THE MANDARIN MYSTERY. Republic Pictures, 1936. Eddie Quillan (Ellery Queen), Charlotte Henry, Rita La Roy, Wade Boteler (Inspector Queen), Franklin Pangborn, George Irving, Kay Hughes, William Newell. Based on the novel The Chinese Orange Mystery by Ellery Queen. Director: Ralph Staub. 

Currently streaming on Amazon Prime and YouTube (see below, but I think the running time on the latter has been cut).

   Remarkably enough, the actor who plays Ellery Queen in the bottom basement of a movie has the same initials, but alas he has absolutely no other credentials for playing the role. Eddie Quillan had a long successful career in making movies and in television, but in The Manadarin Mystery he plays the part of Ellery Queen as a brainless twit, more interested in getting a date with the girl in the leading role than solving a mystery.

   The girl being Charlotte Henry as Josephine Temple, owner of a rare, one-of-a-kind Chinese stamp worth thousands of dollars, and that was back in 1936. Obviously with a small piece of paper worth that kind of money, there are many others who wouldn’t mind having their hands on it, and one of them does so badly that they don’t mind committing a couple of murders to accomplish it.

   The movie follows the book, sort of, with a dead man found in a room with with his jacket on backwards and held upright with two long poles through his clothes. But with a running time of just over an hour, there’s no way to stuff all the complexities of the original text in, and the whole affair ends up being, in technical terms, a muddled mess.

   I can’t tell you to whom this movie was meant to appeal to, but it certainly wasn’t those who read and enjoyed the early day Ellery Queen books, written about strange mysterious affairs, true, but with clues and alibis that really meant something.

   Nothing at all like that here. Only cheap banter and little more. When I say “avoid,” I mean it.

ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE – July 1967. Overall rating: ***½

CHARLOTTE ARMSTRONG “The Second Commandment.” Short novel. A minister’s wife falls to her death while answering a “call of nature” along the highway. Afterward the minister discovers he can no longer love all his neighbors. Fine personal point of view, but fails as a mystery story. (4)

AGATHA CHRISTIE “At the Stroke of Twelve.” First appeared in The Sketch, 10 OctobeR 1923, as “The Kidnapping of Johnnie Waverly.” Poirot deduces a man has kidnapped his own son, but then he has all the clues. (3)

JOHN DICKSON CARR “The Lion’s Paw.” First appeared in The Strand Magazine. July 1938, as “Error at Daybreak” by Carter Dickson. Colonel March. A fake suicide attempt is mistaken for a mysterious murder on a deserted hearth. (3)

CORNELL WOOLRICH “Divorce – New York Style.” Serial, part 2 of 2. The girl in a staged hotel room bit dies in the bed, end of Part 1. Scene two in the police station is disappointing. (3)

DENNIS M. DUBIN “Elroy Quinn’s Last Case.” First story. Elroy stops a plot designed to disrupt international relations. Clever! (5) [Note: the author’s only work of short crime fiction.]

ELLERY QUEEN “The President Regrets.” Puzzle story with presidential names. (2)

SHIRLEY WALLACE “The Tiger’s Cub. First story. A man defends his son. (3) [Note: The author’s only work of short crime fiction.]

CELIA FREMLIN “The Special Gift.” An amateur authors’ club meets a man with a strange deadly dream (3)

GUY CULLINGFORD “Something to Get at Quick.” Juvenile delinquency and a stabbing in London. (4)

MIRIAM ALLEN deFORD “The Impersonation Murder Case.” An actor discovers that he is the fall guy in a murder investigation. Sorry, I don’t Believe It. (3)

JOAN RICHTER “Intruder in the Maize.” An arrogant man in Africa should not deal with poison. One bad flaw. (2)

BRIAN HAYES “Security Risk.” First appeared in The (London) Evening News, 19 April 1961. A test works beautifully. (4)

LAWRENCE TREAT “B As in Burglary.” Bankhart of the Homicide Squad is led to the stolen jewels by the murderer’s daughter, and the romance is over. (4)

ELLERY QUEEN – What’s in the Dark? Capt. Tim Corrigan #6. Popular Library, paperback original; 1st printing, 1968. Dale Books, paperback, 1978. Zebra, paperback, 1985.

   Captain Tim Corrigan is assigned to a murder case on the night of New York City’s “Great Blackout.” The suspects are all trapped on the 21st floor with the body while Corrigan’s investigation goes on. And of course the blackout helps provide the means for establishing the killer’s guilt.

   The psychology of crumbling inhibitions is emphasized, but Corrigan and his detective pal Chuck Baer still have too great a tendency to climb into bed with their suspects. That and an early emphasis on Miss Graves’ mammae make this novel [considerably] different from EQ’s more conventional mysteries.

   [It’s] strictly enjoyable, though, and the reader has a fair chance to grab the essential clue on page 45. I shall look for more. [Books in the series, that is, not clues. per se.]

Rating: ***½

UPDATE: Reading this old review tonight for the first time in 55 years, it does not appear that back when wrote it I knew that the book was not written by “Ellery Queen.” It was ghost-written instead by Richard Deming, who as it turns out was the actual author of four of the overall six Tim Corrigan novels.

ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE – June 1967. Overall rating: ***

CORNELL WOOLRICH “Divorce – New York Style.” Serial, part 1 of 2. This story will be reported on in my review of the July 1967 issue. [Note: This installment is only ten pages long.]

GEORGES SIMENON “Inspector Maigret Thinks.” [First published in English in Argosy (UK) December 1961, as “Dead Man’s Barge.”] Two hangings on a barge in the Seine require Maigret’s attention. (3)

GERALD KERSH “A Game Played in the Twilight.” [Reprinted from The Saturday Evening Post, October 10 1959, as “Duel in the Dusk.”] A young Wild Bill Hickok learns how a near-sighted woman avenged the murder of her husband. (2)

EDWARD D. HOCH “The Theft from the Onyx Pool.” Nick Velvet is hired to steal 10,000 gallons of water from a swimming pool. (4) [Note: I reviewed this story separately on this blog here.]

AVRAM DAVIDSON “The Memory Bank.” Attempts to retire an aged clerk fail because of the old man’s memory. (4)

AGATHA CHRISTIE “Ask and You Shall Receive.” [Reprinted from The Royal Magazine, May 1928, as “The Thumb Mark of Saint Peter.” It was later collected in The Tuesday Club Murders.] Miss Marple’s niece is suspected of murdering her husband, and pilocarpine is mistaken for a heap of fish. (3)

MIRIAM SHARMAN “Battle of Wits.” A headmaster is confronted by the father of a student who was expelled. Good moments, but too confused. (3)

COLIN WATSON “Return to Base.” An American returns to an abandoned British air base where a girl had disappeared, Moody, languorous and uninteresting. (2)

ROBERT LADNER, JR. “Choice of Evils.” [Appears in EQMM‘s Department of First Stories- and was the author’s only published work of crime fiction.] The owner of a gas station slowly going bankrupt finds robbery the solution to his problems. (4)

JAMES HOLDING “The Photographer and the Columnist.” Manuel Andradas works out a plan to get all the money due him for working for the Big Ones. [Note: Under the guise of a photographer, Andradas is a professional assassin.] (3)

NEIL MacNEISH “Lament for a Scholar.” [Author’s real name is Norma Schier; an anagram of Michael Innes is used as the stated author.] Pastiche of Sir John Appleby. (0)

MICHAEL INNES “Dead Man’s Shoes.” Novelette. [Reprinted from Lilliput, August/September 1953; later included as the title story of a US hardcover collection.] A young real estate agent has a strange adventure traveling back to London, involving him with a murdered scientist wearing different colored shows. Sir John Appleby is the detective in this story of international espionage. Too clever a plot on the part of a murderer leads to his downfall. (3)

ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE – May 1967. Overall rating: ***½ stars.

CHRISTIANA BRAND “Twist for Twist.” Novelette. Inspector Cockrill solves the murder of a man no one wanted to see married, especially the bride. Good detection. (4)

MORRIS COOPER “As It Was in the Beginning,” Quite possibly the first detective story, occurring some 20,000 years ago. (5)

ELAINE SLATER “The Way It Is Now.” In contrast to the previous story, a search for lost romance in a modern-day marriage ends in murder. (4)

ARTHUR PORGES “The Scientist and the Invisible Safe.” A diamond thief hides them in light bulbs. (2)

MICHAEL GILBERT “The Road to Damascus.” Novelette. Previously published in Argosy (UK), June 1966.  A Calder and Behrens spy story of a World War II impersonation discovered only when an old resistance post is uncovered, fascinating in its accounts of past and present espionage. (5)

ALICE SCANLAN REACH “Father Crumlish and His People.” The hypocrisy of a murdered social worker is discovered. Good social comment. (3)

HENRY STONE “The Impersonator.” Psychiatrical fare. (1)

NEDRA TYRE “A Case of Instant Detection.” A cop in a sociology class is forced to make deductions on the spot. Interesting background. (3)

ROBERT L. TILLEY “The Other Man.” An escaped convict finds refuge in a country cottage, an ideal sanctuary. Personal involvement clashes with the ending. (2)

VERA HENRY “What They Don’t Know Won’t Hurt Them.”  The hired help take advantage of two suspicious deaths. (2)

JON L. BREEN “The Crowded Hours.” First story. Pastiche. A murder investigation by the 97th Precinct Squad. McBain’s style deserves this. (4)

ED McBAIN “The Empty Hours.” Short novel. Previously published in Ed McBain’s Mystery Book #1, 1960. A murder investigation by the 87th Precinct Squad. A girl posing as her cousin is killed by a burglar, but the police must learn everything through determined work. The plot is obvious from the beginning, and it is the emotional involvement that makes the story at all attractive, McBain has a flair for detail, but his style can be overdone and irritating. ***

ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE April 1967. Overall rating: ***

JULIAN SYMONS “The Crimson Coach Murders.” Novelette. First published in The Evening Standard, 1960, as “The Summer Holiday Murders.” A detective story writer seeking background material takes a tour through southern England. Murder gives him a chance to try his abilities. (3)

ROBERT BLOCH “The Living Dead.” A World War II vampire story; not too imaginative. (2)

EDWARD D. HOCH “The Spy Who Came Out of the Night.” Rand of Double-C is sent to Berne to decode a message. His bitterness is forced to light. (3)

JACQUELINE CUTLIP “The Trouble of Murder.” A murderer burns down his inheritance unknowingly. Dry and confusing writing, but ending is good. (4)

CORNELL WOOLRICH “The Talking Eyes.” Novelette. First published in Dime Detective Magazine, September 1939, as “The Case of the Talking Eyes.” A paralyzed woman, able to communicate only wth her eyes, overhears her son’s wife plotting to kill him. Unable to stop the murder, she manages to avenge his death. Who else could attempt such a story? (4)

RHODA LYS STOREY “Sir Ordwey Views the Body.” Anagram-pastiche [by Norma Schier] of [Dorothy L. Sayers’] Lord Peter Wimsey. (1)

DOROTHY L. SAYERS “The Queen’s Square.” First appeared in The Radio Times, December 23, 1932. Lord Peter Wimsey solves a murder no one could have committed. A red costume in red light would appear white. (3)

JIM THOMPSON “Exactly What Happened.” Man disguised as another is killed by the other disguised as him. (1)

H. R. WAKEFIELD “The Voice of the Inner Ear.” First appeared in The Clock Strikes Twelve by H. Russell Wakefield, Herbert Jenkins, 1940, as “I Recognised the Voice.” A “psychic” detective solves mysteries. (2)

L. J. BEESTON “Melodramatic Interlude.” Revenge is thwarted by the victim’s wife. Obvious but still exciting. (3)

CHRISTOPHER ANVIL “ The Problem Solver and the Burned Letter.” Richard Verner reads a clue from a typewriter ribbon. (2)

LAWRENCE TREAT “P As in Payoff.” Mitch Taylor of Homicide Squad solves a hotel robbery as he tries to gain a favor. (3)

ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, March 1967.       Overall rating: **½

JAMES YAFFE “Mom and the Haunted Mink.” OK, if played a a game to trick the reader. But the police detective telling the story to his mother must certainly have recognized the name-switch at once. Pfui. (0)

AGATHA CHRISTIE “Miss Marple and the Golden Galleon.” Original title: “Ingots of Gold.” [The Royal Magazine, February 1928]. The theft of gold bullion is solved by knowing gardeners never work on Monday. (2)

DONALD E. WESTLAKE “The Sweetest Man in the World.” Another insurance company fraud, mixed with impersonation, embezzlement, and murder. (3)

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN “The Yellow Wallpaper.” [First appeared in New England Magazine, January 1892.] First published over 60 years ago; “a classic tale of horror.” A woman is driven insane by wallpaper. Not very effective. (2)

ELLERY QUEEN “The Adventure of Abraham Lincoln’s Clue.” [First appeared in MD, June 1965, as “Abraham Lincoln’s Clue.”] Items with the signatures of both Lincoln and Poe turn out to be forgeries, but the stamps are worth a fortune. (4)

RICHARD DEMING “The Jolly Jugglers, Retired.” Bank robbers take over restaurant. Obvious from beginning. (1)

JOSEPH MATHEWSON “A Stranger’s Tale.” The fresh wrinkle in this story of identical twins is the same old crease. (2)

HUGH PENTECOST “The Monster of Lakeview.” Uncle George’s dog is is stolen for laboratory and saved by a befriended man-child. (3)

MARGERY ALLINGHAM “Bubble Bath No. 3.” [First appeared in Argosy (UK), July 1956, as “Three Is a Lucky Number.”] Wife-killer is foiled in third attempt. (3)

FRANK SISK “The Strange Adventure of Charles Homer.” The estate Surcease Isle becomes Circe’s Isle, but Homer escapes. A weird fantasy. (3)

CHARLES DICKENS “The Pair of Gloves.” [First appeared in Household Words, September 14 1850, uncredited.] Primitive police procedure; gloves have nothing to do with murder. Of historical interest only. (0)

PRINCESS ZAWADSKY “Third Act Curtain.” An actor masquerades as a notorious killer. (3)

JOAN KAPP “Mystery, Movie Style.” A lady jewel thief scares off two others. A fun story. [The author’s only published crime story.] (5)

GEORGES SIMENON “Inspector Maigret Directs.” [First appeared in English in Argosy (UK) November 1961, as “Under the Hammer.”] Maigret puts all the characters in a murder-drama through their paces continuously until the culprit is revealed. ( 4)

WILLIAM BRITTAIN “Mr. Strang Gives a Lecture.” A high school clears a student framed for robbery. Not a very promising series start. (2)

ELLERY QUEEN – The Origin of Evil. Little Brown, hardcover, 1951. Paperback reprints include: Pocket #926, 1953; #2926, 1956. Signet, 1972. Harper Perennial, 1992. Also one of the three novels included in the omnibus volume The Hollywood Murders (J. B. Lippincott, hardcover, 1951).

   Ellery returns to Hollywood and finds reports of its death premature, but a new Hollywood, to be sure. Revenge is apparently the motive for a series of mysterious threats to a pair of business partners; one of them dies of fright.

   It is the other, confined to a wheelchair, who believes he has worked out the murder scheme, but this time the real murderer is even more clever.

   The pseudo-Tarzan living in a tree is the most remarkable character, one most remembered. There seemed to be a bit more lenient attitude toward sex in this story than expected. Ellery falls in love with one unworthy; Paula Paris is not mentioned.

   The series of threats has a hidden significance, as well as the first threatening note. Was EQ’s presence a factor? Lack of evidence keeps justice from triumphing completely, not quite satisfying.

Rating: ***

ELLERY QUEEN – Double, Double. Little Brown, hardcover, 1950. Pocket #874, paperback, 1952. Dell, paperback, 1965. Ballantine, paperback, 1975, 1979. Also published in a Signet double novel edition, and as The Case of the Seven Murders (Pocket, paperback, 1958).

   A series of anonymous envelopes sent to Ellery Queen from Wrightsville filled with clippings from the local newspaper there is what first piques the well-known mystery writer’s interest. This is followed up by a visit from the daughter of the local “town drunk,” who has mysteriously disappeared and is assumed to have met with foul play and to be dead, his body swallowed up by quicksand at the bottom of a cliff.

   The girl is somewhat of a “bird child,” living barefoot and alone in a shack at the edge of a swamp. (You should not be surprised to learn that her name is Rima.) Before the two of them return to Wrightsville, Ellery plays Pygmalion with her, furnishing her with new clothes, up-to-date hair styling and the like.

   Wrightsville is a small town somewhere in New England, with small town stores and small town businesses, a local doctor who still makes house calls, and a place Ellery has a strange affinity for, with at least three previous cases having taken place there. The townspeople know him well.

   Three deaths have already occurred, one suspicious, the other two not. Before the book is done, a total of seven have taken place. I suppose it does no harm to tell you now that the pattern that Ellery discovers connecting them comes from the nursery rhyme that begins “Rich man, poor man…”

   This being the first Ellery Queen novel I’ve read in a while, I was caught by surprise at how chaotic his detective stories could be: swirling winds of surrealism and the unknown. Added to the mix are suspicion, doubts, small town nostalgia, and karma. The final solution, the one that unravels the mystery at the end, is, in fact, greatly dependent on the latter. Events have happened that even the killer could not control.

   The detective work is superb – it is utterly fascinating to read a novel in which so many threads of the story could be so knotted up and elusive – then unsnarled so the pieces all fit together. Except … except for the fact that in an Ellery Queen story the people do not act or react as real people would. They are in a sense both naive and artificial, and they do things that real people would not do – especially the killer, as hard as Ellery Queen the detective does his best to explain his or her thinking.

   I do not mean to suggest that this is a bad thing, except perhaps for present day readers who do not understand the worth of a pure puzzle story.  You start to read an Ellery Queen novel, and you  will find yourself at once in an Ellery Queen world governed by Ellery Queen rules and Ellery Queen ways of thinking.

   Opinions on this may vary, but I found myself enjoying this return visit to the world of Ellery Queen, a visit I’ve delayed for far too long. Shame on me.

   What I’m about to describe sounds like a coincidence worthy of Harry Stephen Keeler, but it really happened. During the year 1928 two young men of New York, working in the advertising and publicity fields, spent most of their evenings, weekends and vacation time collaborating on a detective novel for submission to a writing contest with a $7,500 prize.

   Their names were Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, and the byline they used for their novel was Ellery Queen. They won the contest (only to lose it again, but that’s another story) and eventually became world-famous under that byline.

   Many of their subsequent novels and stories centered around a cryptic message left by the murder victim.

   Now comes the hard-to-believe part. During that same year 1928 a book was published which consisted of three long stories plus a framing story. The first of the long stories, “The Giant Moth,” was also about two young men in the advertising business who had written a detective novel for a prize competition.

   On the eve of the announcement of the winner, one of the two—a fellow named Wilk Casperson who’s desperate to win and use his share of the money to set up housekeeping with the daughter of a wealthy stockbroker—goes to a masquerade ball at the mansion of his girlfriend’s father dressed as, you guessed it, a giant moth, and quickly becomes involved in a murder whose victim apparently left behind him, you guessed it again, a dying message.

   Who wrote this story? The King of Koinkydink. The nuttiest filbert of them all. In his middle twenties, after a few years of turning out fairly ordinary short stories, usually with O. Henry twist endings, Harry Stephen Keeler (1890-1967) became more ambitious and, beginning in 1914, concentrated on much longer tales. Usually works of such length are called short novels, novelettes, novelets or novellas. Harry liked to call them novellos, probably with the accent on the first syllable.

   â€œThe Giant Moth” first appeared in Top-Notch, 1 June 1918, at about 35,000 words. Ten years later and at least 20,000 words longer, it became the tale of the first prisoner in Keeler’s SING SING NIGHTS (Dutton, 1928).

   Fast forward almost a century and it still stands up as a beautiful example of the kind of plot only Keeler could devise. With two characters dressed as moths attending the same masquerade ball at different times, two supplies of disappearing ink, a Chinese gangster who like-a to speak-a in de Italian dialecto, a missing diamond necklace, a murdered lepidopterist, an enigmatic Japanese servant, and a secret map giving away the defenses of the Panama Canal, the story has enough wackadoodle elements for three times its length, but let’s focus on the dying message.

   Paralyzed from the waist down after being shot in the back, and with no pen or pencil within reach, the mothologist in his last moments apparently made use of what he did have available—some strips of tissue paper and rubber type used to make out classification cards for his specimens—to leave the following message:

             FIND

            USHI

               HE

           KNOWS

   Ushi is the name of the moth maven’s servant, who has vanished. No reader in a million years could figure out the real meaning of that message and no writer other than Keeler could have dreamed up the gimmick. Whether Fred Dannay or Manny Lee ever heard of the tale remains unknown.

   The Ellery Queen novels and stories proved to be so popular in the 1930s that at the end of the decade a network radio series about the character was launched, with Hugh Marlowe (1911-1982) as EQ. The prime mover behind the series was George Zachary (1911-1964), who served as producer and director from its debut on CBS as an hour-long program (18 June 1939) till its departure in 30-minute form on 22 September 1940.

   In January 1942, a month after Pearl Harbor, the series returned on the NBC Red Network, with Carleton Young (1907-1971) as Ellery. Zachary continued as producer but was replaced in his other capacity by two men from the Ruthrauff & Ryan advertising agency’s stable of directors working in alternation, Bruce Kamman and the man we are to follow.

   Knowles Entrikin (1880-1956) is almost completely forgotten today, but in his time he was fairly well-known on the stage as a producer, playwright and director before he entered radio. Perhaps his main claim to fame in that medium was that in 1934, as director of the CBS educational series American School of the Air (1930-48), he hired a brash 19-year-old named Orson Welles for his first audio acting job.

   I know of only one reference to Entrikin’s work on the EQ series, an unpublished letter of 22 November 1942 from Manny to Fred, discussing the program’s most recent episode (“The Bald-Headed Ghost,” 19/21 November):

   I take it that the last words mean: Who will know you and I aren’t to blame?

   Entrikin seems to have remained with the EQ series from its return to the air in January 1942 until fourteen months later when Ruthrauff & Ryan assigned him to a project on the West Coast. He’s included here because, like Harry Stephen Keeler, he brushed against Fred Dannay and Manny Lee.

   Finally we come to another man, infinitely better known than Entrikin, who was thought to have brushed against Fred and Manny but actually didn’t. I refer to none other than John Wayne. During the WWII years the Queen radio series featured Hollywood personalities and some unknowns, many of them in the military, as guest armchair detectives.

   My book THE SOUND OF DETECTION: ELLERY QUEEN’S ADVENTURES IN RADIO (2002) included an episode-by-episode list of those guests, based on research in old studio files by Martin Grams, Jr. Much of what Marty found in those files consisted only of guests’ first initials and last names. For “The Fire Bug” (22/24 July 1943) and “The Fallen Gladiator” (16/18 September 1943) one of those guests was a certain J. Wayne.

   Knowing that the Duke didn’t serve in the war, both Marty and I—and before us John Dunning in the entry on the Queen series in ON THE AIR: THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF OLD TIME RADIO (Oxford University Press, 1998)— assumed that this was he. Later research revealed that “J.” was an ordinary Joe by the name of Jerry Wayne.

   All things considered, I still think the mistake we made was reasonable. But I do wonder how many readers of THE SOUND OF DETECTION racked their brains trying to imagine the Duke playing supersleuth. If any of them happen to read this column, my deepest apologies.