Don Collier

Don's TV

Perry Mason
Fifty-millionth Frenchman


Phillipe Bertain:  David McCallum
Armand Rovel:  Jacques Bergerac
Ninette Rovel:  Roxane Berard
Peter Hayes:  Don Collier
Story by Robert C. Dennis

For Perry Mason fans, this story is pretty tame.  For Don Collier fans, this is wowsville.  There are so many good close-up shots as to be unbelievable!  He plays the part of the pilot Peter Hayes at a posh ski lodge in the mountains nor far from Los Angeles.  As Perry Mason later discovers, Peter is not particularly fond of the murdered man, the ski instructor Armand Rovel.

pm3.jpg (6570 bytes)The plot centers around Phillipe Bertain, a clerk in a bookstore that Perry Mason frequents.  Phillipe is in love with Ninette Rovel.  She is from his hometown of Dijon, France, and she is married to the brute of a ski instructor, who is later found dead.  Phillipe wants to help her escape her tormenting husband, also a Frenchman, so he loans her $5,000, his total life's savings, which he has planned to use to purchase the book store where he works.  She promises to have the money back in one week, but of course, she defaults, and he goes looking for it.pm2.jpg (9193 bytes)

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When Phillipe finds Ninette, she has a black eye.   Forgetting all about the money he came to collect, he immediately heads to the ski lodge to beat up the husband.  While he is there, the husband gets killed, he gets blamed, and Perry Mason comes to the rescue.  It's pretty contrived, but well worth watching for the Don Collier scenes.

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