Erle Stanley Gardner

Erle Stanley Gardner

By Tom Kirvan

A prolific writer, attorney Erle Stanley Gardner was known to challenge himself, setting a quota of penning 1.2 million words a year early in his career before he gained fame as the creator of Perry Mason, the criminal defense lawyer with an innate ability to prove the innocence of his raft of clients.

A native of Massachusetts, Gardner began his legal career in California, working as a trial lawyer defending the poor, particularly Mexican and Chinese immigrants entangled in the legal system. His early experience prompted the founding of The Court of Last Resort, an organization dedicated to helping those who were imprisoned unfairly or couldn’t obtain a fair trial. After years in private practice, Gardner published his first Perry Mason novel in 1933, which spawned radio and television shows as well as a series of popular movies that served as the inspiration for countless legal careers.

Gardner – who died on March 11, 1970 at the age of 80 – made Perry Mason a household name, as well as the fictional characters of district attorney Hamilton Burger, private investigator Paul Drake, secretary Della Street, and homicide detective Lt. Arthur Tragg. The TV series began airing on CBS in 1957 and starred Raymond Burr as Mason and ran through 1966, when Gardner made an uncredited appearance as a judge in “The Case of the Final Fade-Out,” an aptly named finale that attracted huge ratings.

Erle Stanley Gardner*

At the time of his death, Gardner was reportedly the top-selling American writer of the 20th century and was the author of such proclamations as, “It’s a damn good story. If you have any comments, write them on the back of a check.”

Some of Gardner’s other treasures:

“Courage is the antidote to danger.”
“The reason men don’t know the law of life is because they’re afraid to look Eternity in the face.”
“If you like the story, then don’t hold back in telling me about it, and if you don’t, then please keep your opinions to yourself.”
“Now listen, Lam, you’re a nice egg, but you’ve got yourself poured into the wrong pan.”

*John Atherton, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons