asg-64419

I watched The Racket (1951) starring Robert Mitchum, Rogert Ryan, and Lizabeth Scott, and was startled to see in the supporting case many familiar faces from the Perry Mason show-most notably Ray Collins and Willliam Talman, but also down the cast list, Les Tremayne of the sonorous voice (8 PM episodes), Howard Petrie (2 episodes, including TCO The Ill-Fated Faker, in which he plays businessman Carl Gorman, the world's most gullible husband), and Don Beddoe (3 episodes). Early in The Racket we also find William Conrad, the future Frank Cannon, as Detective Sergeant Turk, giving an assignment to William Talman, Office Bob Johnson.

Charlie Chan in Reno is one of my favorite films in the series. However, one thing does not ring true and disturbs me. Recall that Charlie is called into the case by Curtis Whitman, whose estranged wife Mary has been arrested for the murder of Mrs. Jeanne Bentley. (Mary was reluctantly getting a divorce at Curtis' request because he wants to marry Mrs. Bentley instead.) When Charlie asks him whether his concern is for the living or the dead, Curtis speaks only of Mary's predicament, showing no sign of grief at the loss of his fiancée; nor does Curtis ever say a word about her in subsequent scenes. (She is always referred to in the movie as "Mrs. Bentley," never "Jeanne.") This is the woman he had dumped Mary for and was intending to marry, but she might as well have been a perfect stranger, the way that Curtis behaves. We later find out that Jeanne Bentley was a wrong 'un with an unsavory past in addition to her atrocious bad manners, so Curtis is right to forget her and go back to Mary, but this still does not explain his behavior.

Maybe some dialogue or scene was cut from the print of the film we have, but as it stands Curtis Whitman has proven to be such poor husband material that Mary ought to continue with her divorce action against him. Curtis was unfaithful, ready to abandon Mary for another woman who was clearly her inferior in manners and morals-what lack of discrimination and judgment! Moreover, Curtis was so shallow in his affections that he could forget his current love as soon as her body was cold. I know I am over-thinking something that is not a fit subject for psychological analysis, and CC movies required a happy ending, but still . . . .

P. S.: A 1957 Perry Mason TV episode, "The Case of the Nervous Accomplice," features another happy ending to a similar romantic triangle in which a woman plotting to get her unfaithful husband to return to her becomes a murder suspect defended by Perry. One suspects that in real life the wayward husband would sooner or later stray again, this time discarding her for a younger new wife.