I'm really surprised he hasn't thrown himself off a bridge by the end of the series...
Do you reckon he's more of an absurdly tragic figure? Or an inspiringly heroic figure, showing dogged persistence in the face of insurmountable odds?
Since we only really see the cases where he and Perry are involved, I think it's a safe bet to assume that he has a fairly good success rate with the other cases he's involved with. I find it interesting that, in the opening credits for one season, he is seen at the same table with Della and Paul, which would seem to indicate that they are on the same side in that particular instance.
shareI agree that, apart from the Mason cases, Burger must have had a terrific success record in court. How else could he have been re-elected time and again?
(And, to paraphrase Raymond Burr himself, we only see the cases Burger tries on Saturdays.)
I agree that, apart from the Mason cases, Burger must have had a terrific success record in court.And considering what a lousy job the LA police do, Burger must have sent a lot of innocent people to the gas chamber. share
There are multiple instances of Burger and Mason working together to expose the real murderer, which, to me, would indicate that Burger sometimes believed that he was prosecuting the wrong person.
I saw "Ice-Cold Hands" last night. After his plan to force a witness to testify blows up in his face, Burger goes ballistic, far worse than in any other episode I've seen. You're surprised he doesn't spit up hairballs.
William Talman was a respected actor before being cast as Burger. But I suspect the producers were trying to create a strong contrast with Raymond Burr. Burr was heavy, "smooth", and handsome. Talman was thin, angular, and (forgive me) ugly. * Talman's voice was harsh; he sounded as if he was almost always annoyed and on-edge.
Note that this episode follows the general (but not universal) rule that the murderer is a familiar character actor (in this case, Dabbs Greer). It also follows my general rule that I never recognize Phyllis Coates.
* I like rough-looking men (Arthur Hunnicut, Festus Haggen). But Talman was unpleasant-looking.
I saw "Nosey Neighbor" last night. Talman is given a really good opportunity to shine.
shareI belive Raymond burr actually read for the part of Hamilton burger before he was chosen for the role of perry mason
shareYes. He was asked to lose 60 pounds and come back to read for Perry Mason.
shareExcerpt from "The Perry Mason TV Show" book:
Although it's hard to imagine anyone but Burr in the role now, some of executive producer Gail Jackson's initial choices included William Holden, Richard Egan, and Jack Carlson* (of sci-fi movie fame). Another candidate, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., was dismissed by Erle Stanley Gardner as too much of a "pretty boy." In March of 1956, Gardner sent a memo to Jackson, indicating the coveted role was to go to Fred MacMurray. Typically, Gardner had never even heard of MacMurray before, although the actor was a well-known film star at the time. But, for various reasons, plans to cast MacMurray in the lead role later cooled.
When screen tests for the show finally got underway later in 1956, just about every leading man type who was not currently working tried out for the role. Raymond Burr's agent, Lester Salkow, got him a chance to read for the part. In one of the stranger twists in the show's history, Jackson at first saw Burr as a possibility not for the Perry Mason role, but for that of Hamilton Burger!
Burr made a bargain with Jackson. He would test for the Burger role if he could also test for Mason. "All right, we'll humor him," Jackson said at the time. Burr agreed to lose some more weight and went off to study for the parts.
The day he returned to read for the Mason role, Erle Stanley Gardner was on hand in the projection room. The real-life lawyer took one look at Burr and, according to eyewitnesses, jumped to his feet, waving his hands and yelling: "That's Perry Mason!" Burr got the part. Gardner later told him: "In twenty minutes, you captured Perry Mason better than I did in twenty years."
http://www.perrymasontvshowbook.com/pmb_c302.htm
Fred MacMurray had done some classic comedy and film noir movie roles, and as he later proved with his sitcom "My Three Sons" (it even ran longer than Perry Mason, though syndicators have always maddeningly refused to rerun any episodes prior to Season 6), MacMurray would be a fine TV star as well. I suspect he probably would have played Perry Mason much along the lines of the Sherman Hatfield character, so superbly and charmingly played by Walter Pidgeon in pinch-hitting for Raymond Burr in a later season. But Erle Stanley Gardner's novels' scant physical description of Perry Mason did give the character one attribute which MacMurray never could have lived up to, that made Raymond Burr heads and shoulders above all other actors to play the part--that stare which seemingly could bore holes through you, especially if you were a nervous witness on the stand.
shareWe don't know. We only see him within a Perry Mason construct.
He could be batting 1000 otherwise
He was called "Ham Burger" because he was usually pulverized and pounded in each
episode. Too bad that Talman was chosen as the actor to play this role. Better
choices were available.
I always got the feeling that the TV Perry Mason had a tougher time when he went up against other prosecutors, who didn't have an ax to grind so they would approach the case more professionally and less emotionally.
But none of them were as 1/10th as entertaining to watch as William Talman. It was tremendously hilarious to see Perry's maneuvers send him up a wall at times. (I feel it's a pity that the TV writers didn't always capture the best scenes when they were adapting the original novels, as TV episodes like "The Caretakers' Cat", "The Careless Kitten", and the "Sunbather's Diary" showed nowhere near the devastation Hamilton Burger suffered in the climatic court scene in the books--deservedly in the last two stories, I might add, considering the grief he put Perry through). It's a mystery why Burger was often so eager to force Perry to take the stand, considering how the prosecution's case would always fall apart every time he succeeded. (In the one of the books, both of Perry's clients and Perry and Della themselves spent most of the book on the lamb from police--and when the police finally caught them and forced them to attend the coroner's hearing to determine the cause of death--it took about five minutes for the authorities' case to fall apart and the real culprits be exposed, and Perry didn't even have to do much of the work that time! Poor authority--it made understandable probably one of Paul Drake's most memorable bits of dialogue in the books, that no district attorney in the state of California would charge someone with the murder of Perry Mason, but probably offer a reward instead!).