The Case of the Ugly Duckling

Another badly acted and directed episode. Main cast did a good job Guest stars were not believable and should have stayed unemployed. The later seasons really went downhill as to the acting and storylines.

It always amazes me that when a TV series has a episode concerning a supposedly ugly girl- they end up getting a female model and have her wear baggy shirts and matted hair. They consider this to be an unattractive girl that everyone will take at face value. Let them get one of my family members if they want ugly- but they get a beauty contestant winner and cast her as the ugly one. This happened in this episode.

Alice Trilling (beautiful Anne Whitfield) plays the supposedly ugly heiress that is the daughter of toy company (father died) and is line to get a lot of money when she reaches a certain age. She wants nothing to do with the company and lives by herself wanting a different life style. But she is upset at a doll that her father created called the Angie Doll. This doll has all the beauty that Alice feels she does not have and as a hatred for the doll.

Her uncle Harry Trilling (Ford Raney) is in charge of the company and is trying to get Alice to settle down and come back into the family's business. So he hires a man, Anthony Sharp (Adam Lazarre) to see her daughter and paint her picture. Alice finds out about this and confronts her uncle. She believes that her uncle hired Anthony to make her look bad and she get upset. They get into a scuffle and Harry is knocked to the ground by Alice.

Then we find out that Harry has died and Alice has been charged with her uncle's death. Enter Perry to defend her in court.

We meet some other suspects along the way like the jealous secretary, an unappreciated co-work and a competitor toy maker official. (No lack of suspects in this show.)

The guest stars seemed to handle the episode well. They were emotional and made the viewer interested in the outcome of the story. However, while watching it appeared that Raymond Burr was bored with the entire script. He was robotic in his movements and delivered lines as if all the scenes had just been written. It was like this was the first time he had seen the script and it was dress rehearsal. None of the flair we are use to seeing from his first years as Perry. Maybe it was because this was the last episode of season seven- but whatever was wrong it came across on the screen.

But the storyline and guest actors made this a better watch than most anything you can find on TV today. I thought the story was interesting and was held to the screen till the end of the show.

Note- Ford Raney that played Harry Trilling in this episode was a character actor in many shows in the 60's,70's,80's and 90's. He was still acting at the age of 95 before his death a year later in 2005.

I think a psychiatrist would have a field day with most of the involved people in this Perry Mason episode. I also suspect a few issues among those who dreamed this one up.

Anne Whitfield, best remembered as Dean Jagger's granddaughter in White Christmas is the subject of one of those insane wills thought up by really screwed up parents. If she's not married by the age of 21 and she is the sole heir, her father's toy company will be sold. But her legal guardian is uncle Ford Rainey who likes being head of a big business, because as he's reminded often he was washing machine salesman before this windfall he'd like to keep going.

What Rainey does is hire an itinerant artist to play up to Whitfield and maybe marry her. Not easy as the young lady has self esteem issues and is never sure men aren't interested in her bank account. When Whitfield, Rainey gets dead. Of course she didn't do it, but she looks mighty good for it.

Adam Lazarre the artist is a truly unbelievable character, especially when he has a change of art. A plot gambit used in hundreds of films and TV shows, but not convincing here at all.

This was one Perry Mason episode I couldn't buy into.

I think Max Showalter's agitated confession at the end was very nicely acted. I love the little toy making irritating noises and motions throwing Max completely off his game. Much of the rest of the story was kind of silly. It's hard to see the young heiress really being so down on her appearance. At the end the fella drew a picture of her showing how pretty she was. The problem is that people with that kind of low self image can't see themselves as others do. They see themselves as unattractive. That's the inner self picture they see and unaided they cannot break past that ugly self image Good news it was just a story.

The young woman in this episode is attractive, even when her hair is a mess and she is overdoing it in the bar. But what she is is so in need of psychological help that she is a danger to herself. She is also victimized by a cruel condition in her father's will. But a problem with this episode is that the whole thing is so hard to believe. Almost no foundation is laid for anything. Still, it kept my interest.