Rudolph C. Flothow (November 23, 1895 - December 21, 1971) was a movie and television producer active from 1915 through the mid-1950s, producing more than 45 films and over 80 television episodes. [1] Most of his productions were crime films for Columbia Pictures, [2] including the 1943 Batman serial, and Crime Doctor, Whistler, Boston Blackie, and Ellery Queen films. [3] He directed the sound sequences in the early sound feature Lucky Boy, starring George Jessel. [4]
Flothow was born November 23, 1895, in Frankfurt, Germany, [5] into a mercantile family involved in the China shipping trade, and was apparently a distant relation of the Bavarian composer Friedrich von Flotow. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1914. [6] He married a former model, Martha Tekla Sikorski, the daughter of Polish immigrants, and had one son, Rudy Flothow. [5] His half-brother Wolfgang Hoeffer, a U.S. counterintelligence agent, was found shot to death in the immediate aftermath of Otto John's defection to East Germany. [7]
His earliest involvement in the film industry was in distribution, joining Paramount in 1915. [5] Flothow consistently worked with small budgets, [2] with film shoots typically lasting just 21 days. [8] Flothow had a reputation for delivering a lot of movie for the money, an impression reinforced by Ralph Bellamy's recollection of Flothow as being "always on the set" during the filming of the Ellery Queen films. [2]
In the wake of the film industry's slowdown in the late 1940s, Flothow transitioned into the nascent television market, with the idea of doing for television syndication "...just what he had done before, hard-hitting, low-cost shows, a lot of male-driven action". [8] The result was Ramar of the Jungle , a syndicated television program that reran for decades. [3] The program's African setting had its source in Flothow's longstanding fascination with Africa, [8] crystallizing in a dressing-room conversation with Jon Hall. [9]
Flothow "used a regular stable of heavies. He was actually very fond of these guys with mean faces who were actually very sweet." [8]
He died on December 21, 1971, in Culver City, California. [10]
Ellery Queen is a pseudonym created in 1928 by the American detective fiction writers Frederic Dannay (1905–1982) and Manfred Bennington Lee (1905–1971). It is also the name of their main fictional detective, a mystery writer in New York City who helps his police inspector father solve baffling murder mysteries. Dannay and Lee wrote most of the novels and short story collections in which Ellery Queen appears as a character, and these books were among the most popular American mysteries published between 1929 and 1971. Under the pseudonym Ellery Queen, they also edited more than thirty anthologies of crime fiction and true crime. Dannay founded, and for many years edited, the crime fiction magazine Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, which has been published continuously from 1941 to the present. From 1961 onwards, Dannay and Lee commissioned other authors to write thrillers using the pseudonym Ellery Queen, but not featuring Ellery Queen as a character; some such novels were juvenile and were credited to Ellery Queen Jr. They also wrote four mysteries under the pseudonym Barnaby Ross, which featured the detective Drury Lane. Several movies, radio shows, and television shows were based on their works.
Ned Thomas Beatty was an American actor. In a career that spanned five decades, he appeared in more than 160 films. Throughout his career, Beatty gained a reputation for being "the busiest actor in Hollywood". His film appearances included Deliverance (1972), White Lightning (1973), All the President's Men (1976), Network (1976), Superman (1978), Superman II (1980), Back to School (1986), Rudy (1993), Shooter (2007), Toy Story 3 (2010), and Rango (2011). He also had the series regular role of Stanley Bolander in the first three seasons of the hit NBC TV drama Homicide: Life on the Street.
Sidney Alderman Blackmer was an American Broadway and film actor active between 1914 and 1971, usually in major supporting roles.
William Dennis Gargan was an American film, television and radio actor. He was the 5th recipient of the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1967, and in 1941, was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Joe in They Knew What They Wanted. He acted in decades of movies including parts in Follow the Leader, Rain, Night Flight, Three Sons, Isle of Destiny and many others. The role he was best known for was that of a private detective Martin Kane in the 1949–1952 radio-television series Martin Kane, Private Eye. In television, he was also in 39 episodes of The New Adventures of Martin Kane.
Lee Bowman was an American film and television actor. According to one obituary, "his roles ranged from romantic lead to worldly, wisecracking lout in his most famous years".
Suresh Gopi is an Indian actor, politician, playback singer and television presenter. He works predominantly in Malayalam cinema and has also appeared in some Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Bollywood films. Suresh made his acting debut as a child in the 1965 film Odayil Ninnu. He made his debut as an adult in 1986 and since then, he has acted in more than 250 films. Suresh Gopi is a recipient of the National Film Award and the Kerala State Film Award in 1998 for his performance in Kaliyattam. He was a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Parliament of India.
Margaret Lindsay was an American film actress. Her time as a Warner Bros. contract player during the 1930s was particularly productive. She was noted for her supporting work in successful films of the 1930s and 1940s such as Baby Face, Jezebel (1938) and Scarlet Street (1945) and her leading roles in lower-budgeted B movie films such as the Ellery Queen series at Columbia in the early 1940s. Critics regard her portrayal of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Hepzibah Pyncheon in the 1940 film The House of the Seven Gables as Lindsay's standout career role.
IMDb is an online database of information related to films, television series, podcasts, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and personal biographies, plot summaries, trivia, ratings, and fan and critical reviews. IMDb began as a fan-operated movie database on the Usenet group "rec.arts.movies" in 1990, and moved to the Web in 1993. Since 1998, it has been owned and operated by IMDb.com, Inc., a subsidiary of Amazon.
Duncan Chow is a Hong Kong-born actor who is popular in Taiwan. Chow was originally a professional windsurfer and a fashion show model, but chose acting as a career in 2001. He rose to fame by starring in 2004's Taiwanese Hit Movie "Formula 17", a comedy film about homosexuality.
Lloyd Corrigan was an American film and television actor, producer, screenwriter, and director who began working in films in the 1920s. The son of actress Lillian Elliott, Corrigan directed films, usually mysteries such as Daughter of the Dragon starring Anna May Wong, before dedicating himself more to acting in 1938. His short La Cucaracha won an Academy Award in 1935.
Hal Mohr, A.S.C. was a famed movie cinematographer who won an Oscar for his work on the 1935 film, A Midsummer Night's Dream. He was awarded another Oscar for The Phantom of the Opera in 1943, and received a nomination for The Four Poster in 1952.
Salvatore Anthony Grosso, known as Sonny Grosso, was an American film producer, television producer, and NYPD detective, noted for his role in the case made famous in the book and film versions of the French Connection.
Ramar of the Jungle is a 1950s American television series that starred Jon Hall as Dr. Tom Reynolds. In addition to Jon Hall as Dr. Tom Reynolds (Ramar), the series also starred Ray Montgomery as Reynolds' associate, Professor Howard Ogden. Victor Millan played the role of Zahir and Nick Stewart played Willy-Willy.
Shadows is a 2007 film by the Academy-award nominated director Milcho Manchevski. Its motto is “Sometimes the Dead Speak Louder Than the Living”. Shadows, a Macedonian-German-Italian-Spanish-Bulgarian co-production was filmed on location in Skopje, Ohrid and several other locations in the Republic of Macedonia.
Marek Losey is a British film and television director; he is the third generation of film maker in the Losey family.
Nauman Ijaz is a Pakistani television and film actor, TV anchorperson, and TV show presenter. He is the recipient of several accolades including 10 Lux Style Awards, 7 Hum Awards and a President's Pride of Performance, which was awarded him in 2012.
Lawrence J. Darmour (1895–1942) was an American film producer, operator of Larry Darmour Productions from 1927, and a significant figure in Hollywood's low-budget production community.
Eric Taylor was an American screenwriter with over fifty titles to his credit. He began writing crime fiction for the pulps before working in Hollywood. He contributed scripts to The Crime Club, Crime Doctor, Dick Tracy, Ellery Queen, and The Whistler series, as well as six Universal monster movies.
Amna Ilyas is a Pakistani film and television actress, and model. She is the younger sister of models Salma Ilyas and Uzma Ilyas. Amna began her modeling career at the age of 20, and a few years later, she moved on to acting in 2013. She is known for her leading roles in several films, including Zinda Bhaag (2013), Good Morning Karachi (2014), Saat Din Mohabbat In (2018), Baaji (2019), and Ready Steady No (2019). Ilyas has also starred in a series of television shows including the romantic drama Tum Mere Paas Raho (2015).
Ellery Queen and the Perfect Crime is a 1941 American mystery film directed by James P. Hogan and written by Eric Taylor. The film was loosely based on the 1938 novel The Devil to Pay by Ellery Queen. It stars Ralph Bellamy, Margaret Lindsay, Charley Grapewin, Spring Byington, H. B. Warner and James Burke. The film was released on August 14, 1941, by Columbia Pictures.
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