Perry Mason (TV Series) The Case of the Dangerous Dowager (1959) User Reviews

In hindsight, this was actually a sad tale.

[kfo9494 · 9/10 · 30 June 2016]

The actions in this story all evolve around an elderly matriarch named Matilda Benson and how she handles her grown-up children. Ms Benson, and the wealth that she has accumulated, has this problem of wanting to control everything in her adult children's lives. And by any means possible, Matilda is going to live her late life through the actions of her children, Robert Benson and Sylvia Oxman.

Due to Matilda interference, Sylvia is going through a divorce from her husband, Frank. It seems that Frank can no longer take Sylvia running back to her mother in each time of stress. Frank wants a divorce and the custody of their son. And with Sylvia having some gambling IOU's it just may prove that Sylvia is not fit to be the best parent.

The IOU's are held by a gambling house co-owner, Danny Barker. There is a bidding war ongoing between Frank and Sylvia for the IOU's with Barker playing each for more money. It becomes sour when Danny Barker is found shot to death by none other than a pistol owned by Sylvia. This is when Perry goes from a simple paper-trail case to a murder case. With many witnesses and evidence against Perry's client, it will prove difficult to get the possibly fractured female acquitted of the crime.

The story seemed to drag at the beginning but picked up when we actually got to the murder and the evidence surrounding the killing. With so many people giving opposite court testimony, it appeared like this was going to be a confusing set of circumstance. If almost felt like we were going to have one of those moments when someone from the gallery shouts his or her confession. However, the story ended in a more sober manner when Perry connected all the pieces of this mystery. With some nice acting by the cast, this episode proved worthy for the series.

NOTE- Patricia Cutts, that played Sylvia, was always on top of her game when acting. It was sad when at age 48 she committed suicide just as she beginning a regular stint on a popular British soap-opera.

Interesting show about poker and Perry

[jamesadavidson · 8/10 · 28 October 2017]

Poker functions as a plot device in several Perry Mason episodes, and it is front and center in this one. The location of much of the action is the Clover Club in Gardena, CA; even at the time (1959), poker playing was legal in certain parts of California, and Gardena was the home to six legal card clubs (none of them named the Clover Club, of course, but you get the idea.) Perry and Paul are shown playing at the Clover Club and Paul tries to run a bluff, which is called by a woman poker player played by the one and only Ellen Corby, who would later play Grandma on the 1970's TV show, The Waltons.

Incidentally, Ellen Corby had a small part in the Alfred Hitchcock classic, "Vertigo", which came out a year before this episode aired. In another Hitchcock connection, the accused killer in this episode is played by Patricia Cutts. Cutts was born in London, England in 1926 and her father was Graham Cutts, who was a well known film director in the 1920's. Cutts' assistant director was none other than a young Alfred Hitchcock, who would eventually step into the director's chair and come to America, becoming an iconic figure in the history of film. Sadly, Patricia Cutts died young, in 1974.

A Priest Makes An Ironclad Witness

[bhoover247 · 9/10 · 4 January 2020]

My favorite part of this episode is when Perry Mason is trying to make all the gamblers look like they are lying about their eyewitness accounts of seeing his client at a gas station, the priest appears. Once the priest makes a definite eyewitness Perry Mason changes gears and of course discovers the killer out of the blue. There is a great scene of grandma Walton harassing Paul Drake at the poker table.

Zarathustra

[darbski · 10/10 · 6 July 2017]

"Thus spake Zarathustra" (Nietzsche). I liked this show. Acting is good, and it explains very clearly how "The House" always wins in these small scale poker clubs. The old bag that runs her family; through tight-fisted economy and relentless peerage pressure; plays her kin with ruthless policy. Her son, (a sneaky, slithering snake), explained it in his last soliloquy, her grand daughter also from the county lockup. The strongest character in the supporting roles is Duncan, the prime partner in the "Clover Club". He's a clear thinking businessman, and a breath of fresh air to those of us who see so many of these actors have to play parts that are of weak individuals with little integrity. Not afraid to be tough, he actually IS honest; even if he denies it.

There are a couple of pointless discussions, "the gun in the glovebox", the Brylcreem sleeze, and his pompadoured dirtbag buddy, a couple of misfires in a debt collection scheme, an arrest scene for Tragg, but it's a coast to the finish line.

No, Perry uncovers the truth, and in so doing, loses any custody case his client might have had concerning Sylvia, her son, and her Grandmother. See, the very thing that the Benson family wanted to avoid, is brought out in open court, isn't it? The ending is not happy, but it is satisfying, with beautiful Della providing the lines.

Best PM episode that I recall!

[rwphillips-92830 · 10/10 · 27 August 2021]

I am a big fan of PM and have been rewatching on MeTV for a couple of months now. This is the best episode I have seen so far.

The best is the writing, namely the dialog and plot; what stands out are the suspect's explanation to Perry of her misery, and then the explanation by the murderer, which is certainly not your typical motive of greed or jealousy. I thought it most poignant, including the final embrace between mother and son.

There is even a reference to Nietzsche, though that might be just showing off.

Milton Krims either adapted or wrote 8 episodes; I will be sure to see the final two: Envious Editor and Sad Sicilian.

BTW, the IOUs are a McGuffin: why would anyone pay $25K ($226k in 2021 dollars) for evidence that Sylvia has a gambling problem? There has got to be lots of evidence of that.

It all started with that Neapolitan fisherman

[sol1218 · 6/10 · 17 May 2013]

***SPOLIERS*** Poor little Sylvia Oxman, Patrica Cutts, became the black sheep in the wealthy and well connected Benson clan when her father killed himself when his wife check out on him with this Neapolitan fisherman whom she met while on vacation in Italy. Being considered not worthy to carry the Beson family name Sylvia was to later marry her collage sweetheart Frank Oxman, Gene Blakley, whom she had a son, Peter with.

Still not able to live with the shame of both her fathers suicide and mothers desertion Sylvia started to go to the local gambling dens around town and run up thousands of dollars in IOU's that she got stuck with gambling. Now with Peter's father and her estranged husband Frank wanting to get control of Peter those IOU's if in Frank getting possession of them can keep Sylvia from getting custody of him in them proving her to be an unfit mother. And it's the manager of the Clover Club sleaze ball Danny Barker, Robert Strauss, who has position of those explosive IOU's and wants big bucks $25,000.00,from Sylvia to give them back to her.

As expected Barker after trying to blackmail Sylvia gets mysteriously murdered with Sylvia's gun found next to his body in his office at the Clover Club. With Sylvia the #1 suspect in Barker's murder her defense attorney Perry Mason, Raymond Burr, has to dig up all the dirt in the Benson family to prove her innocence. And what Perry digs up is a gold mine that can supply the tabloid newspapers and TV shows with enough dirt for the next six to eight months.

***SPOILERS*** Even though she didn't do it, murder Danny Barker, it was head of the Benson clan Matilda who set the stage for all the trouble that both her grand daughter Sylvia and momma's boy son Robert, Barry Atwater, were subjected too all these years. Perry soon began to realize what a nut case old Matilda was in her trying to have her way or the highway in how her children ran their lives that, by her running them, in fact destroyed them. As it turned it was better that Peter should stay with his father Frank Oxman not his mom Sylvia for his own good and mental health. Or else he would ends up like they did which was a fate even worse then death!

Destructive Old Woman and Her Charming Family

[Hitchcoc · 7/10 · 2 January 2022]

A casino, a young alcoholic woman with a gambling addiction, an ugly, controlling grandmother with oodles of money, and a blackmail scheme, gets us to this sort of sick episode. Perry is frustrated because if the nasty actions of virtually everyone in the plot. No real heroes.

Strange motive

[bkoganbing · 4/10 · 11 September 2014]

Patricia Cutts is Perry Mason's eventual client when she's accused of murdering Robert Strauss. Originally Raymond Burr is hired by her grandmother Katharine Givney an imperious old woman used to issuing orders. She finds out early that Burr is not going to be treated like her hired help early on.

Cutts owes some heavy gambling debts to a club owned by Strauss and Leo Gordon. Strauss is trying to make some extra money on his own by selling the debts to her estranged husband Gene Blakely. Blakely will use these in a custody battle he is having with Cutts over their son who as Givney's great grandson will be heir to a considerable fortune.

When Strauss winds up shot to death its Cutts that Ray Collins arrests for the crime. The usual nice mix of suspects is included in this Mason story. I will say that the motive for killing Strauss by the eventually discovered murderer is a strange one. And the murderer was one you wouldn't suspect for most of the story it was like our perpetrator was part of the wallpaper.

I couldn't quite buy into the characters here in Givney's family so this is not one of the better Perry Masons for me.

Feeble script; very poor acting

[ColonelPuntridge · 2/10 · 26 December 2020]

All the characters here, without exception, are tired cliches. The wealthy domineering mother, the cruel, gleeful blackmailer, and the fallen woman in distress, afflicted (the script tells us) by alcoholism, compulsive gambling, and spiritual emptiness, but miraculously redeemable (we are supposed to hope) by the unconditional faith of her defense attorney. This thankless role is played by Patricia Cutts, trying her best to look sultry and to sound like Grace Kelly. (This was 1959, five years after Grace had done her three big hits with Alfred Hitchcock, and three years after she had become a princess of Monaco.) But Patricia Cutts ain't no Grace Kelly.

Perry plays the fatherly, gentle, wise man-of-the-world-who-can-see-the-good-in-everyone, delivering brain-numbingly banal platitudes about suffering and spiritual growth, in his velvety bass voice. Raymond Burr was a really great actor, and he proves it by actually putting some feeling into his lines here. Other than that, there's nothing worth watching (as far as I can see). Even the character-actors and bit-part players are dull, which is unusual for this series.