The Case of the Stuttering Bishop

Moviecut—The Case of the Stuttering Bishop

source: The Case of the Stuttering Bishop

The Case of the Stuttering Bishop

I missed the beginning of this movie. I enjoyed Perry Mason with Raymond Burr while growing up, so I was fan of enchanted to stumble upon this movie, which I also learned is part of a series that I will now look for. I watched this on TCM. Missing the beginning scenes might be why I was left confused & missed the point of the title. One really needs to pay close attention or you'll not be able to follow it very well & I sure missed something as I was left wondering where the real Janice was - or did the fake Janice also turn out to be the real one? But one thing I didn't miss was was a production goof in which the courtroom chairs & defendant's table are suddenly empty in the midst of Mason's cross of Brownings grandson! As the camera pans back & forth from Perry to the grandson, those chairs & table are filled with people, only to become empty, then fill up again! And that scene lasts for several seconds. Quite funny!

Donald Woods is Perry Mason in the last of the Warner Brothers' series, with Ann Dvorak as Della Street. Woods is adequate, but little more under the direction of William Clemens. Tom Kennedy is on hand as a dumb hotel detective, and while I usually find him enjoyable, this one has him as annoying, present to hold the vital clue, but unable to remember what it is until almost the very end, at which point the entire mystery is solved. But what a mystery! It has so many plots and pieces that it is nigh unto indescribable... but it has a script to adept that it makes perfect sense as it goes along. How can a bishop, who must speak in public, stutter? Who is really the grand daughter of Douglas Wood, and who killed him, and why? Will the murderer confess on the witness stand? It's classic clockwork mystery writing. Too bad the acting isn't more compelling, but perhaps, given the essential 'B' nature of this movie, there wasn't screen time enough for plot and acting.

Perry Mason gets an unusual client. Australian Bishop William Mallory is that stuttering client who wants to clear the name of a woman who supposedly killed a man 22 years earlier. The bishop claims to be a witness but he is knocked out in his hotel room. Oil tycoon Renald C. Brownley is looking to put her away for some unknown reason. I think I followed the case but the movie is not making it easy. I like the start but it gets complicated. It's the sixth and final of the early Perry Mason movies. The character would gain new life on television after this. As a cinematic experience, he is not popping whereas the television character would gain familiarity with the audience.

As someone who has read all 82 of the Perry Mason novels, I have to say that this is the best I've seen of the Warner Brothers Perry Mason films. Readers of Gardner's mysteries will appreciate how faithfully the screen writers were able to keep to the essentials of the original plot in this short 70 minute film. This film is far superior to the turkeys WB made with Warren William (although that's not saying much.) And Donald Woods was more like the literary Mason than Raymond Burr, who was almost fat enough by the end of the TV series to play Nero Wolfe! And, of course, there's the great 1930's atmosphere in this film, something the TV series could never hope to reproduce.