Perry Mason (TV Series) The Case of the Lucky Loser (1958) User Reviews

If you think you know the facts- keep watching till the end

[kfo9494 · 10/10 · 12 April 2013]

This is a different kind of episode than we are accustom since we know the facts early in the show instead of a who-done-it kind of mystery. But we know that the wrong person has been accused of the crime and Perry has been brought in to defend the lad.

To give you some background without giving away the crime, the story involves a powerful family with the named of Balfour's. Ted Balfour was first convicted of hit-and-run manslaughter charge into the killing of George Egan. Hamilton Burger has questions about the death and revisits the body to find a gunshot wound to the head. Now Hamilton Burger issues a murder warrant on Ted Balfour.

Now we, as viewers, know the circumstance of the murder, this is when Perry will enter the picture. When the murder trial begins, Perry will move for dropping the charges on the grounds of double jeopardy. Ted has already been convicted of the death and cannot be retried. The Judge makes a ruling to go ahead with the trail and a higher court would rule on the double jeopardy request. So the court hearing will continue.

During the trail we hear some strange testimony from the witnesses. Since we know the details of the incident we know most are committing perjury. But Perry, with much help form Paul Drake Detective Agency, will have to fight off all the lies in order to get his client cleared of not only the murder charge but also cleared of the manslaughter case. But before the end of the episode there is a bizarre twist that will have each viewer flabbergasted by the evidence and event of the murder.

At first I thought knowing the details of the murder early in the show would diminish the value of the show. However I was proved wrong as this episode was strangely interesting. And one person that could have had perjury charges against them will be facing much worse. And we, the viewer, will be entertained to the fullest.

Simply brilliant

[shakspryn · 10/10 · 18 October 2017]

This is an absolutely top-notch episode, the kind that marks this as one of the very best mystery shows ever to come to television. In this episode, we have: action; a complex legal concept, explained so the audience can grasp it (not easy! I'm a lawyer!); beautiful women (well, Della, as always, plus gorgeous Patricia Medina and classy Heather Angel)and a tough antagonist for Perry; and an outstanding story. The pacing is swift. This is one you will remember.

One of the Best Mysteries in the Series

[mrblack-11 · 9/10 · 4 October 2013]

I enjoyed this episode a lot. One of the most cohesive plots and endings, yet still, for me, a complete surprise.

This isn't a fun episode with lots of interplay with Street and Drake. It's all business and lots of it. And a bit on the dark side. Shades of Chinatown with lots of corruption and a very dysfunctional family. Lots of levels to uncover, but it didn't feel contrived (as many episodes do). Really first rate story.

Not that it doesn't have some small plots holes. But they are forgivable, if not undetectable. I didn't notice them until I read another review here. The red herrings are palatable, minimal, and suit the story.

And, for a change, no blackmail.

Bulldog Mason

[Hitchcoc · 9/10 · 15 December 2021]

Perry goes against a guy whom we would call a fixer. He earns a huge salary to get rich people out of trouble by manipulation, no questions asked. When he butts head with the great Perry Mason, he face a worthy opponent. As viewers, we get to see Mason accept the challenge, horns out. I like to see the disreputable mighty fall.

Beautiful Bad Girl

[darbski · 10/10 · 2 June 2017]

**SPOILERS** See this episode before going further. First, the other reviews were right on. Just a couple of points, though.

1)Douglas Kennedy played a very good part as always; he has that kinda crooked look about him, anyway. Also, he drove a really beautiful Corvette.

2)No one brought up what happened to the crooked old fart that changed his testimony in the original trial. He sold out really fast, too; why settle for a loan, when the payoff should have been a gift? Nobody checked HIS bank account, did they? 3)In those days, .22 bullets were not jacketed, making identification by microscope comparison impossible. This is one of the main reasons (true deal) that they were used in so many mob murders. The gunsmith's testimony, therefore, was useless.

4) Hamilton Burger really overstepped in exhuming the dead guy. All evidence pointed to a traffic incident, not murder. The fixer actually called it right; it should have been dropped right there. Hamilton didn't trust his A.D.A.s?

5) Patricia Medina was the equal of Barbara Hale in beauty. I NEVER thought I'd say that, but it's true; she was an incredibly beautiful woman. The best looking murderess in this series. Her acting credits are in IMDb.

6) The kid was still a wimp,, and his Gramps was a pretty good guy, despite being a crotchety curmudgeon - I liked him.

Perry Mason meets his evil twin

[dimplet · 9/10 · 24 May 2014]

The reason this is one of the best Perry Mason episodes is perhaps because the story was written by Erle Stanley Gardner, himself, as a book that was first serialized in The Saturday Evening Post in 1956. (The teleplay is written by Seelig Lester.) I see that some of the Perry Mason episodes are based on Gardner's books going back to the 30s. I wonder if they are better than the average episode written by other writers?

I also wonder if the original print version of this story had clues tucked away in the more voluminous text that were missing from the one-hour TV version? I suspect it is harder to camouflage clues on TV than in a book.

Like any good mystery, the first and most obvious suspect probably didn't do it, and this is especially true with the Mason episodes. Usually who we might think is the most likely suspect shifts as the show progresses and the background details become clearer.

The moral of the show could, perhaps, be: Appearances can be deceiving. Mason knows this, better than the police, who are all to quick to accept facts that are amenable to their case. This is key here, as Mason is more careful about checking the veracity of the facts the police seem to have established.

-- Spoiler alert --

What we have is layer upon layer of appearances and illusions, largely created by the unapologetic fixer for the oligarchical California Balfour family, a sort of evil genius alter-ego of Perry Mason. It is not every day Mason encounters someone so intelligent, and he respects him as a worthy adversary, and because he is doing his job to protect the Balfour interests.

The most interesting scene is where he tries to intimidate Mason, even while admitting some criminal responsibility. We wonder what is going through Mason's mind, and whether it is having any effect. We see later that Mason's probable reaction was to wonder what his real motive was. It is like a match between two chess masters.

The best way to watch Perry Mason is with a group of friends, and to try to analyze who did it, and why, as the show progresses. I wonder how many would guess the real culprit in this show? It certainly came as a surprise to me. The only person you could be sure was innocent was the rich guy's grandson, of course, because he was Mason's client.

With many of the Mason episodes, there seem to be too many gaps in the trail for the viewer to be able to pin the culprit ahead of time, and for the viewer to feel entirely satisfied when the guilty party is revealed. To me, the ending here was very satisfying, and that's all I will say about it.

-- End spoiler alert --

Raymond Burr IS Perry Mason. How could anyone else play the role as well? If you don't believe me, listen to Gardner:

"At the auditions to cast the parts, as Burr entered the room, Gardner shouted, "That's him! That's Mason!", changing the course of Burr's career forever." -- Wikipedia

Oddly, I think Burr more closely matches the original book description of Hamilton Burger than William Talman: "a broad-shouldered, thick-necked individual with a close-cropped moustache."

Burr fans should watch the episode of the Jack Benny Show where Perry Mason appears in Benny's dream to defend him against the charge of murder of a rooster.

-- Spoiler alert --

Benny was innocent, which is more than could be said of Mason.

.

The best episode of the series that I have seen so far

[AlsExGal · 10/10 · 4 December 2022]

This episode has everything - suspense, obvious lying and not so obvious lying, head scratching moments when you wonder exactly what law school Hamilton Burger attended, and red, green, and blue herrings.

Lawrence Balfour (Bruce Bennett) is getting on a train headed for Mexico and kissing his wife. Harriet, goodbye. But it is just a ruse. Lawrence gets off of the train and follows his wife in a car he has stashed nearby. He follows her to a remote cabin, she greets her lover, and Lawrence waits for her to leave. Lawrence, armed with a revolver, goes into the cabin to confront the other man, that other man shines a bright light in his eyes, there is a struggle, the gun goes off, and the other man falls to the floor dead. Lawrence frantically calls - not the police - but the Balfour family fixer as to what to do. The fixer, Steven Boles, tells Lawrence to catch the same train that he got off of at the next stop, try to get on unobserved, and act as though he never got off of that train. Boles says that he will take care of the body. Did I mention that the Balfour family is very wealthy, thus they can afford an able and loyal fixer.

Things don't go as planned. The body is discovered too soon, somebody sees the license plate of Steven's car as it speeds away from the dead body - the license plate belongs to Lawrence's nephew Ted. Ted was out drinking that night at the goodbye party for Lawrence, and can't account for his time during the accident. Ted is charged with vehicular manslaughter.

There is a hung jury before Perry gets involved in this case of the wrong man charged with the wrong crime. How does Perry figure out what actually happened? He doesn't have to figure out what I just told you. The fixer actually TELLS Perry everything just to let him know who has all of the power in this situation. It is the only time I can remember that somebody told Perry Mason to sit down and then he does so.

If you know what to look for in an episode of Perry Mason, some "tells" will hit you, as in - This is a common situation on Perry Mason, why did they do this scene in this particular way? Also note that, in the age of DNA and hard rules about forensics, the kinds of mistakes being made here by the prosecution would simply not be made today, or even in 1958.

It's great, and includes one of my favorite actors

[ColonelPuntridge · 9/10 · 24 November 2020]

It's a wonderful episode, for many reasons, including Douglas Kennedy, who is just terrific at portraying sinister, menacing characters. He was in four installments of the show; this is his second appearance. (His first was the first filmed: The Case of the Moth-Eaten Mink (1957).) He has a gravelly low-baritone voice similar to J.D. Cannon's, Neville Brand's, and Lee Marvin's. But he also has a sneaky, shifty-eyed quality which the more famous tough-guys do not have. In fact, his face and demeanor bring back my childhood memories of President Richard Nixon trying to muscle his way out of his terminal scandal. (And I see that he (Douglas Kennedy) died, coincidentally, in 1973, when the impeachment proceedings began.)

He's definitely on my watch-everything list now.

Much like the novel

[VetteRanger · 8/10 · 14 April 2023]

The "Lucky Loser" in this case is the defendant, who--while trying to get assistance to repay a $20,000 gambling debt, is framed for manslaughter, which becomes murder.

I've seen (I believe) all 281 Perry Mason series episodes, as I used to watch them every day way back when TBS cycled them endlessly. There were only 82 Perry Mason novels, and this was novel number 52. I always go back and watch the episode matching a novel to see how they compare. Sometimes they're not all that close, at times even changing the murderer to a different character.

This episode happens to roll along very close to the story in the novel, only eliminating one important character and changing the role of second, combining it into the character dropped for the TV episode. The other main difference is the order of things in the novel are scrambled in the TV episode, so you see certain events at the start of the episode which you only learn about in the last half of the novel. There are a few sequences of dialogue in the novel which were adapted almost word for word into the TV episode, and that is QUITE unusual.

The episode itself is a good mystery, and off the normal plotting track from many Perry Mason mysteries. It's a good show.

Quite the fixer

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 23 October 2018]

Somebody ought to have fired the LA Medical Examiner. Young Tyler MacDuff the youngest of the wealthy Balfour clan is tried and convicted of vehicular manslaughter of a man who'd been seeing Uncle Bruce Bennett's wife on the side. But later he's found to have been shot.

A legal dilemma greets Hamilton Burger. If MacDuff was tried for the wrong offense and now clearly not guilty if MacDuff is freed on the Habeas Corpus writ that his family wants, can he be tried for the second more serious offense without double jeopardy?

Usually the judges in Perry Mason stories have minimal dialog. In this one Morris Ankrum gets a bit more as he decides that this decision is above his pay grade. Raymond Burr who's been retained by the Balfours who are like a west coast Kennedy clan also is a truth seeker.

Douglas Kennedy has a strong part in this as the Balfour family fixer. He and Raymond Burr have a great scene together as he tries to tell Perry Mason how to run the case and take the loophole option. Big mistake, no one tells Perry Mason how he conducts his trial.

I guarantee you won't figure this one out. I will say that Douglas Kennedy is quite the fixer.

The initial few minutes are not what they seem to be

[ebertip · 8/10 · 24 November 2020]

Some reviewers noted they were let down by seeing the apparent crime unfold in the first few minutes. But of course that was an illusion. That is one aspect that makes this episode different. Another is the court ruling against Perry on double jeopardy. Perry cites a real case, State v. McDaniels, 137 Cal. 192 (1902), that is right on point and controlling precedent. The judge did not have discretion. In almost all Mason episodes, the judges are dead on right in their rulings, and neither Mason nor Burger wins via a bad call. But this ruling adverse to Perry, but wrong, sets up the pivotal scene between Perry and "Evil Steve," the Balfour family fixer, who is the embodiment of an anti-Mason. Steve wants Perry to present no defense for Ted Balfour and win on appeal, which will minimize exposure to the Balfour family and to "Evil Steve." Steve has made it clear to Perry that Ted is innocent and recounted to Perry what the viewer saw in the first few minutes. Perry tells Steve that Perry does not suborn perjury but relies on truth. He hands Steve a subpoena. Steve gets Addison Balfour to fire Perry but Perry continues to represent Ted. Perry wonders why Lawrence Balfour, the killer in Steve's version, has not shown up. Paul helps Perry to learn why. To viewers of shows like CSI and NCIS, the mistakes made by the State in this episode are unbelievable. Curiously, for the plan of the culprits to succeed, the culprits had to rely on the State making these mistakes.

The Case of the Lucky Loser

[Prismark10 · 7/10 · 30 September 2021]

There is a terrific story here but it looks to have a major flaw.

The Balfours are a wealthy family. Lawrence Balfour has a wife who is a floozy and he follows her to a remote cabin where she is with her lover.

After she departs, Lawrence gets involved in an altercation in the dark with a man in the cabin. A gunshot goes off and the man falls to the ground.

Lawrence rings the Balfour family fixer, Steven Boles.

He makes it look like an accident but someone spots the number plate in the car he was driving. Ted Balfour, Lawrence's nephew was at a party where he arrived home drunk. It was his car Boles borrowed.

Ted is convicted of reckless manslaughter. Perry Mason is hired to overturn the conviction.

Mason needs to outwit Boles, the people who he has got to lie for the Balfours. Then there is the question of where exactly is Lawrence hiding.

Plenty of plot packed in one hour. It is hard to gloss over that the coroner did not notice a bullet hole on the man who was shot but made to look like he was run over.

good story up to a point; conclusion totally wrong

[geoffdean1 · 2/10 · 15 April 2013]

I love the Perry Mason show generally, but the conclusion of this episode contradicts much of what we're shown at the beginning. At the beginning we're shown the husband shooting his wife's lover (his wife having left the cabin earlier), fleeing the scene, and then calling his company lawyer from his home. In the conclusion, we're given to understand that the wife shot her husband at home, and that the lawyer tried to protect her by making it look like the husband was someone else and was the victim of a hit&run accident. And yet Mason speaks highly of this lying lawyer at the end. I don't know why the conclusion was re-done to make it seem that this corporate lawyer wasn't a bad guy; he should at least have been charged with obstructing justice if not as an accessory to murder. (And why was the good-guy butler not there at the end?)

MISMATCH TITLE

[guildwayne · 10 July 2021]

The plot is quite fine. So is the acting. The same holds true for the legal principle which emerges- namely double jeopardy. However this writer simply CANNOT fathom the relevance of the story's title CASE OF THE LUCKY LOSER to the ACTUAL incidents in the story itself. Who is supposed to be the lucky one? The husband? The cheating wife? The family fixer? The bedridden grandfather? The clean cut , pious grandson? Who??

Secondly,who is the loser? Which of the above? To reinforce this point why was the LOSER so LUCKY?

Why not a title like CASE OF THE HEART ACHING ARCHAEOLOGIST ? An alternative title could be the CASE OF THE FRAUDULENT FIXER. . How about the CASE OF THE BODY IN THE BOOT?

This writer is open to suggestions.

CASE SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN TRIED TWICE

[talula1060 · 4/10 · 28 September 2023]

While the story is certainly interesting, I couldn't help thinking that the entire thing was totally illogical and probably a violation of Ted Balfour's constitutional rights. Since another court had already ruled on the illegality of double jeopardy, it made very little sense that the judge in this case overruled Mason's writ of habeas corpus. The case law quoted by Perry clearly stated that the same person cannot be tried for the same death more than once. Not even if the prosecution was incompetent and didn't adequately investigate. Once again, Burger was so anxious to get to court that he didn't notice a bullet in the head of the victim. He always had a habit of taking the most obvious answer and running with it. This led to his prosecuting Ted on a lesser charge of manslaughter. In any other court in America, that would have been case closed.

For some reason, the judge in the episode claimed he would send it to a higher court and then somehow they overruled it. Case law is there for a reason. It sets a precedent for judges to rule on tricky constitutional issues.

There were also way too many characters thrown at us at once (Boles, multiple Balfours and their wives, Mrs Ingle, and a butler). But the main problem with the episode is that this show is supposed to be all about justice. The double jeopardy thing was the opposite of justice. Even though the truth was exposed, the entire thing was a violation of Ted's rights. Why bring up double jeopardy at all if it's just going to be quickly overruled? Another thing that's weird is the judges seem a lot more cranky in this season. The judge in this case used to be a kindly old man who usually took Perry's side. In this case, he's crotchety and is downright rude at times. Wondering if the creators were trying to create more suspense by making it seem as though even the judges were against Mason?

Even with all the flaws in this episode, it's still miles ahead of any show on television today.