Perry Mason was an American legal drama series originally broadcast on CBS television from September 21, 1957, to May 22, 1966. The title character, portrayed by Raymond Burr, is a fictional Los Angeles criminal-defense lawyer who originally appeared in detective fiction by Erle Stanley Gardner. Perry Mason was Hollywood’s first weekly one-hour series filmed for television, and remains one of the longest-running and most successful legal-themed television series. During its first season, it received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination as Best Dramatic Series, and it became one of the five most popular shows on television. In 1960, the series received the first Silver Gavel Award presented for television drama by the American Bar Association. In 1985, Burr returned to play Mason in a successful series of Perry Mason television films airing on NBC. A total of 30 films were made; Burr starred in 26 of them before his death in 1993.(More from Wikipedia)
I go back a long way with Under Appreciation. When watching TV as a kid, I of course paid a lot of attention to the stars, but I would also notice the character actors that showed up in small parts in a lot of the shows. One of my favorites back when was Dabbs Greer; he just seemed to show up all the time on TV, and eventually I picked up his name from the credits in one of those shows. Scanning his write-up in Wikipedia, he was in an episode of The Twilight Zone and several of the Perry Mason shows; but it was mostly Saturday morning shows where I remember seeing him.
Imagine my surprise decades later when Dabbs Greer appeared in some of the first scenes in The Green Mile; he played the Tom Hanks character in later life who was relating the story to a friend at the nursing home where he was living.
(Year 5 Review)
