TELEVISION
 llery Queen
is arguably the greatest fictional detective of American creation, but despite several
attempts in diverse styles, he has never been accurately
portrayed in movies or on television. The great complexity of plot and depth of character
that marked the extraordinary series of Queen novels almost never survived in attempts to
transfer them to visual formats, and the part was often played for comedy (one of the
first movie Queens was comic Eddie Quillan).As with the radio Queen, television versions of the "logical successor to Sherlock Holmes" appeared on three networks (as well as in syndication) in a twenty-six-year span.  The character of Ellery Queen made only one successful
crossover to the (little) screen as a NBC series, with legitimate bases in the books for
most of the characteristics that Jim Hutton displayed in the leading role. The show had a
sense of good humor, and its setting in 1947 made nostalgia an important component of its
success. After the final aired episode of the series, there were a number of scripts
waiting to go - some of them quite excellent. Many were given over to a short-lived NBC
series called "The Eddie Capra Mysteries" starring Vincent Baggetta.
A show that
tried to mix elements of "Columbo" with elements of "Ellery Queen" but
achieved neither as the star was totally miscast. Another of the unused scripts and one
of the best, "The Adventure of the Grand Old Lady" (in which a famous mystery writer
dies and Ellery recalls a old case that the writer was personally involved in..)
was re-tooled and used as a
"Murder, She Wrote" with Jessica Fletcher in the EQ role. The same
writer team that made the Hutton-series is also responsable for the
immensely popular
 'Columbo' and in the first episode of that serie "Murder
by the Book" (9/15/71) they had a worldfamous mystery writer murder
his collaborator in perfectcrime fashion, only to be detected by the
shambling Lieutenant. It was no secret this was based on Dannay and Lee (although
their detective in the teleplay Mrs.Melville clearly was a Miss Marple-clone). |
 he
Adventures of Ellery Queen
Producers:Norman and Irving Pincus Very little is know about this series. Being
broadcast at the beginning of TV, the series were
allegedly broadcast live.
Although ABC made recordings which somehow seem to have survived. At first
Richard Hart, big and strapping and sporting an incongruous Errol Flynn moustache, was
the star "The Adventures of Ellery Queen" also
known as 'a Kaiser-Frazer Adventure in Mystery'. This first series was aired live and was
well done for a Dumont net program. Florenz Ames played his father,
Syndicated
(Norvin/Arrow), 1954-1956 The portrayals were given a certain degree of authenticity since Ames was familiar with his role and both Charlotte Keane and Hugh Marlowe had played their role on radio. Furthermore both actors came physically close to the image of the characters described in the books. The production values of this syndicated version were nil and the storylines poor. 32 episodes were filmed. The title was changed to 'Mystery Is My Business' when rerun in 1956. In 1954 actor John Ireland sued the Young and Rubicam Add agency for dropping him for the lead for this series. Ireland eventually received an out-of-court settlement. Supposedly this proofed that actors who were labeled political nonconformist were banned from work.
During the first twenty weeks Ellery was enacted by the far too young and handsome looking George Nader. Scripts were poor and the acting abominable. In this series the idea was to do actual Queen stories, and six of the first eight were adaptation of the novels. Other writers' mystery stories were dramatized by making Ellery the hero character which didn't help much..The show was telecast live from Hollywood, but when the series switched to production in New York, Lee Philips took over the EQ role and the Inspector was completely dropped. Philips played Ellery as a man of awareness and compassion, substantially closer to the original concepts. Using only original scripts the show was produced on videotape rather than live and the title was shortened to "Ellery Queen".  List of episodes
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Introduction |
Floor Plan | Q.B.I. |
List of Suspects | Whodunit?
| Q.E.D. | Kill as
directed | New |
Copyright Copyright © MCMXCIX-MMVII Ellery Queen, a website on deduction. All rights reserved. |
Dumont, 14 Oct 1950-1951 
Inspector Richard
Queen. The show appeared on the Dumont Network beginning in 1950 and each episode took 25
minutes. After only four months, less than a third of the way through the season, in
January of 1951, Hart died of a heart attack during a rehearsal and was replaced
on 24 hours notice by Lee Bowman,
older, suaver, and slimmer. 
