Description

PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION COPY OF THE CASE OF THE DEMURE DEFENDANT,
WARMLY INSCRIBED AT LENGTH BY ERLE STANLEY GARDNER TO THE PRODUCER OF THE PERRY MASON TELEVISION SERIES

GARDNER, Erle Stanley. The Case of the Demure Defendant. New York: William Morrow, (1956). Octavo, original brown paper boards, original dust jacket.

First edition, presentation copy, inscribed to the producer of the Perry Mason series: “To Ben Brady, with all my thanks for your legal and technical skill in getting the Perry Mason show on TV. Yours, Erle. Erle Stanley Gardner 1958.”

“In Perry Mason, the combative defense attorney who manipulates the legal system to vindicate the innocent, Gardner created one of the most widely recognized figures in American literature? Mason came to embody the ideal of the American lawyer” (ANB). This is number 50 of 86 books in the series. Hubin, 162. An abridged version of this novel was first published in The Saturday Evening Post as The Case of the Missing Poison. The recipient of this copy, Ben Brady, was hired by Gardner’s Paisano Productions to work on the 1957 television adaptation of Perry Mason. In a bid for total control of the character, Gardner slashed out the melodramatic elements that had been so much a part of the radio and film adaptations and created a show squarely centered on Mason’s lawyer persona. Ben Brady assumed the position of line producer under executive producer Gail Jackson. Brady developed the character of Perry Mason for the writers and actors according to Gardner’s wishes, stating, “Perry thinks, he investigates, he studies. He is not a smart aleck. He acts with his eye.” Perry Mason was an elaborate production that cost CBS nearly 40 million dollars; Brady was often credited with helping the show to exceed CBS’s understandably high expectations.

Dust jacket price clipped. A very nearly fine inscribed copy with a wonderful association.