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Variety

Top Contributor to a Baby-Boomer Favorite Dies at 92. Arthur Marks Produced 145 Episodes of ‘Perry Mason’ and Directed 76 of Them

Nov 24, 2019  •  Post A Comment

“Prolific producer and director Arthur Marks, who worked on ‘Perry Mason’ and blaxploitation movies including ‘Detroit 9000…,’” has died at age 92, Variety reports.

The story adds, “Marks was a native of Los Angeles who was born in 1927 into a show business family. His grandparents were actors in silent pictures and his father, Dave Marks, worked as an MGM assistant director and production manager… Arthur Marks worked as a child actor, getting work as an extra and bit player on ‘The Good Earth’ (1937), ‘Boys Town’(1938) and Mickey Rooney’s Andy Hardy series.

Variety notes the Marks “directed 76 episodes of the CBS legal drama “Perry Mason,” starring Ramon Burr, and produced 145 episodes between 1958 and 1966….[He also directed] episodes of  ‘I Spy,’ ‘Starsky and Hutch,’ ‘Mannix’ and ‘The Dukes of Hazzard.”

The Variety story also says that Marks directed a number of blaxploitation titles, including, besides  “Detroit 9000,” “Friday Foster,” “Bucktown,” “J.D.’s Revenge,” a horror film starring Glynn Turman, and “The Monkey Hustle,” starring Yaphet Kotto.

2 Comments

  1. This was well before baby boomers were even 20 years old. Hardly a teen favorite. Perry Mason wasn’t American Bandstand.

    • Hi Jack. Thanks for your comment. For those of you who don’t know Jack, he’s a terrific guy and the former longtime chief research officer for Turner Broadcasting. Respectfully, I would argue that “Perry Mason,” while not a teen favorite of us boomers, was one of the shows millions of us watched with our parents when we were pre-teens. Many of us have great fondness for the show and have watched hours of it in its various incarnations in syndication, including, at one time, as a staple on TBS. “Perry Mason” can still be seen, in glorious black & white reruns, on METV and FETV.

      Chuck Ross

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