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b a c k
Season 1
1* "The Gum-chewing Millionaire"
06-18-39 :60:00*
Repeated condensed as 'The
Great Chewing Gum Mystery'
05-25-44 and 05-27-44
Printed as authorized (not by
Queen) book The
Murdered Millionaire
(Whitman Better Little
Books,1942)
Guest Armchair Detectives: Peter Arno (cartoonist),
Ruth McKenney
(playwright), Lee T.Smith
and Frederick Chase Taylor (radio's 'Colonel
Stoopnagle').
Ellery receives a friendly
letter from a stranger asking for a recommendation
on choosing a nurse. Before he
knows it he's involved in the murder of a
gum-loving,
will-changing old tyrant.
2* "The Last Man
Club"
06-25-39 :60:00* Repeated 02-18-40
Repeated as "The
Disaster Club"on 01-06-44 and 01-08-44
 Guest Armchair Detectives: Gelett Burgess (writer,
author illustrator), Ed Gardner (radio star
from Duffy's
Tavern), Princess Alexandra
Kropotkin (Russian refugee,
linguist-writer), Deems Taylor (music critic,
composer)
When Ellery and Nikki witness a
hit-and-run, the victim's
dying words lead them into the affairs of a
survivor-
takes-all-group
to which the dead man belonged.
3* "The Fallen Angel"
07-02-39 :60:00*
Repeated condensed as "The
Adventure of the Fallen Angel" for NBC's
Molle
Mystery Theater 06-14-46
Adapted as "The Fallen
Angel" and published in EQMM, 7/51 and
in The Calendar of Crime
(1952)
Guest Armchair Detectives:
William H.Barton Jr.(Executive curator, Hayden
planetarium), Christopher
W. Coates (Aquarist, New
York Aquarium),
Francesca La Monte
(Associate curator of ichthyology at the American
Museum of Natural History),
Pauline Simmons (Assistant curator of far
eastern art, Metropolitan
Museum of Art)
Nikki's girl friend, recently got married
a aging laxative tycoon and moved
into the monstrous family
mansion. There she gets involved into a sexual
relationship with her
husbands' artistic younger brother. Then murder steps
in ...and so does
Ellery.
4* "Napoleon's Razor"
07-09-39 :60:00*
Repeated condensed as "The
Corpse in Lower Five" 06-22-44 and 06-24-44
Guest Armchair Detectives:
Lillian Hellman (playwright), Herman Shumlin
(Broadway producer), Craig Earl
(host of radio's Professor Quiz) and Betty
Garde (singer)
A
murder is comitted on a transcontinental train from
Santa Fe station in Los
Angeles and cross the country,
arriving at Grand Central terminal, New York.
Ellery gets involved with
a traveling salesman,
a moviestar, a professor and
an old razor.
5* "The Impossible Crime"
07-16-39 :60:00*
Guest Armchair Detectives: Jane
Franklin, Mrs.Mary E. Hamilton, Michael
Krozier and John J.Martin
A murder that couldn't have been committed—and yet was—would
reasonably be expected to
stump such fictional criminologists as Sherlock
Holmes, Nick Carter,
Philo Vance, Perry Mason and Hercule Poirot.
6* "George Spelvin, Murderer"
07-23-39 :60:00*
Guest Armchair Detectives:
Katharine Albert (playwright), Dale Eunson
(playwright), Constance
Smith and John S.Young (radio announcer)
Ellery warns his colleagues that even
though the killer's name is known,
"the most redoutable
sleuth would have no cinch in summarizing this
solution" As
ridiculous as it seems, everything is known about the murderer
and nothing.
(CBS publicity handout)
There is a possible connection
with 'The Scarlet Letters' (1953) where
the name George Spelving (a
traditional pseudonym for actors) pops up.
7* "The Bad Boy"
07-30-39 :60:00*
Guest Armchair Detectives: Daisy
Armoury, Lewis E. Birdseye
(General
agent of St. Johns Guild
Floating Hospital and Sea Side Hospital at
New Dorp, Staten island) Helen Leighty
and Dr. Lloyd B.Sharp
(Head of
Life
Camps). All 4 guests were New York child
welfare officials.
Repeat performance
in NBC's Ford Theatre
1-4-48 had playwright -
producer
Howard Lindsay
as host. Hugh Marlowe
(EQ), Santos Ortega (IQ), Ted De
Corsia (Velie), Charlotte
Keane (Nikki), Brad Barker (boy Bobby Hayes),
Harold Dryanforth, John Gibson,
Avril Harris, Jane Houston, Anne Seymour,
Walter Vaughn, Guy Wallace.
George Zachary (producer), George Falkner
(continuity) Lynn Murray
(composer - conductor), Howard Teichmann
(editor).
Adapted on television in the
Dumont series "The Adventures of Ellery
Queen" 10/19/50
Sarah Brink, who was poisoned by
arsenic in a serving of rabbit stew and
found dead in her bed with
several dozen live bunnies loose in the room. In
the Washington
Square browstone we also find a secret room, an old
matriarch,
a magician and a precocious young boy.
"KILLER
DILLER THRILLER
The latest in Sunday night radio socks
Is wallowing knee-deep in crime:
The killer's at large and as sly a a fox;
O, boy! What a wonderful time!
Away on the hunt the whole family goes;
The murder? By whom was it seen?
The corpus delicti won't tell what he knows
—Hurray! Here comes Ellery Queen!"
(39-07-29 Mason City Globe-Gazette)
8* "The Flying Needle"
08-06-39 :60:00*
Repeated
condensed as "The
Murder on the Air" 02-03-44 and 02-05-44
Guest Armchair Detectives:
E.L.Bragdon (New York Sun radio editor),
Leonard Carlton (New York Post radio editor),
J. E. "Dinty" Doyle (New York
Journal-American radio editor) and Joe Ranson (radio
editor of the Brooklyn
Daily
Eagle)
Ted Weeks, Broadway
columnist, is murdered during his broadcast in
a mystifying manner.
Involved the
blowing of a poisoned needle through a soda straw.
Which
was actually tested by Zachary
hours before the show went on the air!
9* "The Wandering Corpse"
08-13-39 :60:00*
Repeated condensed as "The
Election Day Murder" 11-02-44 and 11-04-44
Guest Armchair Detectives: Raymond Paige,
Howard Barlow, Johnny Green
and Mark Warnow (all
bandleaders)
The
newly elected District Attorney is found murdered in a Turkish bath.
Inspector Queen and
Sergeant Velie can rely on Ellery in a case which
stumbles upon election
fraud
10* "The Thirteenth Clue"
08-20-39 :60:00*
Repeated condensed
as "The Squirrel Woman" 02-17-44 and 02-19-44
Guest Armchair
Detectives: Henry Casler, James Crayhon, Don Doherty
and Margaret
Bourke-White (all news photographers)
A series of thefts on a Broadway sideshow get Ellery involved.
Then a
midget dies in a closed room gets bitten by a rattlesnake...
Assisted by the competent, comely Nikki, Columbia's
gentleman-detective
finds himself faced with a
gruesome problem in a honky-tonk side show on
Broadway. Complicating matters are a little freak, a Hindu
fortune teller, a
snake charmer and a card expert. And the stolen articles?
Who could
possibly want an ordinary flat iron, a mouse, broom, bag of salt,
and deck
of cards? Radiogenic-voiced Queen figures it out in his own
ingenious,
deductive fashion. (39-08-19 Mason City
Globe-Gazette)
11* "The Secret Partner"
(aka Silent Partner)
08-27-39 :60:00*
Nine-part comic
book adaptation distributed by Gulf Oil in
May and June 1940
Guest
Armchair Detectives: Lois Doyle (daughter of radio
columnist
"Denty"),
Estelle Levy, (radio actress of Nila Mack's "Let's Pretend;")
Buster
Hoefer (editor and publisher of the Sheboygan (Wisconsin)
Weekly,
who contends its the world's smallest newspaper), Arthur Ross
(schoolboy radio emcee of "March of Games.")
Diamonds from Holland are smuggled into the States via a shipment of
Tulip
bulbs
12* "The Million Dollar Finger"
09-03-39 :60:00*
Guest Armchair
Detectives: Dean Cornwall (commercial artist),
Ruth
Garth (industrial designer), Tony Sarg (illustrator) and
Suzanne
Silvercruys (sculptor)
In Greenwich Village a group of starving artists encounter dead
and
Ellery Queen!
13* "The Three R's"
09-10-39 :60:00*
Repeated condensed as "The College Crime" 09-14-44 and 09-16-44
Adapted as
"The Three R's" in EQMM,
9/46 and in The Calendar of
Crime (1952).
In the condensed version "There Was An Old Woman" was
mentioned, in
the '46 EQMM version "The Murderer was a Fox"(sic) and
in the
printed Calendar version"The Origin of Evil".
Guest Armchair
Detectives: four undergraduates from Midwest colleges.
When at the beginning of a new academic year students and teachers
return to the classrooms,
Ellery is hired by the administration of Barlowe
College
to locate a Poe
scholar who vanished in the Ozarks during the
summer. His
finds some baffling clues: a detective-story manuscript,
a
skeleton
with two missing fingers...
West Coast only
14* "The Blue Curse"
09-17-39 :60:00* Repeated 02-04-40
Guest Armchair
Detectives: four winners of a write-in contest
"Every mystery script has to have a focal clue on which the action
hinges,"
George Zachary says. "The clue is usually some tiny detail in the
story—a
slot machine, a date, a baseball score board—but it must be the
give-away
to the murderer's identity. Unless it is perfectly correct in
itself, people
write in and criticize the solution."
West Coast only
15* "The Lost Treasure"(aka
Lost Treasurer)
09-24-39 :60:00*
Repeated as "Captain's
Kidd Bedroom" 02-11-40
Condensed
as "The Buried Treasure" 04-27-44 and 04-29-44
Adapted
as "The Needle's Eye" (EQMM, 8/51),
as "Dead is my
business" (True Adventures,
12/58) and collected in Calendar
of Crime,
1952
Guest Armchair
Detectives (West): Camilla Boone, James Edwards,
Hugh
Hawley and Ester Tyler
(East):
Dean Cornwall (commercial artist), Ruth Garth (industrial designer),
Tony Sarg
(illustrator) and Suzanne Silvercruys (sculptor)
Ellery
investigates the husband of the niece of a retired explorer. When
visiting his island he
runs into a treasure hunt and the explorer is
murdered ...
16* "The Woman from Nowhere"
10-01-39 :60:00*
Guest Armchair
Detectives: Wally Buttterworth and Parks Johnson
(co-hosts
of radio's Vox Pop program) and four audience members
A pawnbroker moves with his family from one house to another. To his
astounishment he finds they find the body of a mysterious woman in a
trunk
in the basement
17* "The Mother Goose Murders"
10-08-39 :60:00*
Guest Armchair
Detectives: four audience members
Set in an old hotel where
the mild-mannered propietor Mr.Wiggins turnes
out to be
responsable for nursery-rhyme killings...
When WBBM Chicago
transmitted this show it was forced off the air
9 minutes
before the end of the program.
Robert
Strauss played Mr.Wiggins not Prouty.
18* "The March from Death"
10-15-39 :60:00*
Guest Armchair Detective:
Harry Kurnitz
(screenwriter-crime novelist)
Ellery helps out a department store magnate find three children and
stumbles
across murder and a dying message!
Millionaire Samuel March is murdered.He even carves a clue
concerning his
killer on a desk top. But that only serves to confuse the
police.
Suspicion points to six people including March's sons and
daughters who
were summoned from Cairo, Panama and other distant places just
before he
made a new will.
19* "The Haunted Cave"
 10-22-39 :60:00*
Repeated condensed as "Dead Man's Cavern"
04-13-44
and 04-15-44
Printed as
authorized story in Radio
&
Television
Mirror
(05-1940)
Guest Armchair Detectives:
four members of CBS
staff
and Radio City Music Hall, Martin Lewis
(Radio
Guide columnist) was the only one of the
amateur
sleuths to name the murderer correctly..
Ellery spends
the weekend at Tecumseh Lodge
with Nikki,
Inspector Queen and Velie. While
investigating a cave haunted by a strangler Colin
Montague is murdered...
Kenneth Roberts, announcer for
the Ellery Queen show, looked as though he needed a good
night's sleep. Well, he did; he was up all night pacing the
floor of the hospital where his frau gave birth to a son as dawn
approached.
(Radio Guide 39-11-10)
Note: Tony, Kenneth's son was born on 10-22-39
20* "The Dead Cat"
10-29-39 :60:00*
Condensed
as "The Murder Game" 06-01-44 and 06-03-44
Adapted story
printed as "The Dead Cat" in EQMM,
10/46 and collected
in The Calendar of
Crime (1952)
Guest Armchair Detectives:
unknown
During a Halloween party a game of Murder is played. One of the
guest's throat is cut in pitch darkness. Fortunately
both Ellery and Nikki
attend (in cat costumes)
During November 1939 Ted de Corsia replaced Howard
Smith as Sergeant Velie.
21* "The Picture Puzzle"
11-05-39 :60:00*
Condensed as "The Painted Problem" 04-06-44 and 4-08-44
Guest Armchair Detectives:
unknown
A executed bank robber hid a fortune in stolen bonds, Ellery tries to find
the
goods by studying a painting on the wall of the prison cell
22* "The Cellini Cup"
11-12-39 :60:00*
Printed as authorized story (not Queen)
"Here is a Mystery" in Radio
Guide 01-26-40
AFRS Mystery Playhouse program "The Thief in the Dark" sneak
preview
at the end of
AFRS Nero Wolfe broadcast of "The Last Laugh" 07-05-43 (?)
Condensed as "The Thief in the Dark" 05-04-44
and 05-06-44
Guest Armchair Detectives:
unknown
Ellery meets a man who claims that an
art-gallery propietor has
cheated him out of a cup
made by the great Benvenuto.
Ellery and Nikki go
to the auction
of the priceless cup
and meet a
variety
of people. That night the Cellini cup is
stolen from
the son of
the art dealer in total
darkness and in
the presence of both Ellery and
Nikki...
23* "The Tell-tale Bottle"
11-19-39 :60:00*
Reworked and printed as "The Telltale Bottle" in EQMM, 11/46 and
collected in The Calendar of Crime (1952)
Reprinted as "The Thanksgiving Day Mystery" in EQMM,
12/65
Guest Armchair Detectives: Alvena Smith
(Tulane University coed) one of
four amateur
contestants.
When
delivering holiday food baskets to the poor, Ellery
and
Nikki stumble into a
cocaine-pushing operation and a murder
24* "The Lost Child"
11-26-39 :60:00*
Condensed as "The Missing Child" 05-07-42 and 05-09-42
Adapted
as "Kidnaped!" (This Week, July 8, 1951 reprinted
in EQMM,
6/58
and collected as "Child Missing! in Queen's Bureau of
Investigation,
1955)
Guest Armchair Detectives:
four unidentified celebrities
Ellery sets out to find a missing child who's parents are about to
divorce
and finds a mysterious letter and a negligent nurse.
25* "The Man who wanted to be Murdered"
12-03-39 :60:00*
Printed as authorized story (not Queen)
in Radio &
Television Mirror 08-40
Guest Armchair Detectives:
four unidentified celebrities
A
wheelchair-bound old
gambler deliberately
tempts his
brother, his nephew, hies niece,
and his doctor. Through his
will he intends to leave
everything to charity if he lives
longer that one week otherwise
his estate will be
divided
among them. Furthermore, the
old man
makes a $ 25,000 bet
that Ellery can't solve his
murder. On the last day of
the specified
week his wish is
fullfilled...
26* "The Black Secret"
12-10-39 :60:00*
Condensed as
"The Dark Secret" 06-08-44 and 06-10-44
Guest Armchair Detectives:
four unidentified celebrities
Ellery and Nikki go undercover as clerks in a rare-book shop where some
valuable works
were stolen. Then the co-owner is murdered.
27* "The Four Scratches"
aka "The Three Scratches"
12-17-39 :60:00*
Guest Armchair Detectives:
four unidentified celebrities, possibly
Chamberlain
Brown (producer) (an article in the Washington Post from
Dec 21, 1939
mentions him as solving the story "a few days ago")
"Four armchair
detectives chosen from the radio audience, and Columbia
network
listeners in general as the program rings in".
28* "The Swiss Nutcracker"
12-24-39 :60:00*
Guest Armchair Detectives:
four unidentified celebrities
Marooned at a New England house party Ellery is faced with the thefts of a
nutcracker,
Santa's suit and a valuable diamond. Everyone has an alibi.
 29* "The Scorpion's Thumb"
12-31-39 :60:00*
Printed as authorized story (not Queen)
in Radio &
Television Mirror 12-40
Guest Armchair Detectives: four unidentified
celebrities
At a New Year's party a partner of a Wall Street
brokerage house is
served a poisoned
cocktail...
30* "The Dying Scarecrow"
01-07-40 :60:00*
Condensed as "The
Scarecrow and the Snowman" 1-20-44 and 1-22-44
Guest Armchair
Detectives: Marge Kerr, Russell Markert (promotor),
George
Shoemaker and Helen Sioussat (radio producer/director)
In July
Ellery, Nikki, the Inspector and Velie are driving through the
midwestern farm country. They stop to take home movies of a picturesque
scarecrow and
find a knifed man inside the scarecrow outfit. The victim
survives but remains unidentified and vanishes from the local
hospital
soon afterwards. Six months later, Ellery and his entourage
return to the
area during a blizzard and discover the same man, inside a snowman in a
farmyard only this time very dead....
31* "The Woman in Black"
01-14-40 :60:00*
Condensed
as "The Circular Clues" 03-16-44 and 03-18-44
Guest
Armchair Detectives: four armchair detectives chosen
from the radio
audience.
Ellery investigates the haunting of the family of a English writer
32* "The Anonymous Letters"
01-21-40 :60:00*
Guest Armchair Detectives
(East): George and Martha Washington,
Benjamin
Franklin, Napoleon Bonaporte, Robert E.Lee (5 people with
famous names)
33* "The Devil's Violin"
01-28-40 :60:00*
Condensed
as "Wanted, John Smith" 03-09-44 and 03-11-44
Guest Armchair
Detectives: four people named John Smith.
John Smith (
Flushing, N.Y.), John Smith, (Brooklyn, N.Y), John Smith and
John Smith,
(New York City)
Ellery
tries to help two refugees from Austria a violinist and child
prodigy. Their Stradivarius is
threatened by a bearded man with a
limp, wearing dark glasses who
calls himself John Smith....
34* "The Blue Curse"
02-04-40 :60:00* Repeat of 9-17-39
Guest Armchair Detective:
Donald Cook (movie and radio actor)
35* "Captain Kidd's Bedroom"
02-11-40 :60:00*
Repeat of "The Lost Treasure" 09-24-39
Condensed as
"The Buried Treasure" 04-27-44 and 04-29-44
Adapted as
"The Needle's Eye" (EQMM, 8/51) and collected in Calendar
of Crime,
1952
Guest Armchair Detectives:
unknown
Ellery
investigates the husband of the niece of a retired explorer. When
visiting his island he
runs into a treasure hunt and the explorer gets
murdered ...
36* "The Last Man Club"
02-18-40 :60:00* Repeat of 6-25-39
Condensed as "The Disaster Club"on 01-06-44 and
01-08-44
Guest Armchair Detectives:
unknown
When Ellery and Nikki witness a
hit-and-run, the
victim's dying words lead them
into the affairs of a
survivor-takes-all-group
to which the dead man
belonged.
George Zachary,
program originator, announced that
Queen Fans have been given the opportunity to select
the mystery that they have most enjoyed.
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