Perry Mason is a fictional character, an American criminal defense lawyer who is the main character in works of detective fiction written by Erle Stanley Gardner. Perry Mason features in 82 novels and 4 short stories, all of which involve a client being charged with murder, usually involving a preliminary hearing or jury trial. Typically, Mason establishes his client's innocence by finding the real murderer. The character was inspired by famed Los Angeles criminal defense attorney Earl Rogers.
Robert W. Douglass illustrated "The Case of the Crying Swallow" for the August 1947 issue of The American Magazine
Warren William as Perry Mason in The Case of the Lucky Legs (1935), with Genevieve Tobin and Patricia Ellis
Donald Woods portrayed Perry Mason in The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (1937)
William Hopper and Raymond Burr in the CBS-TV series Perry Mason (1957–1966)
Erle Stanley Gardner was an American author and lawyer, best known for the Perry Mason series of legal detective stories, but he wrote numerous other novels and shorter pieces and also a series of nonfiction books, mostly narrations of his travels through Baja California and other regions in Mexico.
Gardner in 1966
The First National Bank Building in Ventura, where Gardner wrote drafts for the first Perry Mason novels
Perry Mason executive producer Gail Patrick Jackson (left) and Erle Stanley Gardner speak with Hollywood columnist Norma Lee Browning during filming of the last episode, "The Case of the Final Fade-Out" (1966)
The Court of Last Resort (1952) earned Gardner his only Edgar Award, in the Best Fact Crime category.
