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A Brief Biography of Erle Stanley Gardner

by Richard Senate

During the lifetime of Erle Stanley Gardner, he was the pre-eminent mystery writer in the minds of his
readers. Although the character of Perry Mason is not unique as a "lawyer-sleuth," he is the first to come
to anyone's mind when it comes to sheer brilliance in solving courtroom-detective cases by rather
unconventional means. Besides "Tarzan," "Sherlock Holmes," "Superman,"-"Perry Mason" qualifies as
an American icon of popular culture in the twentieth century.

Erle Stanley Gardner was what we would consider a "genetic freak,"- the kind of individual that comes
along only once in 500 years or so. To call him a "Modern Renaissance Man of The Twentieth Century,"
would not be an overstatement, as Gardner was, besides being an imcomparable mystery author, a
legendary trial lawyer, outdoorsman, explorer, archaeologist, businessman, and a relentless champion of
lost causes, such as establishing "The Court of Last Resort" to "un-convict" the convicted innocent caught
up in cogs of injustice.

Gardner was born on July 17th, 1889 in Malden, Massachusetts. His parents moved west in 1899 and in
1902 settled in Oroville, California. Although Erle was a very bright youngster, he was suspended from high
school in 1906 for pranks directed against the school's principal. Erle's parents already had one son in
Stanford and could not afford to support another college student, so Erle read for the law in a legal office
while working as a clerk. He enrolled for a short period of time at Valparaiso University in Indiana but
dropped out after being promoted as a boxer in an illegal boxing exhibition just avoiding an indictment. He
spent most of his time traveling in California and reading law in various law offices and eventually passed
the bar in 1911 at the age of 21. He then joined the Law Office of I. W. Stewart. An old boxing friend
suggested that Erle move to Oxnard, California which is situated next to Ventura, California located on the
coast between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles. On April 9, 1912 he married Natalie Francis Beatrice
Talbert. Upon moving to Oxnard, Gardner started earning an immediate reputation by defending members
of the Chinese Community who were being prosecuted for gambling by the district attorney. His bold and
innovative defences were unconventional in the least, and got his clients off by resorting to using legal
tricks and gymnastics.

In 1915 Erle Stanley Gardner moved to Ventura, California and in 1916 formed the Law Firm of Orr and
Gardner. Shortly thereafter he moved to San Francisco but returned in 1921 to rejoin the Orr Firm, where
at this time he started to write fiction. Gardner forced himself to write constantly and relentlessly submitted
stories, accepting criticsm and rejection and still continuing to write more. By the end of 1921 his story
"Nellie's Naughty Nighty" was published in the pulp magazine Breezy Stories. Gardner would practice law
by day and then write at night. Often he would write 2 or more stories in a day. His goal was to produce
100,000 words a month. Everything was fair game as subject matter for inclusion in the pulps from westerns
to science fiction. At this time in his life he used several pseudonyms, or pen names, such as Charles
Green, Kyle Corning and Grant Holiday among others. Many of his character were quite unique such as
"Speed Dash The Human Fly," or "Lester Leith." In 1923 he wrote "The Shrieking Skeleton" which was
sold to the famous "Black Mask Magazine," along with Dashiell Hammett and Carroll John Daly. By the
early thirties Gardner has sufficient agency representation and two book length manuscripts that were both
rejected by Collier's and Saturday Evening Post. They were subsequently "rediscovered" by Thayer
Hobson the president of William Morrow Publishing Company (who eventually published all of Gardner's
books initially in first edition) and re-written as courtroom mysteries as part of a series. In the re-writing
process the fictional character "Perry Mason" was developed. On March 1, 1933 the first Mason
book was written in Ventura in the Gardner Building at 21 S. California Street and was named "The Case of The Velvet Claws." In September another Mason mystery was published (again, written in the Gardner Building) under the title of "The Case of The Sulky Girl." Eighty-four more  Mason mysteries would follow. The following Mason books, "The Case of The Lucky Legs" and "The Case of The Howling Dog," were most likely conceived and transcribed in the Gardner Building as well.

In 1934 Erle Stanley Gardner bought property in Temecula, California. He had lived for 15 years in the
City of Ventura. In 1940 he left law practice for good. He died in 1970.

PAUL DRAKE'S OFFICE FOUND IN VENTURA!

by Richard Senate

Erle Stanley Gardner's Law office was on the third floor of the First National Bank (see
photograph below) in Ventura, California and he used his real office as a model for the fictional office of
 Mason. The views from Mason's office were almost identical to the view in Gardner's Ventura office.
At that time he was dictating his novels and having them transcribed by typists in a small office just down
the hall, on the third floor, next to the elevator. The elevator and the office are still there. Later he
described Paul Drake's Detective Office in a short piece called "THE CASE OF THE DISLODGED
DETECTIVE." In the early Mason novels Paul Drake's Office was two floors down,-later his office
was on the same floor. A reader found the discrepancy and Gardner wrote the mentioned piece to explain
why Drake had moved. But, Gardner used the location of the office he rented for his typists as the model
right down to the frosted glass doors and the location of the elevator. This is the way it still is in Ventura.
He had used the bank building as the real-life model for  Mason's fictional Los Angeles! Incredible!
Bet you didn't know that! (See the floor plan of his office on this site)

A number of Ventura locations found their way into Gardner's pieces. These will be featured here in future
Gardner pages. Meanwhile, please take my tour of the historic Ventura sites that are related to the life of Erle Stanley Gardner when he was in Ventura.