The Case of the Lucky Legs (1935)

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Comedy takes over the minute the curtain rises and all you see are legs. No faces, just legs. This is a beauty pageant for gams, and nobody cares what the face looks like. I imagined the curtain rising on the winner of the best legs contest to find a face that only their mother could love. This contest is obviously fixed as the man with the money disappears and it is up to Perry Mason to find him. While there is a murder, that is inconsequential to the brittle dialog, especially the rapport between Mason (Warren William) and his hard-working secretary Della Street (Genevieve Tobin), as well as Mason's assistant "Spudsy" (Allen Jenkins) and his tough-talking wife (Mary Treen). There's the typical line-up of an abundance of suspects, mostly red herrings, but all suspicious. Forget about all of that and just enjoy it for the witty banter. That's where the entertainment lies. Everything else is inconsequential.

One day in 1935, Erle Stanley Gardener wandered onto a Hollywood sound stage. "What's being filmed," he asked? "A new Perry Mason comedy," answered an underling who didn't recognize the author. "You can't be serious," shuddered Gardner "And neither is the movie," said the underling. "I mean there's one scene where a client comes in and finds Warren William as Perry Mason lying under his desk, sleeping off a hangover. The poor sap thinks it's a dead body." "Are the courtroom scenes at least serious," wondered Gardner. "There aren't any courtroom scenes," shot back the underling. "Mason solves the murder of a con artist while in his office, being x-rayed by a doctor who's as much as a nutcase as he is. But nobody really cares about who did it or why." Gardener could have filed an injunction since he was a lawyer-turned-author. Instead, he made plans for a Perry Mason TV series if and when television was ever invented. And "The Case of the Lucky Legs" opened in theaters and got quite a lot of laughs.

Erle Stanley Gardner oversaw the TV series "Perry Mason," including picking the Perry - so you can see the difference between that series and a Mason movie like "The Case of the Lucky Legs." Warren William is Mason, and his Mason is 180 degrees different from his first, more serious Mason portrayal in "The Case of the Howling Dog." Here, he's extremely flippant, he and Delta flirt constantly, and it's all a game to him in between drinks. In the first entry into the series, he has a huge office with lots of associates; here, he's a one-man office as in the books.William's Mason has nothing to do with the Erle Stanley Gardner's passionate Perry Mason of the Depression, or the steady, solid Perry of later on, but he's still wonderful - handsome, charming, debonair, and very funny. He's definitely a guilty pleasure, even though I know how much Gardner hated these films.At least in title, this is an actual Perry Mason story, and it's a good one.Warren William played heavies in silent films and emerged in talkies as a leading man. He had a great persona.Very entertaining.

A wonderful version of Perry Mason. Warren William is the perfect shyster, affiable, witty, lovable, funny and willing to bend the law a little for his client while skewering his adversaries. The dialog is great and pace never lags. A very good mystery with a great 30s setting. I wish WW had played Perry in a dozen of these Gardner stories.