And Acting. She was such a precise actress, every move, every inflection calculated for best effect, the consummate professional.
These four Perry Mason episodes, filmed when Raymond Burr was ill, mark the era of the "guest defence army", these were allegedly friends of Perry Mason who were just as good as he was although sometimes their fields of law we're not exactly the same as Perry's.
I have to correct something though, somebody maintained that Bette Davis got "special billing" in this episode, as it turned out all of the guest lawyers for the next three episodes got the same special billing. Next weeks guest lawyer was Dr. Morbius from forbidden planet. 🌎
This is the first of four very interesting episodes, and the ending of this one certainly has an unexpected twist. But, it was kind of expected because of a certain person's actions and speech. Usually in Perry Mason episodes when we have a person who acts and speaks like this, it is a MacGuffin, it is a distraction to keep our attention away from the real murderer. But this time, we are able to zero in on the murderer due to some clever clues.
What boggles me here is that this defendant, this kid was Michael Parks! Very young and very handsome. Michael Parks from many Quentin Tarantino movies, where he plays not only a southwest sheriff but also a Mexican drug lord in the same movie. That is if you watch the entire four hour special edition of that film. I believe he is also in "planet terror" playing the same sheriff.
But here he is, maybe this is one of his very first acting jobs and he is good, he is amazingly good and you can see the chemistry between old timer pro Bette and this young, brazen kid. It was magic. It was the birth of something incredible.
Of course the episode is filled with our standard guest stars that we used to see on Bewitched, I dream of Jeannie, or Batman, I recognize the deputy from "the case of the violent village"- I was halfway expecting to see Sergeant Landro in this, but he only shows up when they go out toward the desert.
I was hoping that dear Bette would show up in more episodes, but alas, that was never to be... this was a special thing during a time when Raymond was recovering from an operation, but the cool thing here was that they actually filmed him in the hospital.
These four special episodes weren't the last time that we had guest-lawyers, there were a couple of other special defenders that would show up occasionally, but this was the only time that we had four major and wonderful guest lawyers in a row.