But I just couldn't. I was deterred by the unnecessarily complicated plot, the repetitive lame jokes - everybody sneezing is not funny!, the annoying second banana to Mason - why did he even hire this goofball?, and the scenes that go nowhere. Warren William is a charming and jocular sophisticate, but films like this were his fate so much of the time after the precode era ended. Until the Lone Wolf series of films over at Columbia in which he starred, he really never again had a role that was worthy of him.
I found Wini Shaw completely unappealing and a terrible actress here, surprising since she really convinced me she was the Island of Manhattan in Gold Diggers of 1935. The only plus of this film is that Claire Dodd got a decent amount of screen time, but then again she was basically playing the same scene over and over again, being annoyed at William for leaving her on her wedding night, and nevertheless helping him with his work.
Back to the plot - Mason is going down the wrong path for the entire first half of the movie - the audience knows this, and yet during the second half he suddenly deduces the entire thing with zero clues. Unless Warren William really was legit in The Mind Reader (1933) all along, I just don't know how he figured this out.
Well maybe Della and Perry did live happily ever after at the end. Because neither Dodd nor William ever played these roles again in the Warner Brothers series. Or maybe being Perry is like being the Dread Pirate Roberts in The Princess Bride. The old Perry just convinces everybody the new Perry is the real thing then retires.
Just one more thing - There is an episode of the Perry Mason TV show with the same name and a similar storyline that is much better than this film. I would recommend that episode.
