User Reviews

The season in 1961 seems to be doing quite well. Here is a script about art but done with a different twist than ones in earlier seasons written by Richard Grey. Bernard Kowalski who would go on to Direct many other series including some good Columbos & Diagnosis Murder does a fine job here.

Artist Austin Durrant fakes his death by incredibly walking into the ocean & disappearing from one beach to be picked up by someone in a conspiracy on another beach. He is taken to this art dealers home to complete paintings he had already started so the dealer can make a "killing" on his death. There are several other involved in the swindle & Durrant for some reason has some other enemies.

One mark of the episodes in this season 5 episode is a large guest cast. Karl Held (David Gideon) is an extra assistant for Mason here. Wesley Lau pops in as Lt. Anderson to replace Tragg as Ray Collins is having some health problems this season. Still, no matter whose in the cast, when you have Raymond Burr, William Talman, Barbara Hale & William Hopper, plus a good script you don't miss a beat.

As modern technology was not as advanced when this episode aired, the faking of a death was more plausible as it was harder to trace folks in the 1960's. That is the only weakness in this script.

Painter Culross, the murder victim, has a history of fraud. One of his victims (Hutchings) bought a fake painting from Culross on behalf of a third party, ended up doing a five year stretch in Huntsville prison , but is now out and in LA. Another victim (Kenyon) bought a fake Matisse ("Blue waters") on behalf of a third party and is being blackmailed by Culross. Culross's latest scheme is to fake his own death so that the value of his own paintings go up. Oddly, this includes using unfinished works, finishing them after his "death," and selling them as finished works soon after his death. He does not tell his wife, who recognizes this later issue and immediately goes to Perry. From the wife's view (not knowing that the death is a fake at that point in time), she is seeing Perry about an art forgery matter. Given the short time involved in the appearance of the completed works, Gideon suggests using a thermocouple. More recent painting would have a different temperature. The idea being that more recent painted parts would still be evaporating solvent and would be cooler than older parts. Trouble is Perry and Gideon just quickly wave a thermocouple over the painting (already at thermal equilibrium in the gallery) and Perry concludes that a portion of the painting (three witches) was completed six days after Culross died. Doubtful that Perry's wave would have detected much temperature difference. But the conclusion may have been correct. Later, looking for the missing $80k, Perry asks Della for phone numbers of judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. He ends up with orders from a federal district court judge (Newman) on the basis that stolen money has been sent through the mail. Perry suggests that the addressee on the package is the murderer. Via the order of the federal district court judge, an assistant postal inspector delivers the package to the party during a state court trial. In the epilog, the Perry gang reviews all the people hurt by virtue of disclosures made in the trial. Della asks about the buyers of the "dead" Culross paintings. Perry says they got authentic psintings but glosses over the fact that they paid an inflated price based on intentionally created falses pretenses. And if these misrepresentations were made in the mail, maybe a federal case too... One wonders about Culross's understanding of his wife, in that he told her of the fraud afterwards, but not before; if he thought she would disapprove before, why a different expectation after?

**SPOILERS** What's missing?? Well, not the dead guy (confidentially, nobody's gonna miss him), Okay, I'll tell you: Victor Buono. I would say somebody like him, but HOW MANY actors are like him? ZERO. Put him anywhere in this episode and you've got a 10. George Macready does a good job of playing the pompous know-it-all who can't be fooled, and I gotta admit, I wish I'da bought one of those dead turkeys they called art before the loser faked his own croakedness and then re-sold it after everyone realized what the plot was. I'da made a fortune buying and selling from complete fools about "ART".

I can't really say too much about the plot or story end, but you've heard it all before; a protracted, deadly soap opera. They shoulda made a country western song about it....Oh, yeah, I guess they did--about a million of 'em. Good acting, speedy story, and a justice-is-served ending; probably second degree murder. Fifteen years in Chino State.

It takes a long time for anyone to get murdered in this story.

Jack Culross (Britt Lomond) is a artist who parks his snazzy convertible on the beach in Malibu, tosses aside a cigarette and walks into the surf, fully clothed. A local resident finds a supposed suicide note on Culross' car and the press reports the artist has committed suicide.

Too bad the police and coast guard don't bother to make even a cursory search for Culross' body. If they had, they'd have found he merely swam off shore and floated until late that night, when he swam back in under cover of darkness. There he is met by his agent, who plans to sell the now "dead" artist's work at a premium. (This plot was later reused to comic effect in the James Garner-Dick Van Dyke comedy "The Art of Love") Once Culross cleans up at an exhibition his plan is to contact his wife Edna(Lori March), take the money and leave the country. However, she refuses to go along with his plans. When Culross turns up dead, his wife is charged with the murder and Mason charges in to defend her.

If you can overlook the holes in the phony suicide plot (was Culross some sort of champion swimmer that he could tread water for hours? If so, didn't anybody know this? Why were the police and coast guard so lax in even searching for him when he could have easily been discovered?) then you should enjoy this episode set in the art world, especially the fine performance by George McReady as Dr. Vincent Kukyen.

****SPOILERS**** With his career in the world of art on the rocks and going nowhere painter Jack Culross, Britt Lomond, and his agent Austin Durrant, Stuart Erwin, decided to pull off "A Star is Born" act by Jack taking a dip in the vast Pacific Ocean; That in him attempting to swim to the far off Hawaiian Islands. Of course Jack really had no plans of doing that in him killing himself. He planned in making believe that he did with his body ending up as shark bait. What both Jack and his agent Durrent planed was to revive his faltering career. That by with his death his paintings, which he couldn't give away for free, would triple in value! Just look what it, dying, did for the sagging careers of Elvis Presley & Michael Jackson! It made them hundreds of millions of dollars and become more famous in death then in life! Even though they weren't around to enjoy it. Why couldn't it do the same for Jack Culross!

With his painting now selling like hotcakes and at record prices Jack & Durrant decide to paint more of them making it very obvious to jack's grieving wife Edna,Lori March, that something isn't quite kosher: How could Jack keep on pumping out paintings if he's already dead! It's Jack mistaking that Enda would be glad to see him alive and well that caused his untimely death. Finding out what a fake phony fraud her "late" husband is Enda threatens to expose him to the public and have him arrested for faking his death. After having it out with Edna who gets whacked across the face by him Jack is later found shot to death with Edna,who had already left the scene, as the #1 suspect in his murder!

Perry Mason, Raymond Burr, taking on Edna's case feels that there's more to Jack's murder then what's at hand and digs into Jack's friends and customers in the art world whom Perry feels had a much better reason to off him then his outraged wife Edna. The clue to all that is to who was it that grabbed the $80,000.00 in art sales Jack was to split with his agent Austin Durrant the night he was murdered! It of course wasn't Durrant who was nowhere near the murder scene so who could it possibly have been?

***SPOILERS*** Jack's killer made the big mistake of mailing the 80 G's to him or herself in thinking it would get there before the police or better yet Perry Mason got wise to his scheme. As things turned out the money that he expected to get in fact lead the police or postal inspectors straight to him! Check out the scare faced, from his fencing career, George MaCready as art connoisseur and art museum curator Dr. Vincent Kenyon who ended up being one of Jack's suckers or victims. That in Kenyon spending a fortune on his paintings when he thought the guy was dead, and thus have their price tripled, when he at the time, that's before Jack was murdered,he was actually very alive and painting them!