RADIOPLAYS
 achary
produced and directed thirty-four hour-long radio drama's which were broadcast
between June 1939 and February 1940. The program ran initially on a sustaining basis
(without a sponsor) as a summer replacement for The Screen Guild Theater.
Studio executives  were initially not impressed by the program. They changed their view
when due to a water hose burst in the transmitter cooling system at a Chicago station
WBBM 'The Mother Goose Murders' was forced off the air 9 minutes
before the end of the program. The number of
listeners who called in was so great it not only remained on the air but also garnered its
first sponsor Gulf Oil. Not much survived the years apart from the 'translations' of the
stories to other formats. After this period the format changed to half an hour drama's.To
prevent the plot leaking out Zachary would keep the final part a secret even to the actors
who played in it. At the last dressed rehearsal all was revealed and it didn't take long
for the actors to organize a pool, the winner being the one who unmasked the culprit. Ted
de Corsia (Velie) and runner-up Robert Strauss were the most frequent winners.
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Season 1 "The Adventures of Ellery Queen" list of titles 2
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The nephews wrote at least two
10-minute scripts for 'The Kate Smith Hour' a popular radioshow
with Kate Smith (singer) and Ted Collins (vice president of Columbia
Records). Both of them were armchair detectives in one of the EQ
radioshows early on in 1940. Two scripts "The Case of the Three Macklins"
and "The Case of the Crusading Reporter"
(dated Jan 12. 1940, there was a unknown capsule on
Jan 19. 1940) were
recovered and
star Ellery, Nikki and the Inspector. They supposedly were broadcast just after their
appearance in the EQ-show. One script
(Macklins) has been made available in print through
a special Crippen & Landru booklet in 2005 (limited
edition of Adventures of the Murdered Moth), it
clearly mentiones the fact that next week another EQ-story would be heard.
However crossreference with other data remains uncertain as to the precise
dates.
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Season 2 "The Adventures of Ellery Queen" list of titles 4 NBC Bromo-Seltzer Thursdays 9:30 - 10:00 pm 1942 - 1943 (68-93)  East Coast version aired Saturdays 7:30 - 8:00 pmProducer/Director: George Zachary Announcer: Ernest Chappell Scripts: Frederic Dannay, Manfred B. Lee Music: Charles Paul, organist Stars: Carleton Young, Santos Ortega, Ted de Corsia, Marion Shockley. Season 3 "The Adventures of Ellery Queen" list of titles 5 NBC Bromo-Seltzer Thursdays 9:30 - 10:00 pm 1942 - 1943 (94-145) East Coast version aired Saturdays 7:30 - 8:00 pm Producer/Director: George Zachary Announcer: Ernest Chappell Scripts: Frederic Dannay, Manfred B. Lee Music: Charles Paul, organist Stars: Carleton Young, Santos Ortega, Ted de Corsia, Marion Shockley. |
July 4,1942 and Manny married Kaye Brinker coinciding with the last broadcoast of the series. During the next three months of he and Dannay worked on There was an Old Woman. Zachary had left to work for the Office of War Information and it wasn't long before they were contacted by the OWI and asked to feed their American public some war propaganda. They would keep control over the plots only some slogan's were added by the Office. Tom, Dick and Harry or the Adventure Of The Murdered Ship (EQMM, 7/43) is by no means the best example of a Queen story but it does show the format of the radioplays and, like no other radio drama the influence of the Office. In 1944 they even made a (15 minutes) 'special' which was broadcast under overt sponsorship of the OWI : "The Adventure of the Wounded Lieutenant" it was published in EQMM that summer.(EQMM, 7/44)
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Season 4 "The Adventures of Ellery Queen" list of titles 6 NBC Bromo-Seltzer Thursdays 9:30 - 10:00 pm 1943 - 1944 (146-197) East Coast version aired Saturdays 7:30 - 8:00 pm Producer/Director: George Zachary Announcer: Ernest Chappell Scripts: Frederic Dannay, Manfred B. Lee Music: Charles Paul, organist Stars: Sydney Smith (Ellery), Santos Ortega, Ted de Corsia, Marion Shockley (Helen Lewis for two months) |
| The middle of the War was the peak of their success, reportedly they
earned $50,000 per year most of which through the radio adventures which were heard by
more than fifteen million listeners every week! In 1943 some reruns were scheduled and the
cousins used their time to write The
Murderer is a Fox . Enter Sydney Smith as Ellery Queen which
kept the role for almost four years. As a gimmick NBC kept his identity a secret and as
did Hugh Marlowe before him Smith convinced himself he was Ellery Queen.
In 1944 (Aug '44) Ellery Queen appeared on "Bill Stern's Sports
Newsreel". In these 15 minutes shows sports reporter Bill Stern tells many
stories of and about sports and sports figures -- many are rumors, or even
gossip. Each week he had a different guest who told a story themselves.
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Season 5 "The Adventures of Ellery Queen" list of titles 7 NBC Bromo-Seltzer Thursdays 9:30 - 10:00 pm 1944 (198-210) East Coast version aired Saturdays 7:30 - 8:00 pm Producer/Director: George Zachary Announcer: Ernest Chappell Scripts: Frederic Dannay, Manfred B. Lee Music: Charles Paul, organist Stars: Sydney Smith (Ellery), Santos Ortega, Ted de Corsia, Marion Shockley. "The Adventures of Ellery Queen" list of titles 8 CBS Anacin Wednesdays 7:30 - 8:00 pm 1945 (211-239) Producer/Director: George Zachary Announcer: Don Hancock Scripts: Frederic Dannay (Anthony Boucher), Manfred B. Lee Stars: Sydney Smith, Santos Ortega, Ted de Corsia, Barbara Terrell (Gertrude Warner beginning 6-13-45) |
The next series knew it part of chances but the one most radical was the 'replacement' of Dannay with Anthony Boucher. Mary Dannay was near dead (she died that same year) and Fred had to redistribute his priorities. They already had farmed out some publication of radio stories and beginning with 'The Corpse of Mr.Entwhistle" all but a few scripts were the uncredited work of Anthony Boucher and Manfred B.Lee.Unlike Dannay or Lee, Boucher was profoundly religious and the figure was to be transformed from celebrated gentlemen to socially concerned citizen. Richard Coogan (once an Armchair detective) took over the Ellery Queen part late in 1946.
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Season 6 "The Adventures of Ellery Queen" list of titles 9 CBS Anacin Wednesdays 7:30 - 8:00 pm 1945 - 1946 (240-291) Producer/Director: George Zachary Announcer: Don Hancock Scripts: Frederic Dannay (Anthony Boucher), Manfred B. Lee Stars: Sydney Smith, Santos Ortega, Ted de Corsia, Gertrude Warner Season 7 "The Adventures of Ellery Queen" list of titles
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The start of each episode of the 1947-1948: " I dedicate this program to the fight against crime- not only crimes of violence and crimes of dishonesty, but also crime of intolerance, discrimination and bad citizenship-crimes against America." and ending with "This is Ellery Queen saying goodnight till next week, and listening all Americans every night - and every day- in the fight against bad citizenship, bigotry, and discrimination-the crimes which are weakening America!" In 1947 when mandated segregation was proudly practiced a bold statement. Lawrence Dobkin played Ellery and would later direct the Ellery Queen tv-series. We also mention the appearence of Kaye Brinker (Mrs.Lee!) to be heared in 'the Message in Red'. |
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Season 8 "The Adventures of Ellery Queen" list of titles 11 NBC Anacin Sundays 6:30 - 7:00 pm 1947 (321-328) Producer/Director: Tom Victor Announcer: Don Hancock Scripts: Anthony Boucher, Manfred B. Lee Stars: Lawrence Dobkin, Bill Smith (IQ), Ed Latimer (Velie), Charlotte Keane Music: Chet Kingsbury, Organist Show moves to Hollywood "The Adventures of Ellery Queen" list of titles
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 After Ford theatre
re-ran a first season episode "Bad Boy", 1 hour long with Howard Lindsay as Host
and following actors: Hugh Marlowe (EQ), Santos Ortega (IQ), Ted
De Corsia (Velie), Charlotte Keane (Nikki), Ellery
Queen left the airwaves...In 1957 the BBC broadcast a six weeks summer series based on six of the earliest Queen short stories.And during the sixties the cousins rented their hero for use in this syndicated package of 100 (silly)one minute mysteries none of them with any involvement of Lee or Dannay. Most of these episodes seem to have survived.
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Ellery Queen's Minute
Mysteries (Syndicated) list of titles
13 Bill
Owen played the role of Ellery. No less than 520 one minute long mysteries
were produced by Creative Marketing and Communications, Cincinnati, Ohio
and issued on a reel-to-reel format. Four boxes are available each
containing about 130 episodes. Set 1: November 1965 (episode 1-130) Set 2: April 1966 (episode 131-259) Set 3: September 1966 (episode 260-390) Set 4: February 1967 (episode 391-520)
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Introduction |
Floor Plan | Q.B.I. |
List of Suspects | Whodunit?
| Q.E.D. | Kill as
directed | New |
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"The Adventures of Ellery Queen" 
"The Adventures of Ellery Queen" 
