Hamilton Burger

Hamilton Burger is the fictional Los Angeles district attorney who is the nemesis of Perry Mason in the long-running series of novels, films, and radio and television programs featuring the fictional defense attorney created by Erle Stanley Gardner. The name is a pun, since shortening "Hamilton" to "Ham", a popular nickname, would produce "Hamburger". In the novels Gardner sometimes played on this pun by referring to him as "Ham Burger, the big beefy DA." In the earliest novels of the series, the surname of the district attorney is in fact "Hamburger", and not yet "Burger".

Critics have suggested that Burger must have been the most incompetent lawyer in history {see "Mad" Magazine parody "The Day Perry Mason Lost a Case"!!), as his cases inevitably involved prosecuting the wrong, innocent person who was defended by Mason, who always in the end revealed the true criminal through a series of courtroom tricks (which largely would not have been allowed in a real-life trial). Burger's bag of tricks was comparatively empty, chiefly comprising indignant exclamations of, "Incompetent, irrelevant, and immaterial!" Once Mason had outed the true perpetrator, Burger always joined in Mason's motion to the judge to dismiss the charges against Mason's client so that Burger could then charge the actual wrongdoer. Burger was probably most famously portrayed (in the long-running original Perry Mason television series) by actor William Talman, who was replaced briefly after he was arrested and charged with possession of marijuana and indecent exposure. Talman returned to the show after all charges against him were dropped.

Not known to many is the fact that Burger "did" actually defeat Mason twice on the television series—once in "The Case of the Terrified Typist" and again in "The Case of the Deadly Verdict." In addition, in "The Case of the Shoplifter's Shoe," Burger figured out the true culprit (after some nudging in the right direction by Perry). In the TV series the closest Burger has to having Perry Mason "arrested" is when he has Mason cited for causing a trash fire within city limits {Part of Mason's plan to free an innocent client}!

References

Erle Stanley Gardner, "The Case of the Velvet Claws" (1933), and about eighty more novels by this author.