Los Angeles, Mildred assumes Fern's identity and takes a room with Laura Richards (Eve McVeigh). However, Mildred knows nothing about the past of her dead hitchhiker and it is about to catch up with her when an insurance investigator called Carl Davis (Robert Bray) shows up. First, he asks her to make a statement to the effect that she was driving the death car and, secondly, assuming she is Fern Driscoll, he demands that she turns over some letters to a Johnny Baylor whom he says is prepared to pay a large sum of money to get them back. Since she is not Fern Driscoll, she has no idea what he is talking about. Davis leaves but says he will be back that evening and will have expected her to have produced the letters by then. Realising that she is in terrible trouble as a result of assuming a dead woman's identity - plus being framed for embezzlement back home - Mildred contacts the lawyer Perry Mason (Raymond Burr) for help. He accepts her case and, although he does not let on to his client, he suspects that she has not been telling him the truth and thinks she is in deep trouble but as a victim of circumstance. That night, Mildred is attacked by an unknown assailant at Laura's apartment. She grabs an ice pick to defend herself and she later swears she only grazed her attacker's shoulder with it. But, later it transpires that Carl Davis has been stabbed fatally with an ice pick and dies as a result of that and Mildred is tried for his murder. As usual, the prosecution lead by the DA Hamilton Burger (William Talman) and Lt. Tragg (Ray Collins) believe they have an open and shut case. However, Mason, aided by his secretary Della Street (Barbara Hale) and the private investigator Paul Drake (William Hopper), uncover a complex web of deceit and cover ups that reveals a good number of people had motives for murder other than Mildred. They include Senator Baylor (Barton Maclane), a politician whose son was romantically involved with the real Fern Driscoll, but she was taking out a law suit against him and Baylor feared a scandal would hinder his reelection chances. In addition, Davis's wife, Marjorie (Betty Lou Gerson), kept her husband under close scrutiny by going wherever he went and answering his phone calls since she feared that he would ditch her for another woman. But, was the hitchhiker really Fern Driscoll and, if she was not, who was killed in the car crash and where is she now?
One of the many absorbing cases that ace Defence Attorney Perry Mason encountered in his long and distinguished career. The original series ran for nine years between 1957 and 1966 and, nearly twenty years later, Burr would reprise his role in a long running series of feature length TVM's. This one is adapted from Erle Stanley Gardner's marvelous novel - one that I have read incidentally and, despite only having an hour to do it, I felt the scriptwriter did a more than reasonable job of putting most of its most attractive elements on to the small screen. As with most of Perry's cases, they are all very involved plots and if your concentration lapses for even an incident you will lose track of it and it won't make much sense. The identity of the real murderer is sufficiently well concealed until the courtroom denouement and it is peopled with interesting characters and suspects that will hold your attention throughout. The standard of the acting is excellent from all concerned and, here, we get a real insight into Mason's character. He accepts Mildred Crest's case for thirty-eight cents, which was all she had in her purse at the time. Then later when Perry goes to question Senator Baylor who as you would expect is concerned for his career and nothing else offers him $10,000 to represent him in retrieving some potentially damaging letters from Fern Driscoll. Mason replies that he has already accepted Mildred's case for thirty-eight cents and the Senator is left speechless. He can't understand why he would accept a case for that tiny sum when he was offering him a fortune. We can see that Perry, a lawyer of exceptional ability who could command the earth and cultivate the richest clients going, retains concern for the poorer working class citizens and goes out of his way to help those who don't have the resources to hire somebody of his stature to represent them against crimes they have been accused of committing but, nearly always, did not.
All in all, for anybody who may have seen the 1980's-90's revival series and wants to check the original out, this is an admirable place to start.
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