The Case of the Curious Bride

There are a lot of different film genres I enjoy, but one I've enjoyed as long as I can remember (at least 45 years) is 30s/40s-era detective/murder mysteries. For reasons I can't explain, the early Perry Mason movies have, until the other night, remained unknown to me. I love the Thin Man, Falcon, and the Saint - Perry Mason ticks all the same boxes. Mix a decent little murder mystery with a bit of nice comedy, snappy dialogue, an appealing cast, and a well-shot, nice looking film and you'll end up with film that will most likely work on me. The Case of the Curious Bride may not be the best of the bunch, but it is a whole lot of fun.

The plot involves a worried woman named Rhoda. She tracks down Perry with a story of "friend" who has recently remarried, but is worried her first husband may not be dead after all. What should the "friend" do? It doesn't take a detective to see that Rhoda's in trouble. Perry agrees to help, but before he can do much, Rhoda's first husband turns up dead - for real this time. With Rhoda the chief suspect and Perry's reputation on the line, he's got to find the real killer.

The Case of the Curious Bride has a couple things going for it. First, Warren William's Perry Mason is a joy to watch. Similar to Nick Charles, Mason is a worldly sort - capable of everything from cooking a gourmet meal to solving a murder to just about everything in between. And he does all with style and grace. His barbs, directed at the police or whoever gets in his way, and his overall wit are real treat. He's quite a character.

The second is Director Michael Curtiz. His direction, even in a relatively "small" picture like The Case of the Curious Bride, is spot-on. The direction is snappy, without a single wasted scene. Curtiz deftly gives the film a light, airy feel that works. The mix of comedy, mystery, and action is handled expertly. He was a real underrated professional.

Overall, a real treat that I easily rate a 7/10.

"The Case of the Curious Bride" is one of the Perry Mason films of the 1930s that starred Warren William as Perry. Erle Stanley Gardner hated these films with a passion. His 1930s Perry in the books was a passionate young man given to intense speeches. He mellowed later on, of course, and it was Gardner himself who saw Burr at the audition for Hamilton Burger and said, "That's Perry Mason." (The original star of the series was supposed to be Fred MacMurray.) So it's easy to see why Gardner despised everything about this particular Mason incarnation.

Regardless of how Gardner felt, this film is a lot of fun, thanks to a breezy performance by Warren William, who flirts shamelessly with every woman who crosses his path and fools the DA time and time again. The dialogue is fast and witty, and Curtiz keeps the action going at a breakneck speed. Allan Jenkins is Paul Drake like you've never seen him - Perry calls him Spudsy -- and Della is the beautiful Clare Dodd. Margaret Lindsay is the woman Perry is defending, who comes to him with a marital problem, i.e., the husband she thought was dead is alive - at first. Later, he winds up dead, in the person of...Errol Flynn in his first American appearance - and his wife is accused. Flynn doesn't have much to do except appear in flashback. For some reason, instead of Los Angeles, the story is set in San Francisco - more atmosphere, perhaps.

William seems to have had the same approach to this character as he had for Philo Vance and the Sam Spade character he played in Satan Met a Lady, but he's so delightful, it doesn't matter. He always looks like he's having a blast, and the audience does too. Hard to believe that until he hit B movies in the mid-'30s, he generally played heavies, but he did, and played them well. When his leading man days were over, he continued in character roles until his death in 1948. How great that we can see his talent now on Turner Classic Movies.

This film is a great reminder that during the Depression, Hollywood gave audiences films that to enjoy and watch to forget their troubles for awhile. I'm not in the Depression per se; I'm just depressed, but "The Case of the Curious Bride" put a smile on my face. It will yours, too.

This is the only Warren William Perry Mason movie I've seen so far, and I thought it was a lot of fun! It gallops along at a breakneck pace, partly thanks to its super-kinetic (and rather disorienting) editing. William and Dodd bring a really delicious tongue-in-cheek camaraderie to the roles of Perry and Della, while Mayo Methot (was she already married to Bogart?)has a lot of fun with the small part of Florabelle. The coroner is not to be missed, by the way!

It is fascinating to see what a different interpretation of the character of Perry Mason William gives; he seems to be drawing as much on his previous performance as Philo Vance as on anything in the books. Naturally, this makes him nothing at all like Raymond Burr's Mason. (And he's in San Francisco, by the way, not Los Angeles.) I certainly missed the gravitas and moral authority that Burr gave the part, but William is hilarious and highly professional, pulling off a performance not unlike that of a drunken tightrope walker working without a net with aplomb and smooth daring-do.

The murder (of Errol Flynn, no less!) is incidental.

Margaret Lindsay approaches Warren William to ask him a question for a friend. It's always for a friend, isn't it? She's about to be married and wants to make sure her first husband is dead. While William goes in search of a bottle of Chablis '21, Miss Lindsay disappears. When the coffin of her first husband is opened, it contains a wooden Indian.

The second Perry Mason movie has him in San Francisco, still a sharp, urbane, sophisticated man, and a bit of a shyster when it comes to defending his clients. It's a nicely tangled little mystery under the direction of Michael Curtiz, with the snap and crackling pace that had become a standard for Warners programmers during the pre-code era, and which had not quite vanished.

Warren William reprises his role as Perry Mason for the second time in The Case of the Curious Bride. This time around Perry must deal with a woman - a young girl that was acquainted with Perry Mason when a child - who wants to marry but has a husband alive now that was supposedly dead four years ago. Just as in the first Mason mystery, we get a pretty taut mystery with lots of red herrings and some fine character performances. This film though is much more fun than The Case of the Howling Dog for two very important reasons: 1)Michael Curtiz(director of films like Casablanca) directs this go round and makes some vast improvements on directorial style, acting changes, and redesigning William's portrayal of Mason. In the first film Warren William was almost stuffy and starch collared, but here William is having a whole lot of fun(very much like his Philo Vance). He is a gourmet chef, a womanizer, a one-of-the-boys, and a witty talker. Curtiz really lets William open up; I am sure to the chagrin of author Erle Stanley Gardner for the even bigger departure from his character's real persona. Nonetheless, Warren William makes this picture work and gets help from Margaret Lindsay as the woman in peril, Claire Dodd as his Friday/Juliet Della Street, and Allen Jenkins in for comic relief as Spudsy Drake. Errol Flynn does have a BRIEF role as the dead man - only really gets to act BRIEFLY in a flashback scene. My favorite character is the mortician friend of Mason's named Wilbur Strong and played by screen stalwart character actor Olin Howard. He is very funny and reprises his role in the next Mason film The Case of the Lucky Legs. Of the four Mason films starring Warren William as the pragmatic Perry Mason, The Case of the Curious Bride is the best in my opinion.