Mondays Missives

• I've started watching Perry Mason on cbs.com, I'd forgotten how great that show was.


• I hated it growing up- mom watched it and I missed The Dick Van Dyke show or something as a result. Later in life it would come on about the time I would pick my girlfriend up for lunch in college. There would always be this same girl in the dorms living room finishing a soap when I'd get there, then she'd put on PM and we'd watch part of it together before we parted ways for lunch.


• I looked up Raymond Burrs bio- I didn't know he was homosexual. I'm curious to see if he ever has a girlfriend in the series and also whether he ever loses a case.


• I thought Della Street his assistant was beautiful when I was a kid. He had an Orchid farm and cultured a certain type of orchid he named Barbara Hale after the actress. In the 20 years his nursery was opened it was responsible for bringing 1500 new varieties into the world catalog.


• Burr was shot in the stomach in WWII on Okinawa. He did newsreels for the troops in Vietnam where he acted as though he was talking to a troop personally giving encouragement and sending the best wishes of the country he'd then sit down under a shade tree and read a passage from the Bible. Pretty simple, pretty powerful stuff.


• His office in downtown LA was in the Brent Bldg. His phone number Madison 5 1190.


• The show ran for ten years and only shot one color episode.


• From the very first episodes a lot of scenes were shot outside- not just on sets either, out in the real world, it's interesting to see the old cars and different architecture of buildings.


• I'm curious to see how much and in what light black people will be portrayed in the coming episodes.


• William Talman played the DA he opposed and was the first actor to do an anti smoking PSA- while he was dying of lung cancer.