Perry Mason (TV Series) The Case of the Latent Lover (1964) User Reviews

An awkward recording leads to a murder charge

[kfo9494 · 7/10 · 6 December 2012]

Eric Pollard works at a financial institution and is very well respected. But Eric has started acting odd after having dizzy spells. One afternoon he commandeers a taxicab by use of a gun and states that he is on his way to rob a bank. He also finds evidence that his wife, Sibyll, is having an affair with an unknown man and plans on leaving the country.

Sibyll gets a probation officer friend, Roy Galen, to get Eric off just on probation instead of spending time in prison. But just after the proceedings he accuses his wife of cheating on him with Roy Galen and then passes out.

Sibyll Pollard, by contract, takes over Eric's job while he is unable to work and that leads to money being taken from an investor with the signature of Sibyll as authority. When a private investigator photographs Sibyll and Roy in each other arms this leads most to believe they are the two going to fly out of the country together using the stolen money.

But when Roy returns to his office, he receives a phone call from Sibyll while she is being assaulted. He rushes over to the house but is knocked out. When police arrive they find Sibyll dead and arrest Roy for the murder. Perry is called in to defend Roy against an almost mound of suspicious evidence.

Nearly everyone has an alibi to there whereabouts during the phone call. It will be up to Perry to scramble through all the evidence to reveal the true murderer. And with the last two minutes of the show everything will be summed up in a nice little package.

Different

[darbski · 8/10 · 12 February 2018]

****SPOILERS**** I must have been watching a different episode from the one reviewed by some others. Now, they didn't explain everything, but it was obvious (to me, anyway), that Eric was guilty of the theft to cover his nefarious dealings (the 1/4 million). His good-looking secretary HAD to be involved, also - remember the bonds Sybill was pressured into signing over? The detective? He "overheard" a conversation that he qualified in court with the shakiest of all evidence? And WHY would they (Roy + Sybill) stay at the park bench after he chased the detective who just took the picture of them - where the detective testified that he overheard them?

I liked Paul and Perry trapping Eric on the stand with the phone evidence, but it was all supposition, wasn't it? If not, where was the recorder that they say he used? The embezzlement? That was a dead-bang. The murder? Why couldn't it have been Dean? He was there, hit Roy on the head, DIDN'T call the cops, and as an officer of the court, this was a monumental NO-NO, fled the scene - another bad deed, was cheating with a member of the firm's wife (Sybill); he's a very good candidate. Nice, huh? again, Perry had very flimsy evidence, and even explaining it afterward was wobbly at best.

Here's the part that I don't get. Dean's a lawyer, right? Sybill is his illicit lover, and Eric is the cuckold. They want him to give her a divorce. He won't do it. Eric holds up Cabbie, steals his cab (blabbering about wanting to rob a bank), crashes same with witnesses, is grabbed by the beat cop; it's cut and dried. Just fine. THEN, his wife gets her old friend to help him get probation BEFORE there is even a trial? WHY, for the love of Pete would she do such a thing? Remember, Dean's a shyster, right? Why not just forget all about helping good old Eric? Just let him get the max (including investigation of all his practices, of course) sentence for his crimes, and THEN get a divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty? Naturally, he's gonna be fired from the firm, lose his license, etc... Lawyers ....Huh? Of course, then we'd have nothing to gripe about, would we? One other small thing is that Eric (Lloyd Bochner) never admitted anything on the stand, did he?

Very cool technology by Motorola, for 1964 - these guys were usually miles ahead of everyone else back then, and are still high quality electronics, today. Very good acting pulls a weak story out of the ditch, I'm in for an 8.

Complex Ruse

[Hitchcoc · 7/10 · 20 February 2022]

The husband in this episode is portrayed as a bonafide nut case. He is erratic and vicious. His wife wants a divorce but he will not hear of it. He has dizzy spells and even crashes a taxi and claims he knows nothing about it. Sometimes a hand is played a bit too well. The means for the murder and the frame-up is very complex and is entertaining. Though it would be quite the coup for it to work.

Is he really crazy?

[philham54 · 8/10 · 7 May 2024]

It seems that one reviewer NEVER likes an episode of Perry Mason! Makes one wonder why he "wastes" an hour watching all of them?

In this episode, a financial advisor suddenly starts having head aches and doing strange things-like trying to hold up a bank, thirty minutes before it opens. The lawyer for his firm convinces a judge to give him probation but the probation officer happens to like the probationer's wife.

The probationer accuses his PO of having an affair with his wife and has a PI follow her and get a surreptitious photo of her being comforted by a man.

Then there's the matter of a missing $250,000 from an irate customer.

When the wife gets killed (Marian McCargo of John Wayne's "The Undefeated"), the PO is charged!

Who is the real culprit?

That's the man! That's the man!

[sol1218 · 6/10 · 6 December 2012]

***SPOILERS*** This has a first in the Perry Mason, Raymond Burr, courtroom episodes with Parry actually being physically attacked by a person he's cross examining! It was that Perry had him so tied up in knots in exposing him as the murderer of the lovely and classy blond Sibyll Pollard, Marian McCargo, that he not only lost it but broke down and confessed his crime! As we soon found out Sybyll's nutty husband Eric Pollard, Llyod Bochner, was going through some kind of mid-life crisis in feeling that Sibyll was involved romantically with another man. As it soon turned out that suspected man Roy Galen, Jason Evers, was at scene of Sybill's murder and indited for it.

Perry a good friend of Roy takes on his case and starts connecting the dots to who murdered Sybill whom he's standing trail for. It turns out that there was a major embezzling scheme going on it the firm that Eric was working for that was about to break wide open. Eric going somewhat a bit crazy didn't help matters either. But his strange and bizarre antics soon lead to his wife, who was given control of his personal and business finances, being suspected in stealing $250,000.00 from the firm that he worked for!

***SPOILERS*** In Eric always suspecting Sybill of cheating on him lead to her unfortunate murder but the person who supposedly murdered her, Roy Galen, didn't turn out to be her lover! As if that all mattered to the person that murdered her. He just did it to cover his tracks in the embezzlement and murdered Sybill just to keep her from talking! But it was Perry Mason who got him to talk in finding out what an elaborate scheme he dreamed up to frame Roy Galen. That in his using state of the art electronics, back in the early 1960's, that wouldn't pass mustard or fool even a armature junior detective today in 2012.

An Affair To Forget

[DKosty123 · 7/10 · 28 January 2018]

Sybil is intent on leaving her husband. She is so intent to do so that she buys 2 tickets to South America for them. So intent she steals $250,000 to use for the trip. Her husband wanting to stop her leaving him, devises a complicated scheme of faking mental illness. Of course he suspects she is stepping out with a former Beau he knows. He hires a Detective to get proof. Then after getting a photo of Sybil in his arms, the photo seems conclusive. Meanwhile, the husband tries to escape Mason's Cross Examination in Court.

A lot of smoke and mirrors here and Lloyd Bucher and Harold Gould head up an excellent cast of guests which strengthen the episode. It does work out well, though it is dating pretty badly. Technology has changed a lot since the episode, though at least the use of it here is cleverly employed.

No explanations given

[bkoganbing · 3/10 · 25 March 2013]

This episode of Perry Mason was a dud as far as I'm concerned. One important plot element was unexplained and I could see the killer a mile away. Remember it can never be Raymond Burr's client.

And in this case the client is Jason Evers who is a probation officer and who Lloyd Bochner thinks is having an affair with his wife Marian McCargo. She's actually got a nice little racket going herself. After Bochner is convicted of trying to rob a bank and hijacking Richard Reeves cab to do it, he's adjudged incompetent and she given power of attorney. Which she then proceeds to use to loot her husband's brokerage company in which he is in partnership with Gilbert Green.

McCargo winds up dead and its Evers that winds up the Mason client. But of course Burr finds the right perpetrator. It's all a matter of impeaching the medical examiner's testimony and breaking an alibi for the real killer.

What happened to Bochner in how he was framed into that alleged robbery and enabling his wife to do what she did was never adequately explained. It is a big big flaw in this Mason episode.

Marian McCargo had several sons in real life and over 20 years later one of them William R. Moses wound up as Ken Malansky in the Perry Mason movies. Most of which were better than this episode.