Chapter 9 Ellery the Many Faces

The image of Ellery Quinn is not only active in Quinn's novels.At the same time, he also appeared in all fields that he was involved in at the time, so that the image of Ellery, a charismatic detective, became a household name in the United States.There are a lot of people behind it who gave their love and even their professionalism to Ellery Quinn.It can be said that this is an unforgettable world about Ellery Quinn, which is very worth mentioning. In 1938, George Zachary, a young executive at CBS, decided to launch a new one-hour detective radio series that would involve guests and detectives solving crimes.Fortunately, he chose cousins ​​Frederick Denney and Manfred B. Lee as screenwriters.Whether it was his own idea or someone else's recommendation, he picked the right guy, and "challenging readers" was Ellery Quinn's signature dish.

In fact, Danay and Lee were just beginning to learn the fundamentals of radio drama writing when the radio series began.Without credit or pay, they co-wrote the radio dramas "Alias ​​Jimmy Valentine" and "Shadow," and were guests on a game-like radio show, "Writer! Writer!"At the same time, Zachary began planning cast and sponsorship.He chose the charismatic voice of Hugh Marlowe as Ellery (and Marlowe would later play Ellery on TV); "One of the most deceitful voices I've ever heard"; Inspector Willie was played by Howard Smith (later replaced by Ted DeCrossa).In order to incorporate some romantic elements to appeal to female audiences, Zachary, with the permission of Danai and Lee, added a character that was not previously in the Ellery series --- Ellery's secretary Nicky Porter, this character Played by Maria Chakla, who later married Zachary.

The most ingenious part of this radio play is its "challenge the audience" link.When the clues are given, the radio play pauses so the guests can engage in a puzzle-solving discussion.Whenever Ellery says, "Now, Dad, I know who killed so-and-so," it heralds the beginning of a challenge.Then, Nikki introduced the guests of the evening, who are often government officials, media celebrities, or experts in fields related to the storyline.Ellery asks the guests who the culprit is, the guests present their answers, and Ellery returns to the radio play for a final answer.Finally, if one of the guests answered correctly (although that was rare), Ellery would present him with the latest Quinn novel or an anthology edited by Quine.At first, the guests were New York luminaries such as music critic Tim Taylor, playwright Lillian Hellman, and photographer Margaret Burke-White.These dignitaries often made some strange speculations, some said that the murderer was one of the guests, and others that the prisoner was Ellery himself.Before long, Zachary no longer invited celebrities and replaced them with ordinary audiences, but the situation was not much better.So there is a situation where celebrities are invited sometimes and ordinary listeners are invited.

In September 1939, CBS discontinued the Quinn radio drama program, and Dennay and Lee resumed their writing and editing work.However, they told their agents that they intend to seek another broadcaster to still work on the screenwriting.Finally, in January 1942, "The Adventures of Ellery Quinn," produced by NBS and sponsored by Emerson Medicine, aired again until late 1944.The link of "challenging the audience" with strong Quinn characteristics before is still retained.Santos Ortega, Ted DeCrossa, and Maria Chakre continued to star, but Ellery's cast was replaced by Carleton Young (later replaced by Sidney Smith), and George Zachary is still producing.

It should be added that between June 1939 and February 1940, the series "The Adventures of Ellery Queen," written by Dennay and Lee and produced and directed by Zachary, aired on CBS 36 episodes (a total of 34 stories, the other two are rebroadcasts).Dennay and Lee felt the pressure to produce a 60-minute episode a week was too much, so, beginning on February 25, 1942, the show was cut to 30 minutes.But it was only compressed to 30 minutes when it aired, which still caused Danai to complain constantly: "The weekly storyline makes my brain a lot."It wasn't long before "The Adventures of Ellery Quinn" was sponsored by Gulf Oil because of its critical reception.

After a brief hiatus (late January 1945), Quinn returned to radio drama again, this time on CBS. "The Adventures of Ellery Quinn" is back on CBS.In the crew, most of the main male actors are retained, but Gertrude Warner (who has replaced Barbara since the end of last season) has acted as the voice of Nicky.Producers and directors have also changed. Another big change is Dannai's departure.His wife, Marie, was terminally ill and died in late 1945.For the sake of her family, Dennay left the crew to pursue only the work that suits her best, such as editing "EQMM" and short story anthologies.But he didn't want to give up the lucrative income brought by the radio play, so he found other writers to write the outline of the story.After several unsuccessful collaborations, he and Lee settled on the novelist, critic and close friend Anthony Butcher.Since then, Nye has gradually retired from screenwriting work, and Butcher and Lee have collaborated, and they have written about 70 screenplays together.Although Butcher is also a loyal follower of pure puzzle reasoning, he is devoted to religion, so Ellery in the story transforms from Dennay's gentleman detective to a worried citizen of society.Comparing Butcher's outline with Lee's scripts, it is not difficult to see that Lee often made major changes to the outline, and even several outlines were not adopted at all.

This collaboration lasted 52 weeks.In addition to Butcher's outline, Lee also adopted six story outlines that Dennay had left behind in case of emergency.The next season of the radio drama began in October 1946 and lasted 27 weeks.Warner's departure left Charlotte Cain as Nikki.Additionally, Richard Coogan replaced Smith as Ellery, with Lawrence Dupkin taking the role shortly after.Zachary was no longer involved in radio productions (in late 1947 he called on veteran actors to remake an episode of the 1939 one-hour Quinn radio play). Beginning in August 1947, the new season lasted only about two months before the show withdrew from CBS.The final 27 episodes of the Quinn radio play aired on ABC in November 1947.By the end of May 1948, the nine-year "Adventures of Ellery Quinn" had finally come to an end.Although sporadic Quinn radio dramas have been broadcast since then, the past glory has no longer appeared.

Quinn's radio play is the only one of the adaptations written primarily by Dennay and Lee, so there's no shortage of interesting stories: In "The Survivor's Club" (1939), Ellery and Nikki witness a hit-and-run and hear the victim's deathbed message, the first radio play of Quinn's iconic ruse. "Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme Murders" (1939) features Ellery going to an old restaurant to investigate a series of murders in parody of Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme, the same Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme that appeared in later novels by Quinn.Interestingly, when the episode aired, the Chicago transmission went down for nine minutes, and thousands of viewers called the broadcaster to express their outrage, showing the popularity of the series.

In "The Diamond Magician" (1940), Ellery solves the murder of a eccentric scientist who claims he has discovered a way to make diamonds bigger, and at the same time solves the problem of how diamonds come from The mystery of the stolen safe.It's also Quinn's brilliant Impossible Crime work. "Mr. Short and Mr. Long" (1943, later collected in the parody "The Failure of Sherlock Holmes" under the title "The Disappearance of Mr. James Freemore") is Quinn's tribute to Conan Doyle made.The story is based on the man mentioned in the Sherlock Holmes story by Hua Sheng who disappeared after returning home with an umbrella.Ellery plays the role of the easy-chair detective, deducing how Mr. Freemore disappeared from the house under intense police surveillance.

"The Crown Prince's Doll" (1943) is the best radio play in the NBS series, and it should be noted that the story was written by Lee alone and not based on Dennay's outline.This famous impossible crime work was later adapted into Quinn's novel and included in the book. "Arresting a Murderer" (1945) written by Butcher and Lee can be seen as a precursor of the film.A madman appeared in Manhattan who slashed the wrists and faces of young women with knives overnight.The last woman is attacked in the maze, and Ellery and the police hold the only exit.But what is puzzling is that no one in the maze has what it takes to be a murderer.

"Phantom" (1946), also written by the duo, is similar to Cornell Woolrich's.Nikki claims to Ellery that she witnessed a murder in the office across the street at night, but inspection of the office turns up no bodies or any signs of a fight. Whether it is the script created by Dannai and Lee, or the product of the cooperation between Butcher and Lee, they all follow the principle of fair competition and give readers sufficient clues to solve the mystery, but the mystery is so clever that most audiences cannot challenge successfully.It's just that very few radio play scripts were adapted into novels by Quinn or republished in "EQMM".However, this year, the United States will publish a selection of Quinn's radio play scripts, which may give us a glimpse of its charm. Dennay and Lee had written screenplays for Columbia, Paramount, and MGM in the late 1930s.However, most of their plans were shelved and never made into a movie.The 1930s and 1940s were the time when detective dramas became popular. Sherlock Holmes, Philo Vance, and Charlie Chan appeared on the screen one after another. There was no reason for Hollywood not to pay attention to Ellery, who was in the limelight.In fact, seven Quinn films were released between 1940 and 1942. The first Quinn film was The Mystery of the Spanish Shawl (1935), produced by Republic Films.Donald Cook became the first actor to play Ellery. Cook's handsome appearance made the director add a lot of love scenes for him.Although Richard does not appear in the novel, the film does have a brief opening scene as the detective played by Guy Asher.Although a large part of Quinn's plot and a large part of Ellery's reasoning have been deleted, screenwriter Albert Demond's adaptation is closer to the original than most of the Quinn adaptations. Despite its many flaws, Republic Films clearly managed to attract audiences, and the following year it produced a second film adaptation, The Tangerine Mystery.It's almost hard to tell that the film was based on an adaptation, and the director's standout isn't the grotesque inverted crime but Eddie Quinlan himself.The Ellery he plays is far from the image in the novel. His signature is gags, smirks rather than deduction.Perhaps the movie was too bad, and no Quinn movie was released in the next 4 years. Beginning in 1940, Columbia Pictures produced a series of Quinn films starring Ralph Bellamy as Ellery, Charlie Capwin as Richard, Margaret Lindsay as Nicky, James Burke plays the inspector.These works are all loosely based on Quinn's novels: Ellery Queen (1940), based on the novel; The Condo Mystery (1941), supposedly based on the radio play Three Scratches; Ellery Queen and the Perfect Crime (1940), based on the novel The Devil's Reward; "Ellery Quinn and the Murder Ring" (1941), based on the novel. After Bellamy's departure, Columbia chose William Takaoka as his successor.The three films starring Takaoka were all produced in 1942, namely: "Gait close", the story comes from the novel; "All or Nothing", said to be based on the short story "The Good Giver"; "Enemy Spies Encounter Ellery Queen", from the novel. Quinn fans needn't be fooled by title adaptations of the original, as they're pretty mediocre.These movies have changed the plot and characters of the original works to pieces, but the case has a slight shadow of the original works, so it is hard to say that they are standard adaptations.For example, in "The Great Detective Ellery Quinn", the deceased became sports tycoon and domestic tyrant John Braun, who died in a locked study with his throat slit.The murder weapon that was the paper knife was gone.Nicky Potter in the room is the only suspect, and Ellery, convinced of her innocence, is determined to solve the impossible crime. Unlike the previous Quinn performers, William Gaughan's Ellery is slightly better than Bellamy's, with a certain melancholic quality to the character -- no one-liners, no gags.The films are no longer slapstick and are set during World War II, as in "Enemy Spies Encounter Ellery Queen," where Ellery is confronted by a small group of Nazi spies. In fact, among Quinn's novels, the Wright Town series has many elements suitable for film adaptation. Unfortunately, there are no Hollywood Quinn films about Wright Town.Since then, it was not until 1972 that Quinn's works were put on the screen again, and it was based on the Wright Town novel.This film of the same name was co-produced by France and Italy. The scene changed to France, and even the detective became philosophy professor Paul Rogers, but the film as a whole is more faithful to the original novel.Orson Welles' Theodore Van Horn is moody, less a protagonist than a villain.Anthony Parkinson's stepson (whom Howard in the novel becomes in the movie) is correspondingly neurotic.Reeves commented on the film: "For a full 100 minutes we are forced to suffer through poor symbolism and nothing else. There is no humanity at all except Piccoli's performance. I find this film unbearable, As much as Carlyle said he read the Koran, I can't recommend it to any Quinn fan other than those who might want to get away from it." Ellery's films have also suffered from Waterloo, as the two authors have failed to achieve in Hollywood.Dennay even said that if a Quinn movie came on while he was watching TV at night, he would crawl under the covers.Film critic Tom Tolan also pointed out: "They have neither managed to turn the brilliant plot of the novel into a movie, nor have they tried to create a memorable screen image; these movie audiences-especially those Ellery Quinn fans -- have to deal with a bunch of second-rate movies." In addition, Japan's Shochiku Film Company once made a film based on Quinn's "The Town" in 1979.The film, titled "Three Undelivered Letters" (五达されない三通の母纸), is supervised by Yoshitaro Nomura, who has directed other films, and the starring role is Komaki Kurihara, who has starred in films such as "Wangxiang".And similarly, the film is set in Japan, and the detective's name is not called Ellery Quinn, but renamed Robert, but the plot is still faithful to Quinn's original work, and won the Japan Academy Award and the Film Xunbao Award ( Both are supporting actress awards, and the winner is Mayumi Ogawa).When the film premiered, Dannai also made a special trip to Japan to attend the ceremony. After the 1940s, black and white television was widely developed.The creations about Ellery Quinn also gradually extended to this field. In October 1950, the first TV series of the Quinn series "The Adventures of Ellery Quinn" premiered on Dumont Television in the United States.Richard Hart becomes the first actor to play Ellery on television.A stocky, athletic man with an ill-fitting mustache, Franz Ames plays his father. When Hart died of a heart attack in January 1951, Lee Bowman took over his role.The film was well received and won TV Guide's 1950 Best Detective Television Award. The second "The Adventures of Ellery Quinn" (later renamed "Mystery Is My Occupation") series was co-produced by several TV stations and broadcast simultaneously on different TV stations in 1955, including 32 episodes and 30 episodes. Minute TV, with Hugh Marlowe as Ellery, Ames reprising his role as Sr. Quinn and Charlotte Cain as Nicky Potter.Marlowe and Cain had earlier played Ellery and Nicky in the radio drama.The actors are very close to what Quinn fans imagined for the novel, but the script is pretty bad and the visuals are poor. A third Quinn TV series, The Adventures of Ellery Quinn: The Sequel, was produced by Albert MacCorey -- a big name in television in the 1950s -- in September 1958. Started airing on NBC.George Nader plays Ellery, the actor who won the Golden Globe in 1955 is a bit young for playing Ellery Quinn, and his performance can only be said to be unsatisfactory.Several episodes of the series are based on Quinn novels, including , , , , and Double, Double.The writers removed the strong anti-McCarthy overtones in the novel and replaced Johnny Shinn with Ellery Quinn, but retained most of the novel's plot structure.Other than this episode, the other changes are pretty bad.There are also many works adapted from other detective writers' novels, which are also unsatisfactory.Twenty episodes later, Lee Phillips took over the role of Ellery, who he played as a conscious and compassionate being.But it didn't save the day, and it wasn't long before the series was abandoned by all sane Quinn fans. In 1963, CBS's Alfred Hitchcock Time aired a one-hour TV film based on Quinn's novella "Town of Horrors," which was not Ellery's work.Another TV movie, Ellery Quinn: Don't Look Backwards, aired on NBC in 1971.Based on Quinn's famous book, Peter Laford plays Ellery as a fashionable London figure, and Harry Morgan's Richard Quinn is set up as Ellery's beloved uncle.The writers tried in vain to bring that deeply rooted 1940s novel to a 1970s setting, shallowing Quinn's rich characterization and adding some senseless "suspense," This cannot be compared with that in the novel, but at least the basic skeleton of the original plot is preserved.The director is reasonably competent, and the budget is much higher than previous Quinn films.Dennay has stated that he generally likes the film even though it leaves a fair bit to be desired. In 1975, the producer of the "Colombo" series (the film is a famous detective drama in the 1970s, won an Emmy Award and was the prototype of "Furuhata Ren Saburo") was also a Quinn fan. Vincent and William Link, with support from NBC, produced the "Ellery Quinn" TV series.The scene of the TV series is not set in the 1970s but back to 1947.The pilot episode was based on Quinn's novel "The Fourth Side of the Triangle", and one episode was based on Quinn's short story.Ellery, played by Jimmy Horton, is a kind-hearted young man who embodies most of Ellery's characteristics in the novel.Dennay has said that Horton's performance reminded him not quite of Ellery, but of himself at Horton's age.David Wayne is also excellent as the stubborn Richard Quinn, very close to the old Richard in the book.There are also characters in the TV series that are not in the novel——Simon Brimmer.He played the famous detective on the radio series "The Case Book of Simon Brimer", in which he thought he was going to compete with Ellery, but often reasoned wrong. Some interesting cases in this series are very interesting, for example, the elevator murder case with only the victim in "The 12th Floor Direct Elevator Case", the mummy that cursed people to death in "The Curse of Faroa", and so on.Despite the varying quality of episodes, none of them are bad, and even the worst are more than made up for in terms of plot, cast, etc.What makes the audience more interesting is that in the film, Horton's Quinn will turn to the camera, inviting the audience to piece together clues and name the criminal.This way of "challenging the audience" is like "challenging the reader" in early Quinn's novels.The series is considered by many to be the finest Quinn adaptation, and even one of the best in American detective television. Ellery Quinn first appeared in the comics in 1940. This interesting work --- "The Case of the Anonymous Partner" was published in 10 issues of "Gulf Entertainment Weekly" (No. 366, April 26, 1940 Issue 375, June 28, 1940), the comic was distributed free of charge by the Gulf Gas Station to its customers.The story is adapted from the Quinn radio play of the same name (aired on CBS on August 27, 1939). Beginning in April 1940, Gulf Oil also became a sponsor of Quinn's radio play, which was roughly created as publicity. Shortly thereafter, a series of comics titled "The Adventures of Ellery Quinn" appeared in the Whitman Publishing Company's comics magazine Distinguished Comics. "Excellent Comic Strips" is a comic collection, each 64-page issue contains comics of various genres. Issue 23, May 1940, first published "Clues to the Coffin," based on Quinn's short story "The Invisible Admirer."The series ran for 20 issues.Among the twenty cartoons in total, eleven are newly created plots, and the remaining nine are adapted from Quinn's novels, radio dramas or imitated from novels, including "Black Penny" (24 issues), "The Hanged Man". "Acrobat" (No. 25), "Three Cripples" (No. 26), "Man Bites a Dog" (No. 33), "Franky's House Powder Mystery" (No. 34), "Teak Box" (No. 37) )etc. The Quinn comics in Gulf Entertainment Weekly and Distinguished Comics are the few comics that have been adapted from Quinn's novels or radio dramas.The stories are faithful to the original books, although small changes are occasionally made.Familiar characters such as Inspector Quinn and Inspector Willie often appear in the Quinn comic series in "Excellent Comics", and Secretary Nicky also makes an occasional appearance.Of course, before the answer, there will always be that interesting "challenge the reader" link. It wasn't until seven years later that Ellery returned to the comics scene.However, there are still a small number of comics related to Quinn. The new ruse (the disappearance of the hotel) comes from Quinn in "The Secret of the Hunter's Hotel" in the August and September 1943 Batman #18.Another Quinn-related comic appeared on the July 18, 1943 issue of Phantom Issue 164, based on Quinn's novel "House of Darkness". Quinn returned in 1949, appearing in four "Ellery Quinn" comics in the Super Comics series (May-November 1949).Although there are also links in the comics that "challenge the reader", the storyline completely deviates from the spirit of Quinn's work and becomes a failure.Slightly worth mentioning is the third issue, which contains a good impossible crime story "Tomb of the Storm", in which Ellery solves the case of how the isolated lighthouse keeper was killed in the storm . The next set of four-color comics was the two-issue "Ellery Quinn" comic series (1952 · Hexia) issued by Ziff Weiss.These two installments contain four Ellery adventures, but the stories are bland, not even detective stories but full-blown action-adventure stories.The series is said to have been published to coincide with the 1952 ABC telecast of the Ellery series. Of all these comics, the most successful—or the most faithful to the spirit of the original—the Ellery series are Nos. 1165, 1243, and 1289 of the "Four Colors" series produced by Dell. , published in 1960 and 1961.Each volume is 32 pages, including two 16-page stories, but there are 3 stories in No. 1243, two 15-page stories, and one 2-page story.These stories were smooth, impossibly atmospheric (the supernatural component is easy to see from titles such as Victim of Voodoo and Curse of Kane), were among the best for their time, and even challenged readers.This series differs somewhat from the previous Ellery comics, the main changes being the 60's setting and Ellery wearing glasses.Moreover, some researchers pointed out that the scripts of the Dale series are rich in the characteristics of Quinn's novels, and perhaps Quinn once participated in the creation or approval of the scripts. Thereafter, until February 1990, in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of Ellery Quinn (the magazine was sold in 1989, which coincided with the 60th anniversary of its publication), Issue 9 of the Maze Detective Agency magazine published the full-color comic "British Channel". mystery of".Ellery made a cameo appearance. Finally, I would like to mention domestic Quinn radio dramas and comics.Around 1980, the Shanghai Film Translation Studio launched a series of radio dramas, starring famous voice actors Qiao Zhen, Tong Zirong, Shang Hua, Yang Chengchun, etc.The role of Richard was removed from the radio play, and Ellery was replaced as the detective chief.The excellent actors and the well-preserved original features of the script made the play a sensation and became a radio drama classic in Shanghai translation. In 1981, Jiangxi People's Fine Arts Publishing House published the comic book "Mystery of the Coffin" (drawn by Chen Shuiyuan) based on the adaptation, and the first edition issued 800,000 copies.Although the plot of the original work has been abridged due to length reasons, it can generally show the charm of the original work.Shiwen Book Company, which publishes the collection of Quinn's modern detective stories in China, also released a comic "The Town" adapted from Quinn's novel at the same time as the collection of novels was published (2001).This is a black-and-white manga, which was presented with the complete works as a gift and has not been released to the public. In conclusion, among the Quinn adaptations, the most successful in the field involved is the radio drama (a large part of the reason seems to be due to the fact that this , TV or comics—all adapted by others).The radio play lasted nine years and brought Danay and Lee great prestige (a 1945 Edgar Award for Best Radio Play for the CBS play Quinn) and financial success.However, Ellery's experience in Hollywood is painful for readers, which seems to be mainly due to the fact that the director and screenwriter changed the original beyond recognition, and did not let people appreciate the true charm of Quinn's work.Therefore, although Ellery's subject matter was adapted to the screen many times, the effect was so small that no film company was interested in it anymore.The occasional caricature of Ellery cannot fill the void in the reader's mind.As a very valuable and world-renowned detective character, Ellery has not had the same successful film and TV adaptations as Sherlock Holmes and Poirot to enhance the influence of the original characters. This has always been a rather regrettable thing .But as Quinn fans, we still look forward to a more pleasing image of Ellery in the future.