Original subtitles

In 1985, and again in 1987, Raymond spoke about Perry Mason with

Charlie Rose, who was then hosting CBS Nightwatch.

These interviews were to promote the return of Perry Mason in the two -hour

movie format.

That music signaled the beginning of an hour of unfailing justice.

Wright was done every night, just in the nick of time.

Perry Mason never rested. The show went on the air in 1957, and after a nine

-year run, it went into syndication.

Now, Raymond Burr is recreating the role of Perry Mason for a new two -hour

movie, The Return of Perry Mason. It airs in December.

And we are pleased to have Raymond Burr join us now. What a pleasure it is to

have you here. Thank you. It's my pleasure. I'm a great fan of this show.

Thank you very much on behalf of all those people who watch it.

Why is it coming back?

Well, we never had the opportunity of doing a two -hour show, and I always

wanted to.

All of Mr. Gardner's books had to be oversimplified to get the whole story

into an hour's time.

And I always wanted to do a two -hour show for that reason.

And so Perry Mason comes back because Della is in trouble.

That's right. That's right. Can I give it away? I mean, she's on trial for...

She's on trial for murder. And he has been... She has become an executive

assistant to a big industrialist whom she's accused of murdering.

Perry Mason has become a judge, an appellate court judge.

And he has to resign that in order to defend her.

So we don't dwell on those two things very much. We dwell on the case.

And, however, we do have two hours that tells you a little bit more about Mason

and tells you certainly a good deal more about Dulles Street.

And what's happened to him in the interim or more about the nature of the

and his character?

The nature of the people involved in the show.

What was the magic of it? Why did it work so well?

I think because the audiences wanted to believe in...

our form of justice, our court system.

It's imperfect, but it's still the best in the world.

And then in the end, justice will help. Yes.

It was even an important show in foreign countries where they had the Napoleonic

criminal code as opposed to the Anglo -Saxon code.

And some of the shows that were done in the United States...

Perry Mason and the Defenders and shows like that helped change the law in some

of those countries. It was good without having car chases and shootings and

violence. It was the drama, the human drama of characters you liked in

You saw the results of violence mostly on the show, very little violence, if

any.

We will have mostly that in the two -hour show.

There is no gratuitous violence of any kind in the show. There is

some excitement.

It must be more than just justice.

I mean, the character itself. People must have liked Perry Mason.

I mean, you've got to have an anchor there that people like.

Well, we worked.

Those days were the beginnings of television's hours, hour dramas.

And when we started the show, there were very few hour dramas. We had come from

live television, Playhouse 90 and Climax and those shows, mostly introduced by

CBS.

And then the new shows started, Lux Radio and Hallmark Playhouse and all

of those.

And then the hour dramas. So no one really knew where they would go or

they would be successful.

And that came just at the right time, I guess. You had a reputation for being a

prodigious worker. You lived on the set.

Well, unfortunately, there were those many words in each show to learn,

and you couldn't do it by living apart from the studio.

It's probably... It was a great success, the show. We went on for nine years.

I thought it was two years too many.

You really, you wanted to quit two years earlier?

Oh, I wanted to quit at the end of five years.

It went nine, you wanted to quit at five. You thought it should have been

after seven.

Absolutely. Because?

You start losing qualities on the show. You start losing your best writers after

five years.

It's very rare that a show can continue on unless it has an...

integrated part of the cast who also works on the show, like writing, like

done in MASH, for instance.

MASH continued on for all those years because of the dedication and, you know,

with a great degree of excellence.

The shows that are on today that are the best shows have that dedication from

all departments in the shows. Commitment to excellence. That's right. And you

don't get it. You have it on your show. That's why I watch it all the time.

Well, thanks very much. Back in a moment, Raymond Burr. Stay with us.

Raymond Burr is with us now in Washington, and what a pleasure it is to

back, sir. It's a pleasure to be with you, I'll tell you.

So we got another movie. The last one was so successful, it was what? The most

watched television movie of the year? We did five.

This is the... We just finished the seventh one.

The Case of the Murdered Madam was the sixth.

So we did five in the two -year period, then we're doing four this year. And

they've all done... They've all beat everything else on their time slots. You

prefer the longer form because... Oh, yes.

You can... We found out that Della Street lived in a house and could

garden and could cook. You never saw her cook. In all the nine years we did a

show. Find out that Perry Mason...

possibly might have a sense of humor, you know, and those kinds of things. You

never had time for that. Never had time for it. And we find out also that maybe

there is more than hanky -panky going on between Della and Perry. Between Della

and Perry? Yeah. So we never had time for that either.

Time for just the one -hour show.

Is the audience reacting differently? Do they say, my God, I love the... I mean,

what's the...

Charlie, the most important thing to me was, everybody said, did you

expect the kind of reaction you got on the first show? I expected us to be

moderately successful.

Not immeasurably successful, as we were.

because that demanded that at least a third of the audience be young people

Not only tune in but stay tuned in and they have since they're people who had

not really know.

Yeah What do you how do you explain the success?

What is it that people still want to?

They are taking a measure of their form of justice as sure as anything.

And they like the idea of, everybody likes the idea of a white knight, you

running to the rescue.

Across this country and indeed in foreign countries, it's the most

show of its kind ever. Yes, I was in Cannes last year, my

first kind of trip to that milieu.

We are the number one show of any dramatic show that goes from the United

this last year. But there's got to be more to it than just the fact that it is

life and death. It is courtroom drama.

I mean, there is something special.

A, it's part of you, but it's also part of the Perry Mason persona. I mean, what

is it that makes it uniquely successful when there are other competing dramas

about lawyers?

Well, I think it was the first one.

Number one, when we went on the air in 57, none of the minorities were

represented really in the courts or didn't know that they were.

And this was a great education for the American people. Not only our show, but

all the shows came after.

But the Oriental people, the Hispanics, the black people,

it all became their show.

Why? Because they could see that this was a country that the justice system is

imperfect in our country because it's dealt with by human beings who are

imperfect. But it's still the best damn one that we have in the world.

Our justice system. Yes. Have you read this book, Presumed Innocent?

Yes, I'm in the middle of it right now. Because it's a fascinating look at

American justice and the notion of deals being made and a sense of the

corruption of American justice.

Oh, there is that.

There is that because now that we get ourselves, wait till we get into the

century, I think there's a lot more going to be involved with the new

electronics than we've had in courtrooms before.

Not just televising the courtroom, but using... No, no, no. Using the whole

courtroom. I support a college of law in Sacramento called McGeorge, and it's

one of the finest law schools in the United States.

I did a commencement address of 27 years there, and we graduated 14 lawyers that

day in an open field because they didn't have any commencement hall.

Last year, they graduated almost 800 students.

And they had 7 ,000 in the audience.

800 students? Almost, 800.

800 lawyers. Yes.

But all marvelous lawyers. And what it has is the biggest group

of students per capita in the law schools passing the bar.

Now, the interest in

that... During that period of time, during the 25 years, they started

what was called the courtroom of the future. And we built the courtroom.

I was part of it. I did a whole film on it. It was done circular, where

the jury sits with its back to the spectator section.

There's absolute security for everything.

There's a television set in front of every one of the jurors and every one of

the principal people that shows them evidence close -ups and certain aspects.

It's a marvelous system and is used as a courtroom.

And all the new courtrooms in the United States don't want to take a look at

that courtroom.

So by the time we get to the year 2000,

You're going to see a lot of changes within the courtroom systems.

We need to because we are more populous and we have more cases.

We're our litigious society.