TRAVEL TALES : VENTURA'S REAL-LIFE PERRY MASON.

Byline: Carol Bidwell Daily News Staff Writer

If Erle Stanley Gardner's life had been a Perry Mason mystery, it might have been called ``The Case of the Country Lawyer.''

The mystery writer began his career with legal knowledge gained defending clients in the old Ventura County Courthouse, where he first stood before a judge in 1915.

Gardner's career - both before the bar and behind the typewriter - fascinates Richard Senate, who heads the city of Ventura's cultural affairs office and recently completed a biography of the famed writer, who churned out an average of 1.2 million words a year in a flood of mystery novels until his death in 1970.

Senate also takes mystery fans on periodic downtown walking tours to the places important in Gardner's life - the courthouse (now Ventura City Hall), two of his former offices, the hotel he used as a setting for some of his mysteries and a cafe where he sometimes penned his novels while ensconced in a back booth. The walk ends at the Phantom Bookshop, 451 E. Main St., which specializes in mysteries, including Gardner's books.

On a recent tour, Senate stood in the middle of one of the former courtrooms, surrounded by dark wood paneling and gold Victorian gingerbread ceiling moldings.

``Here,'' he told some 50 members of a Saturday afternoon tour group, ``is where Perry Mason was born.''

This ornate room and other former courtrooms in the 1913 marble building, supplanted in 1978 by a modern court complex in the east end of town, are now used as conference and meeting rooms. But they still have the same dignified air as when judges in black robes used to glower at Gardner's flamboyant way with the law.

The lawyer-cum-writer relied on loopholes and tricks to win cases, but - unlike Perry Mason - lost a lot of them, Senate said. Gardner only had six months of law school education.

``He got a bad grade, so he stood up and socked the professor in the jaw,'' Senate said. So Gardner ``read law'' in the offices of established attorneys, passing the bar exam at the age of 21.

Gardner first practiced law in Oxnard, quickly becoming the champion of the Chinese businessmen who were often targeted for minor violations by city officials, who saw fines as a way to bolster city coffers.

In the early 1920s, when the city had run up a $2,000 debt, city officials decided Chinese businessmen who sold illegal lottery tickets should be arrested, Senate said. Fining 20 business owners $100 each would pay off the debt. The businessmen got wind of the imminent arrests and turned to Gardner; he devised a plan.

The arrests went off as planned - sort of.

``Gardner moved the butcher into the baker's shop. He moved the hardware seller into the grocery store, moved all the businessmen around,'' Senate said. ``He knew that to the police, all the Chinese looked alike.''

When the cases came to trial, police officers testified that they had arrested the businessmen named in the warrants. But the judge dismissed all charges after asking the businessmen to identify themselves - and found that officers had arrested the wrong men in the wrong shops.

The Chinese community never forgot its champion. When his family fell on hard times years later, the businessmen set up a bank account to pay Gardner's rent and other bills and added money to the account whenever the balance dipped, Senate said.

Moving to Ventura, Gardner first worked in an office - still occupied by a law firm - at 39 N. California St., another stop on the tour. He later moved to the third floor of the First National Bank Building at 494 E. Main St., just steps away at the corner of California and Main streets. Local merchants became used to the sight of Gardner, his coattails flying, dashing up the hill, perpetually late for a court appearance.

Before a judge, Gardner had a flamboyant courtroom demeanor that often helped him win cases.

``He used to sit there with his thumbs in the armholes of his vest while defense witnesses were testifying and shake his head like it was all a pack of lies,'' Senate said. ``He was known for his ability to break people down on the stand. A reporter once wrote that he could see the lies swarming around a witness's head like a giant beehive.''

It was in his Ventura office that Gardner wrote the first Perry Mason mysteries, modeling his legalistic hero after himself; Mason's secretary, Della Street, after his own secretary, who became his second wife; and his settings after the courtrooms, shops, hotels and cafes of his hometown.

The late Walter Fourt, who was Gardner's law partner for many year, said the writer often disrupted business in the office while plotting out a mystery - even frightening clients as he noisily acted out dialogue.

Even though Gardner would write 82 Perry Mason mysteries that would be translated into more than 90 languages, he did little independent research, instead modeling his books after his own life, his court cases and his surroundings, Senate said.

``Although all his books are set in Los Angeles, they're really in Ventura,'' Senate said. ``Perry Mason's office was a mirror of his own office. Why try to invent something when it's all around you? He had Perry Mason's life right here.''

Follow path of novelist

Richard Senate will lead a walking tour of the old Ventura County Courthouse and other sites that figured in mystery writer Erle Stanley Gardner's life from 1 to 3 p.m. Nov. 16. Tours begin at the front door of the old courthouse, now Ventura City Hall, at 501 Poli St., Ventura. Cost is $6 per person. Reservations: [phone].

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Photo, Box

Photo: Fans of fictional attorney Perry Mason visit the courthouse - now Ventura City Hall - where the lawyer who created the character, Erle Stanley Gardner, exhibited his own flamboyant courtroom style. Tours of Gardner's haunts are led by Ventura's Richard Senate, who has written a biography about Gardner.

Carol Bidwell/Daily News

Box: Follow path of novelist (See Text)