I really liked the new Perry Mason show, and thought I’d live-tweet a thread with some of the many places the first episode it touches on real Los Angeles history. Mute or follow along!

The show opens at Angels Flight, the funicular railway in downtown Los Angeles. It’s a frequently-used location in films noir made before 1969, when the railway was dismantled, and after 1996, when it was reassembled in a different location.

Angels Flight can be seen in Criss Cross, Kiss Me Deadly, The Turning Point, Bosch, La La Land, and the first Perry Mason TV show, where it briefly appears in the only color episode, “The Case of the Twice-Told Twist.”

Later in this episode, it will appear in a headline as “Angel’s Flight,” but there’s usually no apostrophe. Here it is in the Times as “Angels’ Flight” in 1902, and “Angels Flight” in 1948, with the same photo.

The details of the area surrounding Angels Flight here are spot on—you can see the tower at the top of the hill, and a later shot reveals they’ve recreated Thorne’s Drugs at the bottom. This photograph is from around 1937:

Another reference point was probably William Reagh’s photographs of Bunker Hill from the 1950s, of which more here. (Note the apostrophe!): https://www.kcet.org/shows/artbound/sidewalk-stories-the-photography-of-william-reagh

The gruesome details of this kidnapping-gone-wrong are taken from the 1927 murder of Marion Parker, but the actual event was worse than Perry Mason’s version. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Marion_Parker)

Parker was the twelve-year-old daughter of a Los Angeles banker who was kidnapped by William Edward Hickman. As in Perry Mason, Hickman staged a ransom exchange for what turned out to be Parker’s dead body, with her eyes sewn open to look lifelike from a distance.

But Hickman went further than the kidnappers on Perry Mason: he had also dismembered and disemboweled his victim, and stuffed the torso with newspapers. Here’s one of several murder ballads about Parker, this one from Vernon Dalhart:

Ptomaine Tommy’s (1929–1958) was a legendary Los Angeles restaurant on Broadway where the chiliburger was invented. If you see a “Chili Size” on the menu in a SoCal diner, this is where it came from.

Pete Strickland is reading an ad for Lipstick Girl, by Edna Robb Webster, a novel that was published serially in newspapers nationwide around New Year’s Day, 1932. Specifically, he’s reading the Examiner’s version of this ad:

Strickland reads the actual hilariously unpromising first sentence of Lipstick Girl aloud, probably for the first time in decades: “THE PAPPE & SON department store, largest mercantile establishment in Mitchelfield, was arousing itself noisily, to meet the activities of the day.”

Mason is trailing Chubby Carmichael, a Fatty Arbuckle type. In the excerpt we see of his movie, he’s wearing Arbuckle’s trademark plaid shirt and suspenders. Compare Chubby in “Seize the Hay” with Fatty in “The Hayseed.”

Arbuckle’s career-ending scandal was in 1921, when he was accused of raping aspiring actress Virginia Rappe, but in 1932 Warner Bros. brought him back to make a series of sound shorts. Chubby also seems to be returning to the screen after a scandal-derailed silent-era career.

Los Angeles County was crawling with airfields in this era; this Chamber of Commerce brochure shows more than 50. One of them, Ardis Airport, shared land with a dairy farm. More details here: http://members.tripod.com/airfields_freeman/CA/Airfields_CA_LA_C.htm

Velma Fuller, star of “Call Her Red,” seems to be inspired by Jean Harlow. Despite already being famous as a platinum blonde, Harlow made her MGM debut in 1932’s “Red-Headed Woman.”

Blue discharges were an administrative discharge from the military that was neither honorable nor dishonorable. Because they did not require a court martial, they were often used to discharge servicemembers for homosexual conduct.

WWI vets with blue discharges had a hard time finding employment, and they were disproportionately given to black soldiers, which were both reasons the Army did away with them in 1947.

Juliet Rylance is playing Della Street, who is working as Perry Mason's secretary by the time of the first novel, "The Case of the Velvet Claws," set in 1933.

Sister Alice’s Radiant Assembly of God is closely modeled after Aimee Semple McPherson’s Church of the Foursquare Gospel, and plays a much bigger role in the episodes to come.

When Perry returns to the scene of the crime, we get a closer look at Bunker Hill around Angels Flight. Here’s Perry Mason’s Bunker Hill, featuring the Hillcrest Hotel and the Sunshine Apartments, and photos of the same buildings in 1910 and 1961.

That 1961 photo is a still from The Exiles, one of the last movies shot in Bunker Hill before it was razed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exiles_(1961_film)

Hammersmith Pictures appears to employ a Roy Rogers type, a Charles Boyer type, a Boris Karloff/Bela Lugosi type, and, as previously mentioned, a Jean Harlow type.

The rest of this week’s Perry Mason was made up by the filmmakers, using the power of imagination! And that’s the end of this thread.