The Case of the Howling Dog

Plot synopsis:
Severely agitated by the howling of a police dog next door, millionaire Arthur Cartwright comes to Los Angeles lawyer Perry Mason to draw up his will, stating that the howling is a sign that a death has occurred. He wants to leave his money to the apparent wife of Clinton Foley, another millionaire and the dog's owner, explaining that while "Evelyn Foley" pretends to be Foley's wife, he is still legally married to someone else. Perry explains how Cartwright should word his odd bequest and after receiving a huge retainer fee, gives him a form to fill out and return. When Perry receives the form the next day, Cartwright has changed the beneficiary to Foley's actual wife. The fee paid by Cartwright obligates Perry to legally and morally represent the real Mrs. Foley to the best of his ability.
Foley attempts to file a complaint of insanity against Cartwright, claiming he is a homicidal maniac whose bizarre behavior prompted most of Foley's household staff to quit. A sheriff's deputy is assigned to investigate the complaint. He and Perry accompany Foley back to his house, where Perry questions why an addition to his garage is being built for yet another car if his chauffeur has quit. Attractive Lucy Benton, who Foley states is his housekeeper, rushes from the house with her right hand heavily bandaged to tell Foley that she was bitten by the dog while giving it an emetic, thinking it had been poisoned. When they ask to talk to Foley's "wife" Evelyn, Lucy tells them that she has just packed her bags and disappeared. A note left behind states that she loves Cartwright and is going away with him. Perry goes next door and finds that Cartwright has also disappeared overnight. A telegram sent from Ventura and signed by Evelyn is sent to Foley asking him to stop his actions.
Perry's private detectives investigate and learn that Evelyn was actually Cartwright's wife who ran away with Foley when they were friends in Santa Barbara with Foley and his wife Bessie. Lucy was Foley's private secretary then, unbeknownst to Evelyn. One of Perry's men is assigned to watch Foley's house and sees Lucy drive away with an unknown man. A cab arrives with a woman in black. When Foley shows annoyance that she "found him", she tells him that she "wants justice" and he releases the dog to attack her. Two shots are fired, killing the dog and Foley, followed by the slamming of the garden door, and the woman flees. Perry arrives for a meeting with Foley and discovers the bodies. He immediately tracks down the cab driver at his cab stand, learning that a perfumed handkerchief left in the cab links "Bessie" to the murder scene, and then finds the woman, who is the actual wife and his client, in a hotel under an assumed name. He sends his secretary, Della Street, to impersonate Bessie and claim the handkerchief before the cabbie turns it in. Bessie denies killing her husband. Perry warns her that she is going to be arrested for Foley's murder and orders her to say nothing to the police. Later, acting on a hunch when none of the handwriting samples of the three women gathered by his operatives matches the note and the handwritten copy of the telegram, Perry devises a ruse to obtain a page from Lucy's diary of the day after the Cartwrights disappeared.
During the trial, Perry discredits the cab driver's identification of his passenger when he demonstrates that he misidentified Della as Bessie. During his cross-examination of Lucy, Perry has the trial shifted to the scene of the crime, shows that the dog was devoted to all three women, and proves that Lucy was Foley's lover and is ambidextrous, writing the note, the telegram, and the diary page with her left hand. Just then, workers excavating the foundation of the garage addition discover the bodies of Cartwright and Evelyn, murdered by Foley. Bessie is acquitted after Perry in closing arguments states that because the dog loved her, he would never have attacked Bessie and been killed, destroying the prosecution's only other link of Bessie to the crime. After the trial, Perry presents Bessie with a dog that looks just like the dead animal, and the dog delightedly greets Bessie. Perry states that when the howling suddenly stopped, he searched kennels in the area and found one where a man matching Foley's description exchanged the dog for a lookalike. He gives Bessie the dog and orders her not to tell anyone what really happened. Perry later tells Della that he is sure that whatever Bessie did was in self-defense.

Tags: murder

Review:
I believe this was the first in a series of Perry Mason films starring Warren William.What's odd is that this film has no other cast members in common with the subsequent films and in fact the whole tenor of the movie is quite different.
And the mystery itself is actually quite good.Later films gave him a goofy detective sidekick ("Spudsey"), made more of the romance between Della Street and Perry, and had much less mystery in the plots.
The appeal of these movies is Perry's string of one-liners he gives to the police, witnesses, etc.But give this first film a look.
Warren Williams brought the famous lawyer to life in much the same way that Raymond Burr would breath life into the Erle Stanley Gardner character for television in 1957.
The Warren William incarnation would change with his next three films with Perry becoming a womanizing boozer.
Television's Perry Mason also changed with time, but rather than going in the direction of playboy souse, being the McCarthy era, Raymond Burr's portrayal made Perry a scholarly type who won his case through sheer knowledge of the law and thorough investigation procedures.The first Perry Mason movie, "The Case of the Howling Dog," is possibly the best in the entire series.
Much of this is owed to the cleverness of the original book written by mystery writer Erle Stanly Gardner, but Warren Williams and later Raymond Burr should also be given credit for making the whole thing work.Warren Williams is ably assisted by a covey of fine actors and actresses including Mary Astor who would later make a permanent mark on movie history playing Brigid O'Shaughnessy in John Huston's classic "The Maltese Falcon." Della Street is there to aid Perry with a hint, as with the later TV series, of a romantic connection between the two.
Unlike William Hopper's TV Paul Drake, Spudsy is more of a comical sidekick for Perry, more in line with William Katt and William Moses' Paul Drake in the made for TV Raymond Burr Perry Mason movies.
Also missing from the Warren Williams Perry Mason's are Hamilton Burger and Lt. Arthur Tragg.
Gradually Perry and his associates are able to unravel the mystery but wait, there is a twist at the end that you don't want to miss just when you think the whole thing has been worked out and the guilty person exposed by Perry.Warren Williams not only plays Perry with gusto but adds much humor to the goings on.
If you think Raymond Burr is the definitive Perry Mason, seeing this film may change your mind..
This is the movie that got me interested in the character Perry Mason and I began watching the old television series because of this film.
Warren William was a very good character actor and it's a shame we don't see more of his films shown on tv..
Excellent mystery story, the first Perry Mason film.
This was the first Perry Mason film ever made, with Warren William as Mason, who is superb in the part, much better than Raymond Burr, who always annoyed me so much I could not watch the later Perry Mason films.
Mason's assistant Della Street is here played by Helen Trenholme, a beautiful and talented choice, but she inexplicably left the film business after making this and one other film in 1934, and that was it.
Hats off to Lightning the Dog, who is seen howling splendidly like a wolf in the initial shots of the film.
Also it's not like Raymond Burr's Perry Mason I grew up with, Warren William has a vast organisation behind him, contrary to his future occupation as the Lone Wolf!Complicated story of a dog's howling driving a neighbour crackers leads to a sorry and sordid tale of multiple murder - and the howling is central to the plot too.
The first of six Warner Brothers mountings (the first of four with Warren William as Erle Stanley Gardner's charismatic investigating attorney, Perry Mason), it is frequently held to be the least of the series, but that's probably too harsh a judgment.
Warren William is a fine first draft for the character TV would take to its heart two decades later.Many sources look at the other great detective series which were springing up in the 1930's from Dashiel Hammett's Nick & Nora Charles (in the popular THE THIN MAN series) to Earl Derr Biggers' Charlie Chan (the second longest running film series ever!) almost as fast as print authors could create new characters - THE CASE OF THE HOWLING DOG went before the cameras barely a year after Mason first hit print - and find the Warners' PERRY MASON series fairly light weight.In truth the series only managed six episodes, with Ricardo Cortez and Donald Woods succeeding William for the final two films.
The character WAS the basis for a long running daily 15 minute radio series before CBS put Raymond Burr in the role of his career for a marathon run starting in the 1950's and inspired more than two generations of actual attorneys.THE CASE OF THE HOWLING DOG (and the later Warners' Mason films) had the decided advantage of being drawn with some faithfulness from actual Gardner novels.
A large portion of the film is given over to novel-like exposition giving the background of the characters and the dispute which will provide the courtroom fireworks in the last 15 to 20 minutes of the film where Perry Mason shows the style he is famous for.Mason has an enormous office in this one (Raymond Burr's Mason would have been jealous) as well as the basic support staff Gardner created which would stay in various forms through all the later Perry Mason incarnations - secretary Della Street (in the Warner Brothers' series her unrequited love would eventually be returned) and Detective Trask among others.Tall, thin Warren William with his pencil mustache (also a striking Sam Spade in the second film version of Hammett's "The Maltese Falcon" called Satan MET A LADY) made a fine Perry Mason.
Some commentators fault the series for allowing the writers and directors (a different one for each of the six films) to vary the "character" of Mason too much over the three years the series ran, but for the first four films the inherent dignity and intelligence of William proved a foundation almost as interesting as the firm one Burr would provide twenty years later.
William's craggy visage has even more sophisticated "danger" in it than the today better remembered Humprey Bogart!) The style on this specific Perry Mason entry carries the substance, but the substance is good enough.
William was cast in the first four Perry Mason movies, and all did very well.
His secretary, Della Street, was the only other constant character in the first four films, but she was played by three different actresses.
That is, until author Gardner hooked up with NBC for the 1957-1966 TV series, "Perry Mason." Raymond Burr had risen slowly as an actor, but this role ensured his success for life.
From 1985 to 1993, NBC aired 26 Perry Mason movies that starred Burr, with a cast of regular characters from the TV series that seldom changed from film to film.
Most people today will remember the Mason played by Burr on TV and film.
That is quite a different character than appeared in the first four films that starred Warren William.
While neither William nor Burr fit the persona of the Mason in the early novels, Gardner explained that he was evolving the character over time.
The screenplays in the first four films were masterfully done to bring out the first Perry Mason character as played by William.
Warren William debuts as Perry Mason.
"The Case of the Howling Dog," made in 1934, was the first Perry Mason film, and it's from an actual Erle Stanley Gardner Perry Mason novel.
And then there's that howling dog.A really excellent story, but Erle Stanley Gardner loathed what the movies did to his passionate young Depression lawyer.
He also has occasion touches of humor, though if memory serves, there's a lot more humor in the later films.As one who read the original Perry Mason books, the character matures and becomes less given to speeches about the law - William would perhaps have been better as the later Perry, though Gardner himself never would have chosen him.
He wanted Fred MacMurray until Raymond Burr walked in to read for the role of the D.A. He then said, "That's Perry Mason." Despite some of the stilted dialogue, this is still a very good story and well worth seeing.
Warren William in his first Perry Mason role....
Warren William's version of Perry Mason is a far cry from that of Raymond Burr in the popular TV series of the '60s, but he gives it his own brand of humor and charm.THE CASE OF THE HOWLING DOG is more complex than it would seem from an outline of the story.
It begins when a man complains to Perry Mason that a howling dog is driving him insane.
These two strands of plot keep building toward a very baffling story which only begins to make sense toward the last ten minutes, when Mason starts to unravel the truth.Intereresting tale gets good treatment.
WARREN WILLIAM and MARY ASTOR do nicely in the leads and ALLEN JENKINS plays it straight for a change, as a detective.
The first Perry Mason film starring Warren William has the famed attorney taking on a client who claims a neighbor is trying to drive him insane with a howling dog.
Soon someone winds up murdered and it's up to Perry to get to the bottom of it all.The Perry Mason series is not among my favorites of the many B detective film series of the 1930s and 1940s, but it's enjoyable enough.
Warren William plays Perry as a standard tough private dick character rather than the Perry many of us know from watching the Raymond Burr TV show.
The rest of the cast includes Mary Astor, Grant Mitchell, Gordon Westcott, Russell Hicks, Addison Richards, and Allen Jenkins playing it straight (and sporting a mustache!).
This first one is pretty good and definitely worth a look if you're curious about seeing a different kind of Perry Mason than you might be used to..
–Such is our introduction to the great lawyer before we even meet him.Warren William is appropriately self-assured as the super-successful lawyer in this classy and well-plotted murder mystery.The complicated story involves a very nervous-looking man named Cartwright (Gordon Westcott) who comes to Mason with questions about his will—and about a neighbor's dog that has been howling for 48 hours.
We soon learn that that neighbor, Clinton Foley (Russell Hicks), had once run off with Cartwright's wifeCartwright had sworn to get even with them both and tracked them down and moved in next door.and soon enough the man Foley is shot dead in his house.The murder scene is particularly well done: We see Foley and his dog in the house, we see Mrs. Foley walk in, and we watch their brief confrontation.
Case of the Howling Dog, The (1934) ** 1/2 (out of 4) Warren William plays Perry Mason in Warner's first film in the series.
In the film, an apparent crazy man shows up at Perry's office complaining about his neighbor's dog who keep barking through the night.
The Best Entry of the Warren William as Perry Mason Film Series.
Warren William stars in the first of four films as Erle Stanley Gardner's attorney, Perry Mason in "The Case of the Howling Dog." In fact, to the best of my knowledge, I believe Warren William was the first actor to portray "Perry Mason" on film.
Mary Astor, who has always been great in everything she does, gives good support in this lively and complicated tale of murder and dogs.
I particularly liked the twist ending of sorts in "Velvet Claws." Please discover Warren William as Perry Mason and then find his other films like "Skyscraper Souls" and "The Match King," and you'll see what you've been missing with such a prolific and dependable actor of the 1930s and early 1940s.
The Perry Mason series of mysteries from the 1930s are some of the best mysteries one could watch.
The Case of the Howling Dog holds one's interest from beginning to end as Perry Mason cleverly addresses the case of a woman accused of murder.
Warren William is a pleasure to watch as Perry Mason, and Helen Trehnolme expertly plays Perry's faithful and efficient secretary, Della Street.
In this very first big screen portrayal of Perry Mason he does some very unMason like things for those of us used to watching Raymond Burr operate.
The Case Of The Howling Dog involves Gordon Westcott retaining Mason to write a will leaving his assets to a neighbor who is the wife of a womanizing abuser, Russell Hicks.
When Hicks is later killed along with his dog and Westcott goes missing, Mason conceives his duty to defend the beneficiary Mary Astor from a murder charge.Don't think for one minute you will see the business like Raymond Burr type of Perry Mason.
And she's in a long line of conquests.In fact The Case Of The Howling Dog breaks one of THE cardinal rules for those of us who see Raymond Burr in action.
Can't tell you because it wouldn't be right, but think of all the Perry parameters from television and I think you can guess.The Mason movies were good, not as popular for William as Philo Vance or The Lone Wolf, but good.
Warren William makes his debut in this, the very first Perry Mason movie, He is very good, especially with his authoritative, stentorian voice.
really good W Williams as perry mason.
The Great casting in this first chapter of Warren Williams as Perry Mason is what makes it!
the constant howling of the dog next door leads one neighbor to go to Perry Mason with many questions, and of course, things snowball from there.
The Case of the of the First Rather Good Perry Mason Film.
The Case of the Howling Dog, the first of the screen's Perry Mason movies moves quickly with pep and zip, has a rather ingenious plot line, and has Warren William give a good portrayal of the most famous lawyer of all time - real or imaginary.
The story has a nervous wreck of a man go to Mason to ask two questions - what can he do to stop the incessant howling from the next door neighbor's dog and what does he have to do to set up a will(with some further odd questions).
Perry now has a case and we get some good old-fashioned mystery here as Mason and his corp of assistants work for their client.
The rest of the cast also all do fine jobs with Helen Trenholme(apparently only making two films in her career) doing a very fine job as a perky and pretty Della Street and Gordon Westcott excelling as the nervous man in a rather brief role.
Warren William, playing the screen's Philo Vance that same year, does his level best to make two distinct characterizations which may also account for the Mason character being a bit stodgy here.
Warren William is always highly watchable but he's just not Perry Mason.
I have long enjoyed Warren William's films.
However, for me only Raymond Burr is Perry Mason.
It doesn't matter to me who best represents the Mason character in the books - Raymond Burr is Perry Mason.
But that's what happens to "Lightning" in what could be called "The Case of the Uncredited Dog." Lightning got the title role in this film because, among his other attributes, he was a "natural howler" and at the lift of his trainer's hand, would lift his head and howl like a coyote.
Having seen one of Warren Williams' other Perry Mason films, I wasn't all that excited about seeing his first from the series, THE CASE OF THE HOWLING DOG.
It was very different from the later "lady killer" Perry Mason films--and frankly, making Mason competent and not just a perv chasing skirts was a good idea.The film begins with a very convoluted encounter Mason has with a really bizarre client who is whining about some "barking dog".
Warren William's character is more subtle and competent than in the later films.
The other ladies are not far behind in the acting honors: ravishing Mary Astor, who has this vulnerable quality which makes her beautiful face so entrancingly sympathetic; Dorothy Tree, wonderfully mysterious.Warren William faces some excellent competition.
***SPOILERS*** "The Case of the Howling Dog" is the film that introduced legendary defense attorney Perry Mason, originated on the screen by Warren Williams,to millions of movie goers and some twenty years later, with Raymond Burr in the title role, TV watchers.Perry Mason, Warren Williams, is contacted by a nervous Arthur Cartwright, Gordon Westcott, claiming that his next door neighbor Clinton Foley's, Russell Hicks, German Shepard police dog Prince is driving him crazy.
Perry now stuck in representing Foley's actual wife Bessie, Mary Astor, whom he dumped for Evelyn Cartwright in that legally she's the woman whom's Arthur, through Perry being his lawyer, left his estate to.Were lead through a maze of subplots in not just the connection between Arthur and the Foley's, Clinton & Bessie, but their dog Prince who's the key to what is later to happen in the film.
The surprise ending does in a very intelligent and realistic way show that the law despite being written in granite is not at all perfect and that there are times when bending it, like Perry Mason does in the film, is really the best way to get justice done.P.S The movie "The Case of the Howling Dog" is such an excellent example of Amercan, or any other free and law abiding country, jurors prudence that it was remade some 25 years later in 1959 as a Parry Mason TV crime/drama episode.