The Case of the Ice-Cold Hands

Joyce Bulifant who specialized in playing innocent if somewhat airheaded blonds long before Suzanne Somers became Chrissy Snow on Three's Company makes her second appearance on Perry Mason in this kind of part. She was not as good in this second appearance.

I suppose that her child like innocence is supposed to intrigue people like Perry, Della, and Paul. But in this trip out Bulifant was just too much. When she hands Perry a $27.00 retainer I thought I would heave.

For said retainer he's to take these tickets from the track and cash them in if they prove to be winners. And Raymond Burr and Barbara Hale do it and promptly get accused by Arch Johnson of taking these from one of his employees who embezzled money for betting. The employee is Dick Davalos and Bulifant is his sister.

Later on Johnson is found dead and Bulifant really needs Perry Mason.

Even with the usual Perry Mason paradigm of no guilty clients for Perry, you know Joyce could never have done it. Besides Davalos there are others as usual.

Still Bulifant's unreal character, so Jessica Simpson like, just annoyed in this episode.

The episode ends with a complicated set of facts concerning the numbering of bills--which is incongruous to the ridiculous acting of "bubbly" Joyce Builfant in her final of two Perry Mason appearances (thankfully). I would blame MeTV for their editing of the episode, but we never know too much about the relationships of the characters, until the courtroom--or their places of "business," just the omnipresent Dabs Greer who has some accounting relationship with Martin, the decedent, that knows "Lorraine" and her boy friend, Rodney. I don't know if watching this again would solve any question. In short, "Nancy" is trying to protect her big brother from embezzlement charges, and bet's everything she has on a long-shot, so there $14,250 winnings with Rodney's $50 bet--that have little or nothing to do with $30,000 missing which we never see recovered. I still don't know why Nancy's hands were "ice-cold."

Joyce Bulifant is a one trick pony. She is that vacuous eternal child with that awful voice. This story is just too much to fathom, starting with the winnings at the track. By the way, what would it cost to hire Perry Mason. Twenty-seven dollars seems a little low, even for the Sixties.

There seems to be a propensity of writers to include "dumb blondes" in at least one episode per season, invariably accompanied by the usual oboes, clarinets and muted trumpets that scream out to the viewer "stoopid girl hahaha" and of course she couldn't possibly be guilty.

These episodes are cute once -- maybe, as comic relief. They are bloody annoying by the second or third iteration.

The courtroom sequences somewhat rescue this one (I suspect this was ESG's contribution), if only because we hear less of the dumb blonde and see more plot development and some pretty strong acting. Unfortunately, anyone who's seen enough Mason episodes and is familiar with the regular stable of character actors will know who the guilty bastard is -- at least I did, because this actor is almost always the baddie.

One final gripe: does anyone really take William Hopper seriously as a ladies' man? He's almost 50 here, and gaining weight almost as quickly as Raymond Burr, yet the producers time and again employ Hopper as bon vivant, gigolo and comic foil. Maybe it was easier to buy 50 years ago, but it is just ridiculous to these modern eyes.

Another one of those episodes that is a conundrum. On one hand, take Joyce Bulifant -- a great comedic actress, but simply annoying in a dramatic role (even if a campy one). The plotline here wasn't the best, but I thoroughly enjoyed some of the courtroom play -- Perry actually sets up this scenario by advising the Richard Davalos character to get himself a shrewd lawyer; and what comes next is one of the better courtroom exchanges in the entire series. William Talman is at his exasperated best here. It almost makes putting up with the setup worth it. It then goes downhill into a rushed conclusion. A couple of casting changes could have made this one a standout. Too bad...