Court of Last Resort, The – Nostalgia Central

1 9 5 7 – 1 9 5 8 (USA)
26 x 30 minute episodes

The Court of Last Resort was an actual American organisation founded in 1946 by lawyer (and Perry Mason writer) Erle Stanley Gardner (played in the series by Paul Birch) and Argosy magazine publisher Harry Steeger (played by Carleton G. Young).

It was composed of a group of seven outstanding private citizens who made it their business to free wrongly convicted prisoners.

The group included Dr LeMoyne Snyder, an expert in legal medicine (played in the show by Charles Meredith); Marshall Houts, the professor of police science at Michigan State University (S. John Launer); and Alex Gregory, a psychiatrist and lie-detector expert (played by John Maxwell).

Actual case histories were used for the factual series as the team explored the possibility of innocence among convicted felons and sought to help people falsely accused of crimes.

The show dramatised the original crime, then followed the investigation by private detective Sam Larsen (Lyle Bettger) and the defence by Gardner.

The real Erle Stanley Gardner died of cancer on 11 March 1970. He was 80. Harry Steeger died on Christmas Day 1990, aged 87.

Erle Stanley Gardner
Paul Birch
Sam Larsen
Lyle Bettger
Harry Steeger
Carleton G. Young
Dr LeMoyne Snyder
Charles Meredith
Park Street Jr.
Robert Anderson
Raymond Schindler
Robert H. Harris
Marshall Houts
S. John Launer
Alex Gregory
John Maxwell

Episodes

The Gordon Wallace Case | The Tomas Mendoza Case | The Forbes-Carol Case | The Wesley Ferguson Case | The George Zaccho Case | The Karl Hooft Case | The Conrad Murray Case | The Darlene Fitzgerald Case | The James Dawson Case | The Clarence Redding Case | The Jim Thompson Case | The John Smith Case | The Westover Case | The Arnold McHugh Case | The Steve Hrdilka Case | The Phillip Huston Case | The Peter Stevens Case | The Lester Arnold Case | The Frank Clark Case | The Jacob Loveless Case | The Joe Credo Case | The Stephen Lowell Case | The Mary Morales Case | The Joel Sheldon Case | The Todd-Loomis Case | The Allen Cutler Case