Reader Michael Kilgore writes, with regard to an earlier item here…
It's easy to pick on the old Perry Mason episodes, especially for the witness-stand breakdowns that occurred much too often on TV and never in Gardner's books. But Perry's practice of trying the case in the preliminary hearings was common in the original books as well. The books had more time to let other characters note how unusual that was, but there it was.
(They were also a bit dated. One book ends with Perry telling Della that he'd marry her, except that then she'd have to quit being his secretary.)
Maybe these shows are an example of the quality the studios can achieve when the author acquires ultimate power over the production. (See also: Harry Potter) The show cast long-time heavy Burr as the hero at Gardner's insistence, and Burr is a dead ringer for the descriptions in the books.
Mr. Gardner made a good choice. Raymond Burr is terrific…though I recall a neighbor lady, back when I was a kid, who had an alternate view. She was a big believer in the philosophy that people were whatever they played on the screen; not that a guy who portrayed a murderer was really a murderer but that he had to have some murder in his heart to play one. Mr. Burr, she was positive, was as reprehensible a human being as he'd been in most of his earlier screen roles, and she was quite vocal about this. I think she watched each week with great certainty that Perry Mason had to be the murderer. She didn't live to see him play Ironside but I'm sure she'd have been among those who asked how Raymond Burr lost the use of his legs.
But of course, you're right. They should listen to the author more often, and it's often not a matter of differing judgment but of politics that they don't. I once worked with a producer who said, "If they did everything the writer said, they wouldn't need me."