Original subtitles

This lady has been working at CBS since 1945.

62 years of continuous employment.

Check out the diamond CBS eye around her neck.

It's one of a kind, as is Ann Nelson.

My name is Ann Nelson.

I am Vice President of Business Affairs for CBS Entertainment.

I handled the contract negotiation and other business affairs on the Perry

Show on behalf of CBS.

Gail Patrick, who is the executive producer, was my adversary in business,

but my friend in life.

Gail Patrick was...

the only female executive producer of a hit show, or actually of a non -hit

show, in prime time in the years of Perry Mason.

Women today won't believe that things were that tough, but Gail was alone in

bailiwick, and I was the only female executive not in personnel at CBS at the

time.

Perry Mason got to CBS through the friendship of Earl Stanley Gardner.

Cornwell Jackson, who was Gail Patrick's husband at the time, and Gail Patrick.

Mr. Jackson was the head of the radio and television department

of the J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency, and in a prior time, I believe,

had been the agent for Earl Stanley Garner.

Anyway, they were all friends, as the name of the company implies.

Paisano is the name of the company.

Gail and Corny decided they would take the show to CBS with Earl's permission.

And suddenly Gail, who had graduated from Howard University in Birmingham,

Alabama, with some law courses, wrote up the contract that she told me years

later was so wild and so favorable to them that they had no clue that they

possibly get it by CBS.

But we bought it, and it has been a very big...

financial success not only for CBS but for the Paisano Partners over this many

years.

Well, the books had been very successful and then CBS radio show with Barry

Mason for 12 years was also very successful.

Mr. Paley, who was founder and head of our company and a very smart man, had

always looked to the programming situation

as radio shows that would convert to television.

That's why he bought Jack Benny, Red Skelton, Burns and Allen, Edgar Bergen,

etc. So I think that he saw the possibility of the radio show

turning into a very successful television show.

Oh, he was very involved in it always.

When I was very young and first in the company, And there weren't so many vice

presidents and people running around.

Mr. Paley would come out and we'd have meetings, six or eight of us with him,

discuss programming.

He made many, many decisions. Mr.

Paley made the deal that brought Jack Benny and all those people to CBS in

They had all been at NBC.

My first connection to Perry Mason was handling contract negotiation.

I used to...

make the deals for the writers and directors and producers when they

Marks or somebody else.

Actually, Artside and Art Marks were there for a long, long time.

And so my connection was to handle the business of yours.

It was not a part of the deal as such, but just by the nature of it, he did.

Because they respected his creative judgment.

Well, it was well -written, well -produced, and well -directed.

I mean, what other answer is there?

The one thing that I found a lot of fun is the very last episode.

Gail and Corny and everybody decided that everybody that had worked on the

that they could get hold of should be in the show.

So we were all in the show. Corny, her husband, was a bartender, and I was a

barmaid.

And I don't know what anybody else was. I don't remember, but I do remember

working in that bar.

And it was just a lot of fun. Everybody that was associated with the show was on

it. And actually, it was a pretty good show, I think.