The Case of the Brazen Bequest

After the episode ends and you have time to soak in all the information, this mystery was really not bad. However when watching, the show was filled with so many characters and so much testimony that it was difficult to keep each conversation separate. It was just an episode that was too crowded.

Dr Charles Cromwell is set to be the next president of Euclid College. And one of the things that will keep the college growing is a large donation that is to be given by the straight lace James Vardon. However it appears that someone is trying to discredit Cromwell when a woman, from his not so great past, shows up drunk at the college.

Cromwell learns that Robert Haskell, personal assistant to the donor Vardon, is the person that was behind the woman appearance at the college. When he tries to confront Haskell, he finds him dead and instead of going to the police he takes an item from the apartment making him look like the killer. Perry is called in to defend the college President.

There is much, much more going on in this episode. Perhaps too much since the story seemed to indicate everyone in the school was a suspect. When the story takes us back to a murder that happened in Panama City, the viewer feels bombarded with too much confusing details. For such a simple reason for murder, this show went too far trying to make the episode very interesting. All it did was make the episode confusing. A middle of the road show for sure.

This episode has good bones, a good mystery, but as other reviewers have noted, there are just too many side plots and ancillary characters that rather than provide diversion or red herrings, instead create confusion trying to keep everything straight. Within those side plots, however, are some good exchanges, especially the courtroom scenes with Strother Martin as the college maintenance man, Pete Gibson. The casting for most of the show was competent, except for Barbara Stuart as barmaid Maizie. She was far too young to have played a barmaid to Curly, as Karl Weber was 14 years her senior. A decent watch in any case...

For reasons that become clear later on in the episode William Allyn wants to stop a certain college from giving an honorary degree to his employer Will Wright who is a most puritanical sort. Allyn's method is go around digging up dirt on various and sundry folks from the president on down connected with the college.

But it's Karl Weber who becomes in need of Perry Mason's services in this episode. And just about anyone connected with the college seems to have a motive. Weber is the president of the college and he's got an interesting and colorful past.

Which comes to people's attention when a floozy, but sick old saloon singer Barbara Stuart shows up half in the bag looking for him. But she's sicker than Weber knew. She dies sadly within the first fifteen minutes of the show. You really miss her throughout the rest of the episode.

Badly cast is John Wilder who at the age of 27 and looking it cannot really convince you he's a lovesick college kid. He's got a thing for Weber's wife Phyllis Avery, but I don't believe it.

One of the more run of the mill Perry Masons.