The Adventures of Ellery Queen is the title of two separate television series made in the 1950s. They are based on the fictional detective Ellery Queen and the cases he solves with his father Inspector Richard Queen.
The first series was telecast on DuMont Television Network from October 19, 1950 to December 6, 1951 (50 episodes) and ABC from December 16, 1951, to November 26, 1952 (43 episodes). It initially starred Richard Hart as Ellery Queen but he suddenly died of a heart attack in January 1951 and was replaced by Lee Bowman. Florenz Ames played Inspector Richard Queen. This was the first production by Irving and Norman Pincus. Donald Richardson was the director. Guest stars included Anne Bancroft, John Carradine, and Eva Gabor. Some of the scripts were written by Helene Hanff, who would go on to write the famous 1970 book 84, Charing Cross Road. [1] Bancroft would go on to play Hanff in the film adaptation of 84, Charing Cross Road in 1987. [2]
The ABC version was sponsored by Bayuk cigars, but that sponsorship ended with the last broadcast. [3]
The second series was telecast on NBC from September 26, 1958 to June 5, 1959 (33 episodes). It featured George Nader as Ellery Queen for the first twenty episodes and Lee Philips for the remaining thirteen. Les Tremayne took the role of Inspector Richard Queen. It was produced by Albert McCleery. [4] Film star and Oscar-nominee Nancy Carroll made a guest appearance.
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 cases. From 1929 to 1971, Dannay and Lee wrote around forty novels and short story collections in which Ellery Queen appears as a character.
Cambridge Circus is the partly pedestrianised intersection where Shaftesbury Avenue crosses Charing Cross Road on the eastern edge of Soho, central London. Side-streets Earlham, West, Romilly and Moor streets also converge at this point. It is halfway between Tottenham Court Road station, Oxford Street and the centre of Leicester Square, which is southwest of Charing Cross Road via Cranborne Street.
84, Charing Cross Road is a 1970 book by Helene Hanff, later made into a stage play, television play, and film, about the twenty-year correspondence between the author and Frank Doel, chief buyer of Marks & Co antiquarian booksellers, located at the eponymous address in London, England.
Anthony Gilbert was the pen name of Lucy Beatrice Malleson, an English crime writer and a cousin of actor-screenwriter Miles Malleson. She also wrote fiction and a 1940 autobiography, Three-a-Penny, as Anne Meredith.
Ellery Queen is an American TV drama series, developed by Richard Levinson and William Link, who based it on the fictional character of the same name. The series ran for a single season on NBC from September 11, 1975, to April 4, 1976. Jim Hutton stars as the eponymous sleuth, along with David Wayne as his father, Inspector Richard Queen.
Charles Ellsworth Grapewin was an American vaudeville and circus performer, a writer, and a stage and film actor. He worked in over 100 motion pictures during the silent and sound eras, most notably portraying Uncle Henry in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's The Wizard of Oz (1939), "Grandpa" William James Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), Jeeter Lester in Tobacco Road (1941), Uncle Salters in Captains Courageous (1937), Gramp Maple in The Petrified Forest (1936), Wang's Father in The Good Earth (1937), and California Joe in They Died With Their Boots On (1941).
An inverted detective story, also known as a "howcatchem", is a murder mystery fiction structure in which the commission of the crime is shown or described at the beginning, usually including the identity of the perpetrator. The story then describes the detective's attempt to solve the mystery. There may also be subsidiary puzzles, such as why the crime was committed, and they are explained or resolved during the story. This format is the opposite of the more typical "whodunit", where all of the details of the perpetrator of the crime are not revealed until the story's climax. The first such story was R. Austin Freeman's The Case of Oskar Brodski published in Pearson's Magazine in 1912.
Helene Hanff was an American writer born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is best known as the author of the book 84, Charing Cross Road, which became the basis for a stage play, television play, and film of the same name.
Mary Christianna Lewis, known professionally as Christianna Brand, was a British crime writer and children's author born in British Malaya.
Patrick Quentin, Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge were pen names under which Hugh Callingham Wheeler, Richard Wilson Webb, Martha Mott Kelley and Mary Louise White Aswell wrote detective fiction. In some foreign countries their books have been published under the variant Quentin Patrick. Most of the stories were written by Webb and Wheeler in collaboration, or by Wheeler alone. Their most famous creation is the amateur sleuth Peter Duluth. In 1963, the story collection The Ordeal of Mrs. Snow was given a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America. In 1949, the book Puzzle for Pilgrims won the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière International Prize, the most prestigious award for crime and detective fiction in France.
The Morey Amsterdam Show is an American sitcom which ran from 1948 to 1949 on CBS Television and 1949–50 on the DuMont Television Network, for a total of 71 episodes.
Frank Percy Doel was a British antiquarian bookseller for Marks & Co in London who achieved posthumous fame as the recipient of a series of humorous letters from American author Helene Hanff, to which he scrupulously and, at first, very formally replied. The shop where he worked was at 84 Charing Cross Road, the title of a bestselling 1970 book written by Hanff which became a cult classic, a 1981 stage play, and a 1987 film starring Anthony Hopkins as Doel and Anne Bancroft as Hanff.
Crawford Mystery Theatre is an American television program broadcast on the DuMont Television Network Thursdays at 9:30pm ET beginning on September 6, 1951. The series was also seen in first-run syndication. The series ran from 1951 to 1952.
Colonel Humphrey Flack is an American sitcom which ran Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET from October 7, 1953, to July 2, 1954, on the DuMont Television Network, then revived from 1958 to 1959 for first-run syndication.
The Cases of Eddie Drake is an American crime drama series which initially was shown in syndication in 1951, before airing on the DuMont Television Network during 1952. It was a crime drama originally filmed for CBS Television by Imppro, a small outfit in 1948. The TV series was adapted from the radio series The Cases of Mr. Ace (1945-1947) starring George Raft, with both series written by Jason James. Don Haggerty played the lead in the new series.
Public Prosecutor is an American television series produced in 1947–1948, which first aired in 1951.
Steve Randall is an American detective television series starring Melvyn Douglas. The series' 13 episodes were initially seen in syndication during the summer of 1952, before being picked up and rerun by the DuMont Television Network from November 7, 1952, to January 30, 1953. CBS subsequently ran 9 of the same 13 episodes again from June 16, 1953, to August 11, 1953.
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.
The Adventures of Ellery Queen was a radio detective program in the United States. Several iterations of the program appeared on different networks, with the first one broadcast on CBS on June 18, 1939, and the last on ABC on May 27, 1948.