Description

“FOR YOUR LEGAL AND TECHNICAL SKILL IN PRESENTING PERRY MASON TO THE TV AUDIENCE”: PRESENTATION/ASSOCIATION COPY OF THE CASE OF THE RUNAWAY CORPSE, WARMLY INSCRIBED BY ERLE STANLEY GARDNER TO THE PRODUCER OF THE PERRY MASON TELEVISION SERIES

GARDNER, Erle Stanley. The Case of the Runaway Corpse. New York: William Morrow, (1954). Octavo, original red 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 presenting Perry Mason to the TV audience. 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 44 of 86 books in the series. Hubin, 163. 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. Pencil initials.

A very nearly fine inscribed presentation copy with a most desirable association.