Perry Mason (TV Series) The Case of the Greek Goddess (1963) User Reviews

It's Greek to Me

[zsenorsock · 7/10 · 2 May 2008]

Middle aged artist John Kenyon comes back from Greece with Theba (Marianna Hill) a beautiful young model in tow, along with her (supposed) mother Cleo (Faith Domergue). Kenyon has hopes of marrying the young girl and turns to Perry for legal advice on getting rid of Cleo. When Cleo winds up stabbed to death in his studio, he needs Perry for more than just advice.

The story is well written and its nice to see Lt. Tragg back on the beat again. Marianna Hill should be familiar to anyone who's seen "Godfather II" as Deanna Corleone. She's wonderfully attractive and innocent here, probably the most convincing of the guest cast. George Kennedy is strong but is given little to do, while John Larkin just isn't very interesting as Kenyon. I guess he still wishes he was playing Mason. At least he's not annoying or a heel like a number of Perry's season six clients. Worst of all is probably John Anderson as magazine writer Dan O'Malley. He's done better is all I can say. You might notice how he manages to steal a magazine from an airport concessionaire, then tears it up, never bothering to pay for it.

Key people not involved in this episode

[lowlyservant1 · 7/10 · 7 January 2020]

Jesse Hibbs, who capably directed many episodes, was off his mark on this one. The acting was at times too effusive and distracting, especially for John Anderson in his early scenes, and for John Larkin in numerous scenes throughout the story. It was as if there was no one on hand to correct this. Samuel Neuman, the writing consultant for many if not most episodes, was also noticeably absent for this production. The Case of the Greek Goddess clearly had potential, but alas, it never came to fruition.

Seems like the entire cast had their passport stamped in Greece

[kfo9494 · 6/10 · 7 January 2012]

For an episode that started out so hopeful and interesting- it seemed to lose some interest near the end.

It begins as we see an middle aged artist named John Kenyon (John Larkin) coming back home from a trip to Greece. He brings with him a nice looking young Greek woman named Theba (Marianna Hill) and her mother Cleo (Faith Domerque).

John is using Theba as a model for his new sculpture, Theba does not know it but the older John is falling in love with Theba. But John is having a problem with Theba's mother, Cleo.

Seems Theba obeys everything Cleo asks. And Cleo appears to be setting up dates for Theba against John's wishes. This causes a heated discussion between John and Cleo where John cuts Cleo with a artist tool.

The next scene we see is a passer-by calling the police saying he just saw someone drag a women to the cliff and throw here into the ocean. But who can it be? Only after an investigation do they find Cleo's body - but the body was found in John's house not in the ocean. So in come Perry to defend John for the murder of Cleo.

During the trial we find out that some people are not exactly who they claim to be. Also stories begin to unwind as Paul Drake begins finding information concerning stories that were told to the police. Which leads Perry to find the true murderer during a courtroom confession.

The story started out so interesting but seemed to stall near the middle. When the writers introduced a dead man in Greece the story began to lose some of the interest. It seemed to get complicated when we see that nearly the entire cast had visited Greece within the last few years.

It was a fine episode but nothing that really makes it stand out from others in the series.

Note- Lt Tragg (Ray Collins) returns after being absent for the last few shows. Mr Collins appeared to have lost some weight and was beginning to look frail. It was obvious that Mr Collins was sick at this point in the series. ---Also the episode that I watched seemed faded at times. Right at the beginning of the court scene it appeared that they pieced scenes together from different stock. Some were extremely light while others were dark. And at times where we went to a new scene, the actors were already talking. Maybe they were cutting some commercial out or perhaps I got a bad copy. Either way it was much more pronounced in my copy of this episode.

Cliché'd characters

[lucyrf · 6/10 · 22 October 2020]

We have the Hemingwayesque sculptor who goes on benders. His Irish best friend who thinks he's wonderful and writes puff pieces about him for "File" magazine, or whatever they've called it. There's a very pretty Greek model whose broken English makes it even easier for her to come over as a) childish and b) moronic. Did men really find that kind of baby talk attractive? I fast-forwarded over the benders and we found ourselves in court discussing blackmailing attempts and a wool-sorting process. At least the lust-for-life sculptor does the decent thing in the end.

Wait a minute Mister Burger I'm rather interested in all this

[sol1218 · 6/10 · 4 October 2012]

***SPOILERS*** Bringing pretty Greek peasant girl Theba, Marianne Hill, to the USA to make her a star or a sculpture out of her artist John Kenyon, John Larkin, had no idea what a can of worms he opened up. It was Theba battle ax Momma Cleo Gammas, Faith Domergue, who was really running things including Theba's life. That in fact made Kenyon's, who had by then fallen in love with Theba, life anything but pleasant. There's also Momma Cleo's activities back in Greece where she got hold of this secret information about this new cotton picking and cleaning process that would end up making her very very rich. It was Momma Cleo who ended up getting the old guy who invented the process whom she was working for, who unexpectedly dropped dead from a stroke, to sign a exclusive contract in using that revolutionary cotton picking and cleaning process with one of her contacts back in the states.

Well things got so out of hand with Momma Cleo running things and keeping both Theba and her sponsor, in getting her a visa to the USA, and lover John Kenyon apart that she ended up dead by being thrown off a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Before that happened it was discovered that Momma' Cleo wasn't even Theba's momma but a total impostor! But that didn't help poor and heart broken John Kenyon who was indited in her murder in that he was the last person to see her alive. That's after he got into a fight with Cleo slashing her hand with one of his working tools.

***SPOILERS*** Taking on the case Perry Mason looks past the love interests in this strange murder mystery in that it seems that every male in the cast had fallen head over heels in love for the pretty and innocent Theba. It soon became evident to Perry that it was the cotton picking process that was the reason behind Momma Cleo's, who in fact turned out not to be Theba's Momma, murder. That in her using blackmail to get her way by exposing that the person who invented the process, whom she worked for as a domestic back in Greece, was in fact dead before he signed the contract!

And her mother comes too

[bkoganbing · 4/10 · 4 February 2014]

Sculptor John Larkin has brought back from Greece Marianna Hill who is his new muse and whom he plans to use as a model for recreating those classical Greek statues. Along in tow is Faith Domergue who is her 'mother' and who worked for a Greek millionaire, an Aristotle Onassis who made his money in wool and who recently died.

All that is tied up rather clumsily in a plot involving the late Greek tycoon's business there and in Los Angeles. When Domergue is found dead Larkin needs Perry Mason.

Not one of the better episodes of Perry Mason, a badly constructed story and characters who truly made no sense.

Case of the lecherous old man and the hapless model

[bribabylk · 2/10 · 3 February 2022]

A sculptor falls in "love" with a young Greek woman half his age and brings her and her supposed mother over to the U. S. so that he can create a statue with the girl as the model, and also so that he can shout at everyone until his innocent and guileless muse agrees to marry him.

Difficult to find anyone to root for in this one. The sculptor is obnoxious, moody, violent, drinks heavily, browbeats his associates--and yet he's a friend of Perry's so we're supposed to be in his corner. In fact, Perry and Della are all for this age-inappropriate romance! "Marry her and keep her behind locked doors" is pretty much Perry's advice; and when it appears that the model's "mother" may be pressuring her to date other suitors, there's a tendency to blame the young woman, and slander her as manipulative and heartless. Della laments how much the young vixen has "hurt" their buddy, the grizzled, drunken sculptor. Yuck.

I used the term "innocent" above, and that's a word you hear a lot in the episode as well. The sculptor uses it to describe the young model more than once; that's the main appeal she holds for him--rather than courting a woman closer to his own age and life experience, one that would be on more equal footing with him, he wants a sweet, young, innocent, naïve, unworldly, childlike, simpleminded--well, someone he can dominate, control, groom, and mold to his specifications, like the clay he works with. He even wants to separate her from her presumed mother and isolate her from other friends, so there won't be anyone to stand up for her and object to his treatment of her. (A quick word on that "mother": though several of the men in the story describe her as an awful, screeching "harridan", no behavior like that is ever shown to the viewer. She's a snob, yes, and a blackmailer, and I feared at one point that she might even be pimping out her young charge--but throughout it all she's rather softspoken and restrained in her criticism of the sculptor. It's odd that the writers were so keen to portray her as a frothing-at-the-mouth shrew from the perspective of other characters but included no scenes or dialogue for her that support it.)

The script itself is rather overcomplicated, involving a revolutionary wool-carding process and Greek tycoons and forged contracts and people who aren't who they claim to be, and I didn't find it particulary interesting; the meat here is the obsessed, possessive sculptor and his fixation on the model who never met someone she didn't like. I've noticed that several of the stories this season hinge on some kind of new invention or process; the '60s were a time of great technological advancement and it made for some handy plot points.

Eventually Perry scores yet another witness stand confession from the sculptor's equally soused-up friend, an opportunistic and ultimately murderous magazine writer played by John Anderson, who deserves the bulk of the acting accolades for the episode. His scene at the end in which he's giving testimony in a relaxed, nonchalant, possibly boozy fashion is fun to watch. He admits he tried to sabotage the sculptor's amorous intentions toward the model because he felt his pal just wasn't destined for happiness with a woman. One could hardly be blamed for wondering if the writer's affection for the sculptor wasn't a tad more than brotherly. And then finally the sculptor does indeed give up on his plan to marry his model, the only time in the entire episode I came close to liking him; he does it by handing her off to another man, as if she were something of his to give away, like a jar of olives, and though the model had earlier declared that she WAS in love with the sculptor, and willing to be his wife--maybe a bit of Stockholm Syndrome at work there--she goes off with the more age appropriate gentleman compliantly without much indication of how she feels about him. I never did understand the relationship between the model and the fake mother, and why the younger woman was so obedient to the elder. Just that kind of girl, I guess.

Dumb and Sexist

[Hitchcoc · 5/10 · 3 February 2022]

I'm a male and yet I can see how disgusting this would be to a woman. This artist meets a young woman in Greece, brings her over as a model, and then takes away any of her freedoms. At the end she agrees to marry him but he hands her off to another guy and tells him to marry her. Seriously? The case itself is even more cockamamy than described.

Great guest stars.

[LukeCoolHand · 3/10 · 10 March 2022]

I usually don't do reviews of Perry Mason because I don't really care for the series too much. But when I saw George Kennedy and Marianna Hill as guest stars I had to give it a look see.. They were good but did not make me like the series any better. However Marianna Hill can really change her looks with make-up, hair, and clothes - almost didn't recognize her in this especially with that accent. Anyway maybe I'll try Perry Mason again as some reviewers thought this episode was not that good either.