The Case of the Desperate Daughter

Gigi Peareau is the Perry Mason client in this episode and a most uncooperative client she is. She's arrested for the murder of Werner Klemperer who was a distant cousin of her stepmother Osa Massen. Klemperer recently arrived from Germany starts insinuating himself in the family of Robert F. Simon who is Perreau's father and Massen's husband.

Perreau fakes an amnesia act that fools no one. Later she becomes more candid about her role in the events but now insist on her guilt. Very obvious someone is being protected.

I wasn't crazy about this story for precisely that reason. Seems that the perpetrator would not have wanted Perreau to be guilty of any kind of homicide charge. But she nearly was convicted more by her own stupidity than anything else.

Not one of the better stories.

An episode notable for being directed by Arthur Hiller who went on to have a respectable movie career. This included a best director Oscar nomination for Love Story.

Perry Mason defends the daughter of a wealthy man who was crippled in a horse riding accident. Doris Bannister claims to have amnesia and she was having a fling with an East German man called Riker.

However Riker has been looking for Doris's stepmother, Lisa Bannister who is also from East Germany. Lisa is running away from her past and has no desire to return to East Germany. She is wary of Riker who claims to be her cousin.

Doris got involved with Riker in order to aid her stepmother but she is now accused of Riker's murder.

The courtroom scenes were involving enough but something did not click right with the whole story.

Maybe in 1958, viewers might have had a fair idea of the fragmented post world war 2 Germany and especially Berlin. What Lisa is running away from is not clearly spelt out.

Doris was taking one hell of a risk to protect her stepmother by taking a murder rap.

Even the end reveal was confusing. Paul Drake turns up with some last minute evidence in a box. I just wanted to know how did he managed to get it.

This story stretched credibility in that I cannot see the very attractive daughter involving herself with the bald and sleazy "Colonel Klink" even to protect a stepmom who's " done so much for her". This amounts to prostitution. Surely Doris could have engaged PM to help get her stepmom right with immigration on the basis of asylum from a communist regime.

The episode begins when an East German gentleman named Stefan Riker arrives looking for a woman. The woman that Riker is looking for is now named Lisa Bannister who has married divorced Edward Bannister. Edward is crippled and has to walk using two walking canes. The married couple lives near LA with Edward's daughter Doris.

We learn that Lisa Bannister is the daughter of an East German Communist Party official and is in the United States with a forged passport and could be sent back to East Germany, a place she does not wish to return.

For some reason the step daughter, Doris, starts a relationship with the much older Stefan Riker in what appears to be a scheme to help Lisa's problem. The next thing we know is that Doris appears in Perry's office claiming amnesia. And when they find Stefan Riker dead all the evidence points to the amnesia victim, Doris Bannister.

Perry will defend Doris in court on the charge of murder but it will not be the easiest task. Perry's client hides valuable information and even yells out, in open court, that Perry is lying about information that was given. But Perry, with help from the prosecution's exhibit, will show that the person responsible for the murder is someone else in the cast.

The show just did not have the usual flare of the first season episodes. The circumstance surrounding the plot was somewhat odd which lead to the writer's having to provide a lot of information to get the episode complete in the hour format. Even with the interesting ending of the show, it just seemed too long in building up any suspense for the viewer.

Something about this episode kept my interest more than the usual Mason; perhaps because I was a child of the "Cold War" and visited Communist East Berlin with college friends. I also liked the persona of Mrs. Bannister, who did have that hard to define European face, and was a good actress to boot. There were several red herrings that made the final gotcha a surprise to me. Well acted and paced (by Perry Mason standards) make this another good Season One outing.