The Case of the Moth-Eaten Mink

This is a very unusual episode of Perry Mason. While eating a steak dinner at a local restaurant, Perry and Della are approached by the restaurant's owner, Morrey. One of his waitresses has just been run down by a car in the street, and Morrey for some reason is very concerned about the presence, in her locker, of a mink coat. He begs Perry to take the coat and also begs Mason to represent him. Perry cannot figure out why a situation that would at most get his restaurant some negative publicity would require the services of an attorney.

But then the waitress disappears from the hospital bandages and all as does Morrie. And a pawn ticket is found in a pocket of the mink coat. The ticket redeems a gun which was used to shoot a L. A. cop several months ago. Now Lt. Tragg is really breathing down Mason's neck because he thinks he is knowingly covering for a cop killer, and Perry thinks that maybe he has been set up and had by his client to take the fall in all of this.

Without getting into too many details, the big reveal comes not in a courtroom confession this week, but in a hail of bullets in Perry's office, with veteran Tragg showing he still has some Dirty Harry in him in spite of the snow on the roof.

The atmosphere is very much like the film noirs of the time, which was normally not the ambience of an episode of Perry Mason. You have plenty of men with hats talking tough and gangsters hanging about both dead and alive with cryptic messages written in lipstick on the bottom of tables in seedy hotel rooms.

This episode of Perry Mason was actually filmed in 1956, about a year before the series started. Thus you may notice a particularly thin Raymond Burr with a much more closely cropped head of hair than he has even in the series' actual premiere.

This episode which we learned was actually taken from an Erle Stanley Gardner novel has a good deal more action to it than a lot of the Mason TV episodes. While Perry Mason and Della Street are having what looks like a real good dinner at Robert Osterloh's restaurant one of the servers catches sight of someone and abruptly runs out of the restaurant with shots being fired after here into the street where she's nearly run down in traffic.

The waitress Kay Faylen is someone Osterloh has taken a personal interest in and he pays his friend Raymond Burr a thousand dollar retainer. As Burr correctly surmises Osterloh is in a jackpot with Faylen involving a several month old cop killing. Faylen left behind a moth eaten mink coat that has a pawn ticket with a clue to said cop killing.

Ray Collins and fellow cop Douglas Kennedy are pretty ruthless in investigating this and Burr gets right into the investigation of his own with William Hopper far more than the normal episode.

The killer is pretty obvious here, but the unmasking is not in the usual venue of a trial. A twist on the Perry Mason paradigm.

This is a very good episode among other great episodes in Season 1. Perry took great interest in helping his friend with a fur coat and was fascinated with the pawn ticket. The cast was very good and as others have noted the film noir aspect was played out through-out the episode. Della was intentionally kept away from some of the action when Perry and Paul Drake went to the hotel. I was too young to watch Perry Mason when it was on television and never saw the re-runs either, however watching them in 2019 impresses me most with the quality of the character actors appearing in each episodes casts. This was no exception.

A must see if you're a fan of the series, the pilot episode that stands out from all the others, and with a noir-ish slant to it. Filmed about a year before the series began, interesting to see some changes, including a younger Raymond Burr sporting a different hair cut.

Perry and Della just happen to be eating in a restaurant that has a waitress caught up in a lot of trouble. Katherine Faylen (daughter of actor Frank Faylen) plays Dixie who apparently someone wants DEAD. She also has an old mink coat, which the owner of the restaurant, Morey (played by Robert Osterloh) gives to Perry for safe keeping. It's all tied to another man who conveniently gets killed, a pawn ticket and a gun that was used in the murder of a cop. Accordingly, Perry has to represent both Dixie and Morey, suspected of murder. You have to admit, it's a clever set-up.

I agree with the last reviewer, Lt. Tragg is mad as a hornet here, and rightfully so, even suspecting Perry of attempting to pull a fast one on him, covering something up with his clients. It's unusual to see Osterloh as one of Perry's clients, generally cast as heavies in movies and tv shows. Western actor Douglas Kennedy plays Sergeant Jaffrey. Don't miss comedian Connie Cezon as Gertie, who would be a fixture in the series. Often seen with the Three Stooges.

Excellent writing by Laurence Marks, known for HOGANS HEROES and MASH. Veteran director Ted Post handles the cast quite well -- the revealing courtroom scene -- which you can't miss. Post was senior director for GUNSMOKE and PEYTON PLACE.

A real change of pace, and a bit on the historical side for tv buffs.

SEASON 1 EPISODE 13 remastered CBS dvd box set. 2 box sets/ 5 dvds each. Released 2006. The entire series is in a fabulous (if not giant) box set. Makes a wonderful gift.

A really good forties type whodunnit. A tough guy owns a restaurant and gets involved with a pretty girl waitress. Something is wrong. The waitress is chased and shot at, ending in the hospital. This leads to some neat detective work with the police out there doing their thing. Tragg is really significant in this one. One thing i noticed. Burger's objections are just about always overruled.