The Case of the Dangerous Dowager

Poker functions as a plot device in several Perry Mason episodes, and it is front and center in this one. The location of much of the action is the Clover Club in Gardena, CA; even at the time (1959), poker playing was legal in certain parts of California, and Gardena was the home to six legal card clubs (none of them named the Clover Club, of course, but you get the idea.) Perry and Paul are shown playing at the Clover Club and Paul tries to run a bluff, which is called by a woman poker player played by the one and only Ellen Corby, who would later play Grandma on the 1970's TV show, The Waltons.

Incidentally, Ellen Corby had a small part in the Alfred Hitchcock classic, "Vertigo", which came out a year before this episode aired. In another Hitchcock connection, the accused killer in this episode is played by Patricia Cutts. Cutts was born in London, England in 1926 and her father was Graham Cutts, who was a well known film director in the 1920's. Cutts' assistant director was none other than a young Alfred Hitchcock, who would eventually step into the director's chair and come to America, becoming an iconic figure in the history of film. Sadly, Patricia Cutts died young, in 1974.

A casino, a young alcoholic woman with a gambling addiction, an ugly, controlling grandmother with oodles of money, and a blackmail scheme, gets us to this sort of sick episode. Perry is frustrated because if the nasty actions of virtually everyone in the plot. No real heroes.

Patricia Cutts is Perry Mason's eventual client when she's accused of murdering Robert Strauss. Originally Raymond Burr is hired by her grandmother Katharine Givney an imperious old woman used to issuing orders. She finds out early that Burr is not going to be treated like her hired help early on.

Cutts owes some heavy gambling debts to a club owned by Strauss and Leo Gordon. Strauss is trying to make some extra money on his own by selling the debts to her estranged husband Gene Blakely. Blakely will use these in a custody battle he is having with Cutts over their son who as Givney's great grandson will be heir to a considerable fortune.

When Strauss winds up shot to death its Cutts that Ray Collins arrests for the crime. The usual nice mix of suspects is included in this Mason story. I will say that the motive for killing Strauss by the eventually discovered murderer is a strange one. And the murderer was one you wouldn't suspect for most of the story it was like our perpetrator was part of the wallpaper.

I couldn't quite buy into the characters here in Givney's family so this is not one of the better Perry Masons for me.

The actions in this story all evolve around an elderly matriarch named Matilda Benson and how she handles her grown-up children. Ms Benson, and the wealth that she has accumulated, has this problem of wanting to control everything in her adult children's lives. And by any means possible, Matilda is going to live her late life through the actions of her children, Robert Benson and Sylvia Oxman.

Due to Matilda interference, Sylvia is going through a divorce from her husband, Frank. It seems that Frank can no longer take Sylvia running back to her mother in each time of stress. Frank wants a divorce and the custody of their son. And with Sylvia having some gambling IOU's it just may prove that Sylvia is not fit to be the best parent.

The IOU's are held by a gambling house co-owner, Danny Barker. There is a bidding war ongoing between Frank and Sylvia for the IOU's with Barker playing each for more money. It becomes sour when Danny Barker is found shot to death by none other than a pistol owned by Sylvia. This is when Perry goes from a simple paper-trail case to a murder case. With many witnesses and evidence against Perry's client, it will prove difficult to get the possibly fractured female acquitted of the crime.

The story seemed to drag at the beginning but picked up when we actually got to the murder and the evidence surrounding the killing. With so many people giving opposite court testimony, it appeared like this was going to be a confusing set of circumstance. If almost felt like we were going to have one of those moments when someone from the gallery shouts his or her confession. However, the story ended in a more sober manner when Perry connected all the pieces of this mystery. With some nice acting by the cast, this episode proved worthy for the series.

NOTE- Patricia Cutts, that played Sylvia, was always on top of her game when acting. It was sad when at age 48 she committed suicide just as she beginning a regular stint on a popular British soap-opera.

All the characters here, without exception, are tired cliches. The wealthy domineering mother, the cruel, gleeful blackmailer, and the fallen woman in distress, afflicted (the script tells us) by alcoholism, compulsive gambling, and spiritual emptiness, but miraculously redeemable (we are supposed to hope) by the unconditional faith of her defense attorney. This thankless role is played by Patricia Cutts, trying her best to look sultry and to sound like Grace Kelly. (This was 1959, five years after Grace had done her three big hits with Alfred Hitchcock, and three years after she had become a princess of Monaco.) But Patricia Cutts ain't no Grace Kelly.

Perry plays the fatherly, gentle, wise man-of-the-world-who-can-see-the-good-in-everyone, delivering brain-numbingly banal platitudes about suffering and spiritual growth, in his velvety bass voice. Raymond Burr was a really great actor, and he proves it by actually putting some feeling into his lines here. Other than that, there's nothing worth watching (as far as I can see). Even the character-actors and bit-part players are dull, which is unusual for this series.