The Case Of The Stuttering Bishop (1937)

I missed the beginning of this movie. I enjoyed Perry Mason with Raymond Burr while growing up, so I was fan of enchanted to stumble upon this movie, which I also learned is part of a series that I will now look for. I watched this on TCM. Missing the beginning scenes might be why I was left confused & missed the point of the title. One really needs to pay close attention or you'll not be able to follow it very well & I sure missed something as I was left wondering where the real Janice was - or did the fake Janice also turn out to be the real one?But one thing I didn't miss was was a production goof in which the courtroom chairs & defendant's table are suddenly empty in the midst of Mason's cross of Brownings grandson! As the camera pans back & forth from Perry to the grandson, those chairs & table are filled with people, only to become empty, then fill up again! And that scene lasts for several seconds. Quite funny!

Well, before Raymond Burr assayed the role of the lawyer that solved crimes and never lost a case, the Erle Stanley Gardner literary staple was a film hero - of sorts. The Mason films began in 1934 and Warren William(who I like quite a bit and think was the best Mason) played the lawyer in four films(The Case of the Howling Dog, The Case of the Curious Bride, The Case of the Velvet Claws, and The Case of the Lucky Legs). Ricardo Cortez then played Mason in The Case of the Black Cat(sans black cat) and the last film before Burr did the television role was performed by Donald Woods in this film The Case of the Stuttering Bishop. Let's start with Woods. He is not a bad actor but he has limited charm, range, and likability - certainly not on par with either William or Cortez. His performance here shows signs of good acting but more often than not he is quite "wooden." - You had to know I was going there! As others have noted, the plot in this movie is really quite messed up with the screenwriters trying to squeeze round pegs into square holes. A bishop(played nicely by character actor Edward McWade) goes to Mason mysteriously to hire him to find out the legitimacy of a millionaire's heir. Things get pretty complicated and one may not exactly know where the story is going at all all times. The acting in general is good but many actors are not fully utilized like Ann Dvorak(who could have been an interesting Della Street) as well as others. This is not a bad film but definitely a JV installment in the Perry Mason playbook.

You can often tell when a studio is losing interest in a film series when they start replacing the entire cast. In this instance, they did it twice in 2 films-- and by the time of THE CASE OF THE STUTTERING BISHOP, we'd not only seen 3 Perry Masons in 6 films, but 5 different Della Streets! Donald Woods does his 2nd PM film, having played one of the suspects in ...THE CURIOUS BRIDE, while William Clemens directs his 2nd PM film, having already done the relatively sober ...VELVET CLAWS. Clemens would go onto quite a few series films, including a Torchy Blane, 4 Nancy Drews, a Dead Ends Kids, a Philo Vance, and 3 Falcons. There's nothing especially flashy or stylish about this film, and it starts out very confusing, but it is a solid mystery film, and gets better as it goes.For example, you have the boastful house detective who Perry winds up hiring part-time, and as the story goes on he proves to be genuinely helpful, rather than "merely" comic relief. It seems the murder takes forever to happen in this one, but once it does, the story FINALLY kicks into gear, and the courtroom sequence at the end is probably the BEST in all 6 films. Unlike when Perry rattled off confusing info nobody but HE knew in the previous installment, the quick stream of witness testimonies actually help to pull all the threads of the story together neatly. And at last, there's the patented "blurted out confession" seen in so many PM stories-- only in this case, NOT from the person being grilled on the stand.It's been said that sometimes casting actors very accurate to novels can lead to dull films. Some of the most popular versions of characters are quite unlike their literary sources-- good examples being Sean Connery's JAMES BOND and Stacy Keach's MIKE HAMMER. In this case, I find myself wishing Warren William had done more films like this one-- his version of Perry might not be thought of as so much of a joke then.

Case of the Stuttering Bishop, The (1937) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Sixth and final film in Warner's Perry Mason series features a new guy in the lead role but the film turns out to be a rather entertaining entry. This time out, Perry Mason (Donald Woods) is visited by a bishop who asks him to investigate a manslaughter that happened twenty-two years earlier but the guilty party is still free. Perry starts to investigate, which leads him to a billionaire who eventually winds up dead and it seems the same person is behind the two cases. This is a pretty strong film that manages to be quite entertaining, although it would have benefited by a stronger supporting cast. Woods is actually very good in the role of Mason and brings his own charm and brains to the role. Ann Dvorak is entertaining as his secretary but the rest of the cast is so-so at best. The case is actually very well written and manages to be quite complicated, which ruins the ending when we get the typical easy way out and that's the guilty person getting away with it until they break down and admit everything.