Detective in the 50s

Answer 1

Perry Mason was big in both literature and TV; Agatha Christie was popular in print and the movie Witness for the Prosecution was made in 1957 from one of her stories; my parents had a whole collection of books by New Zealand author Ngaio Marsh's detective stories; and of course they had a collection of Leslie Charteris, The Saint detective stories. Then there was Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer series.

One of my all time favorite detective movies was the 1950 Mystery Street with Ricardo Montalban as Lt. Peter Morales who took a scientific approach to his job, including consulting a scientist at the local university, Harvard. It was most unusual for movies of this time to use science to solve the crime, considered something like voodoo; but well done enough to hold up to today's forensic savvy audience. It's worth a look see just for Elsa Lanchester's over the top performance.

The most popular detective movies of the 1950s were the film noir style of the above mentioned Witness for the Prosecution, The Big Heat, the original D.O.A., and The Asphalt Jungle. Then there were the Hitchcock dramas Strangers on a Train, Rear Window, Dial M for Murder, The Wrong Man, and Orson Well's Touch of Evil, to name a few.

When it came to TV, the reigning TV detective series were Perry Mason, Mike Hammer, Peter Gunn, Ellery Queen, The Naked City, the Untouchables, and the original Dragnet. The decade ended with the sunnier 77 Sunset Strip, Hawaiian Eye, and Surfside Six.