The Case of the Fifty Millionth Frenchman

An important episode to watch due to the public's fascination with skiing, as to the 1964 Innsbruck Winter Olympics, perhaps. But the old culprit, "barbiturates in the Thermos bottle" causing the death of Andre--loathed by every man in this episode, as to prowess over all the good looking women in this episode. Think of David McCallum's career with CBS, and the early stages where he plays a naive, bumbling, giant glass wearing, nerd to a an ongoing career as medical examiner--I don't know if there is an actor in TV that has had a longer run on TV. Maybe this part was the first to launch him as the sexy, cerebral, foil that he played through out his career.

Hilarious that the previous two commenters single out the accents as a weakness of this episode. Two of the three French characters in the episode are, in fact, native French speakers. One is a Frenchman and one is French Canadian. David McCallum, the third actor using an accent, is a trained dialectician, and to a French native-speaking ear, his dialect work in this episode is quite good. Most viewers are not discerning or educated when it comes to actors' accents, (the correct professional term of art is actually "dialect", not "accent"), and it seems that the famously put-on one used by Maurice Chevalier in GiGi is the standard most audiences are familiar with and accept. Of course, there are as many authentic dialects/accents in every language as there are American accents, and there are at least two in this Perry Mason episode. In this instance, the episode's plot is not the series' strongest and the acting, in general, is not terrific, but the accents are actually one of the stronger elements of the episode.

I have said before on Perry Mason summaries that people really need to do some research before they start talking about the actors and actresses in the series. Too many of the reviewers have stated in this episode that the French accents were ridiculous or not at all what they should have been. Did they ever even look to see if the actor and actress who were the main French speakers were indeed French? In this episode yes the two were either French or French Canadian so the accents were authentic. Also there is one reviewer who completely messed up in the telling of the story because they said that the character of Ninette was the one who went to Perry Mason to get her friend out of trouble. She only did that after her friend did it first and this person who posted this review got this completely backwards. Also there was another poster who said that the line that had to do with the title was spoken by Perry Mason at the end. This is not true; it was David McCallum as Philippe who said it.

We have here another of the "ethnic" episodes (French in this case). I don't have any problem with the French dialects -- they are more than adequate (2 actors were French speakers, and David McCallum's is quite good). The plot is the same as we've seen before, so it's basically just the same dancer in a different costume. The direction is a bit ham-fisted, and the side-plots convoluted and uninteresting. The murderer is pretty apparent early on, so much of the suspense deflates rather quickly. It's more a matter of how the killer would be unmasked. Kind of a ho-hum episode, aside from the French dialects.

I'll just stick to the moment the plane crashed.. "Pull up! HIT THE GAS!!!" LOL! And the plane is obviously close enough to cause a flash of light on the controller's face, but neither he nor the others in the tower bother to duck in any way. Hilarious! But, typical PM! 4/5/2023-Just watched it again. What a chucklefest!

And now, for the sake of meeting IMdb's ridiculous character minimums: I'll just stick to the moment the plane crashed.. "Pull up! HIT THE GAS!!!" LOL! And the plane is obviously close enough to cause a flash of light on the controller's face, but neither he nor the others in the tower bother to duck in any way. Hilarious! But, typical PM!