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Raymond Burr, 42, gives Erie Stanley Gardner s invincible legal Eye Perry Mason, the first TV face he has had since the reports of his cases started spraying from the presses (62 books in 26 years) Sad-eyed, spade-jowled Actor Burr fits Mason to the last wrinkle of his frown-tor the simple reason that Author Gardner never yet has got around to describing his hero. A so-so player for ten years in Hollywood, Burr closed in on Mason with the tenacity of a man who has landed the big role at last. He studied courtroom procedure, lectured to lawyers' groups even insists that he really wants to get a law degree. It seems a lot of unnecessary effort. According to the script, Perry always wins, and he does not need legal knowledge so much as a passion for digging up evidence and that scowling aggressive courtroom demeanor that eventually forces a confession on the witness stand. Like Gardner, Burr feels that the show is brightened with moral uplift—the murders are almost always offstage and the girls are not overly shady Perry's legman is Paul Drake, a suave, civilized type played by Bill Hopper, Columnist Hedda Hopper's son. District attorneys across the country are beginning to cry havoc: it just does not seem right for Perry & Co. never to lose a case.
Philip Carey, 34, has a hard-eyed face and a big (6 ft. 4 in., 207 lbs. ) frame that lend Philip Marlowe the look of a man who has been around. These days Raymond Chandler's Eye seldom travels from L.A., but like his original, Carey maintains the air of an adventurer, a man who might take one drink too many and wind up m Singapore with a full beard. Up from Hackensack, N.J., with stopovers as a Wall Street runner and a Jones Beach lifeguard, Carey has long been an admirer of Chandler's books, is openly proud of the fact that Chandler told him he would make a great Marlowe. What Chandler (who died last March) would think of the rest of the TV show is not quite so certain. On the picture tube his man lives a little too high, operates with a little too much fash. The original would have looked at the posh bachelor apartment, the white convertible, the sharp wardrobe, and bet the lonely fin in his pocket that this guy was on the take from some wrongos.
Stylized Violence. Though these five Eyes have latched onto the classiest clientele scores of lesser peepers operate on IV. Hollywood sound stages, dominated until a few years ago by all sorts of B movies from gangster yarns to Abbott-and-Costello comedies, now harbor an endless succession of Private Eye productions (they are B pictures too, but nobody calls them that). Hollywood prop men account for more blank cartridges in a week than the L.A. police force can match with live bulletsin the line of duty in a year Everyone is getting into the act. At Warners, where TV production accounts for a large part of the company income, Private Eye shows pack so much publicity potential that TV Chief Bill Orr keeps the press away from his crews-writers, directors producers. He handles the interviews and hangs onto the credit.