The Case of the Borrowed Brunette

I found The Case Of The Borrowed Brunette just a little too complex and at the same time the real murderer was rather obvious. And that's always bad with a Perry Mason episode since the paradigm is always that Raymond Burr never defends guilty clients.

And in this case it is correct to use the plural. Joe DeSantis hires Margaret Field to move into an apartment and pose as Paula Raymond. As this is the Fifties and girls weren't into having too much fun yet, Sheila Bromley who is Fields's aunt moves in with her to be chaperon.

It's a simple task, Fields bears more than passing resemblance to Raymond so she moves into the apartment and is wined and dined by DeSantis and gets paid for doing it. That's so Raymond can cheat on her husband with her real boyfriend.

But when DeSantis winds up with a bullet in his forehead, Bromley and Fields are arrested.

I won't go into more, but I was not surprised in the slightest at the outcome.

This episode involves a women hired to impersonate someone in order to deceive another. Just by that line we know this is not going to end well for the hired women. Not only for her, but she brings along her aunt that also gets caught up in this spider web of deception.

This episode has a good cast. Beautiful Margaret Fields (also known as Maggie Mahoney after marriage) does a good job casted as the person hired to impersonate Helen Reynolds, played by Paula Raymond. Rounding out the guest actors are Shelia Bromley, who played many bit parts in the 50 and 60's, and John Stephenson, who is Mr voice-over, worked in many roles in the 60's and now is doing voice-overs for cartoons around the world.

Not really much action in this episode other than classic Perry. We do get to see Hamilton Burger's office. (This is a treat that I will leave for the viewer) We also get Lt Tragg at his best when we see him arrest and testify during this episode. And Paul Drake seems to have a lot of face time and more dialog than in other later episodes.

At the end of the show I am left with a feeling that I get many times while watching "Perry Mason"- Why did someone not lawyer up? Anyway I gave this a seven. Not the best of the early shows but one you feel like you did not waste time watching.

PS- If you watch more episodes then get ready to see Paula Raymond and Shelia Bromley again. They each played in five other "Perry Mason" episodes throughout the series run.

The plot starts out with a great premise. Two women are salaried to do things that involve impersonating someone. But they are mostly kept in the dark. Eventually, the man that hired them is murdered and these women are taken into custody. At some point it all gets quite pedestrian. Still, it's a decent episode.

Here we have the typical (and overused) plot line of the jealous husband/cheating wife, but with a twist. This lends itself to some interesting situations, which further lead to a murder. There are a couple of plot devices that are worked into the script that appeared just a little too obvious on their face. The eventual guilty party is also so incredibly obvious from the get-go that you'd have to be pretty naive to not see it coming. It's more a question of 'how' the guilty party did it rather than 'who' they are. As for the cast performances, I have no complaints, and the directing is adequate. A bit above average...