"The Case of The Fancy Figures"

[sergebroom]

When we feel like watching something shorter than a movie, my wife and I pop in a "Perry Mason" DVD.



One could call it comfort TV. We get in knowing that someone will be wrongfully accused, that Perry will step in, that he will banter with his lover Della Street and with his friend Paul Drake, that he'll beat overconfident Hamilton Berger, and that in the end Justice will prevail.

Perry's way to Justice sometimes throws a few curveballs at us though. So it was in 2nd season episode "The Case of The Fancy Figures", in which a man sent to jail for embezzlement 5 years earlier finally gets his name cleared, thanks to the persistence of his wife, only to find himself accused of killing the real embezzler, the son-in-law of the accused's former boss. What those plot twists are, I can't tell you, but I can say I was awed when I realized that the character of the boss was played by a Jamaican actor named Frank Silvera. In a TV show from 1958.

Comments

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

Well... remember, in 1958 Hispanics still counted as white.

[serge-lj.livejournal.com]

According to what I discovered about him, he considered himself as Black, and so did pretty much everybody else, in those days when one drop of blood was enough to put a person on one side or the other of the stupid demarcation line.