EPISODE SEVEN: THE ADVENTURE OF COLONEL NIVIN’S MEMOIRS

(Written by Robert E. Swanson; original airdate 10/23/75)

The Cast: 

Another cast consisting primarily of television actors, many with a rich pedigree in the medium. I have a special fondness for Rene Auberjonois because, like Paul Shenar from “Miss Aggie’s Farewell,” he was a founding member of San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theatre and a delightful stage actor. He performed in many Broadway musicals, including Coco with Katharine Hepburn, Big River, and City of Angels (a special delight for mystery lovers!) In film, he seemed to be a favorite of director Robert Altmann, who cast him in several films including M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud and McCabe and Mrs. Miller. His credits on TV were even more extensive than I realized, including popular supporting roles on the series Soap, Benson, and, most notably, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Perhaps the most prestigious credits belong to Robert Loggia, whose sixty-year long career spanned films and television, where he seems to have appeared in most hour-long dramas, including The Sopranos. I will always have a soft spot for his performance as the childlike boss in Big. Pernell Roberts also was a favorite of mine, first as moody Adam Cartwright in Bonanza and then as moody Trapper John, M.D.. In between dozens of roles on the small screen, he managed to appear in movies and quite frequently onstage, both on Broadway and in touring musical productions. Lloyd Bochner may be less well-known, but this handsome Canadian had a thriving career, including two iconic (well, sort of) appearances: as the doomed hero in “To Serve Man,” one of my favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone, and as Cecil Colby in Dynasty who had the good/bad misfortune of dying during a sex scene with Joan “Alexis Colby” Collins.

Gretchen Corbett had some success onstage and film but became best known for her role in the first season of The Rockford Files. (She had just left that series when she made this guest starring appearance. Danish singer and actress Nina Van Pallandt was another member of Robert Altmann’s stable of supporting actors, appearing in The Long Goodbye, A Wedding, and Quintet and appeared on American TV for a few years. 

Synopsis: 

Colonel Alec Nivin (Bochner), a decorated British officer, is in New York peddling the first volume of his Memoirs of a Spy, which more resembles “a Hedda Hopper column” than a legitimate history for all the dirt it flings at various people. Nivin has been making continuous passes at his U.S. literary publicist, Jenny O’Brien, who just so happens to be the latest girlfriend of a certain Mr. Queen. Jenny ropes Ellery into meeting her at Nivin’s club, where he is to give a talk, but when she arrives and is directed to enter Nivins’ private office by the club’s Indian servant Ras Khalil (Roberts – yes . . . Pernell Roberts!) she finds Nivin has been stabbed to death with an antique Kashmiri dagger. 

Because mild suspicion has fallen on Jenny, Ellery assists his father on the case. Making use of the case files Nivin gathered (or maybe stole) for his memoir, Ellery amasses a suspect list, including a Russian diplomat (Loggia), his wife (Van Pallandt), a French photographer (Auberjonois) and an Englishman with a limp (Peter Bromilow), all of whom can be connected with past scandals during the war. It’s up to Ellery to discover which of them murdered the scandal-mongering Colonel.

My Take:

This is a serviceable mystery with a couple of fair clues and nary a dying message in sight! What is more disturbing is the comic tone and the utterly offensive portrayal in brown face by Roberts as an Indian character. Regarding the latter: most people who donned make-up to play a person of color looked like white people wearing make-up, resulting in what we call “suspension of disbelief.” But halfway through this episode, Ras Khalil is revealed to be a con man named Barney Groves. In other words, he’s clearly a white man wearing make-up . . . and neither Ellery nor anyone on the police force recognized this??? This is stuck-in-its-time shamefoolery, and it’s discomfiting from start to finish. 

As for the vaguely comic tone, well . . . only four years had passed since the cancellation of Hogan’s Heroes, which had provided a six-season laugh riot about a Nazi prison camp. I dimly recall a theory that if we can laugh at our enemies, we weaken them. Charlie Chaplin certainly believed this when he made The Great Dictator near the start of the war, before all the carnage and atrocities had been committed. A sitcom created twenty years after the fall of Auschwitz still seems tasteless to me. 

This episode doesn’t go that anywhere near that far, but its mildly farcical take on some pretty serious situations – Russians defecting in fear to America, resistance fighters forced by the Gestapo to betray their friends, the dangers of espionage – all felt jarring to me. Also, Jenny O’Brien makes you appreciate how quickly this version of Ellery ran through girlfriends. I think Corbett or the writer was going for something approaching Nikki Porter, always getting into a different scrape, always believing her idea is the right one when it is soooo wrong. I found her teeth-grindingly irksome. 

SPOILERS: 

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EPISODE EIGHT: THE ADVENTURE OF THE MAD TEA PARTY

(Written by Peter S. Fischer, based on the Ellery Queen short story of the same title; original airdate 10/30/75)

The Cast: 

There used to be a million actors out there who seemed to appear in every film, TV show and commercial. They didn’t rock the scandal sheets, you probably never even learned their names, but show you a picture of their face, and you would go, “Oh, yeah, that guy!”

Edward Andrews was one of these guys. I, of course, knew his name, like I knew Claude Gillingwater and Elvia Allman and Eleanor Audley and hundreds more; it’s why I’ve never been very popular. Andrews had a vast stage, screen and TV career, but you probably couldn’t rattle off five of his credits. He could be jovial, he could be smarmy, he could be just about anything you needed for that business client or next door neighbor or wedding guest. 

Most of us who grew up with Jim Backus knew his voice before we met his face. He played the irascibly charming, myopic Mr. Magoo (“Ohhhhh, Magoo . . . you’ve done it again!”) I still hold that he was the best Ebenezer Scrooge ever! Most of us then first saw Backus at the end of a three hour tour (“ . . . a threeeeeee hoooouuurr tooooooouur!”) when, as millionaire Thurston Howell III, he was stranded, along with his wife Lovey and five other castaways, for three seasons of Gilligan’s Island. It’s hard to line these roles up with the uptight father of James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause! I’m happy to say that for most of his lengthy career on radio and the screen, Backus played (and voiced) primarily jaunty, often aristocratic characters with aplomb. 

Larry Hagman has plenty of credits, but some people can so closely identified with one role that that’s all it takes. Hagman was such a man. I’m speaking, of course, of his indelible work as . . . Anthony Nelson, the Air Force officer who meets and eventually mates with Barbara Eden in I Dream of Jeannie. 

Okay, no, it’s Dallas, but I want you to understand how many of us felt when genial Major Nelson became that onerous bastard J.R. Ewing. It was Hagman’s lovability in the first role that reasserted itself with such twinkly-eyed cunning in the second. And who could help but love a man responsible for one of the most famous whodunnits of the 80’s. (P.S. V xarj vg jnf Xevfgva!) Julius Harris, if I remember correctly, is the first actor of color to receive guest star status on Ellery Queen. His forty-year career included James Bond villain Tee Hee in Live and Let Die and one of the good guys in The Taking of Pelham One Two Three as well as many blaxploitation films, and his television appearances were numerous.

From her first credited screen role as a nymphomaniacal mental patient in Hitchcock’s Spellbound, Rhonda Fleming commanded the screen. David O. Selznick believed in her so much that when he sold his other contract players in 1949, he kept Fleming. (She broke her contract the following year and moved to Paramount.) She was considered one of the most glamorous stars of Hollywood throughout the 50’s, and then she gave it all up and focused her life on the last four of her six husbands, her children, and her businesses. She dabbled in television and even performed in Vegas and lived to a ripe old age. 

Carmen Mathews and Patricia Smith, like so many who appeared on Ellery Queen, had substantial careers as actresses without making a huge splash in their careers. One of them played my favorite murderess on my favorite episode of Perry Mason. Don’t peek to find out which one: just start watching the series from the beginning and you’ll get to it. Julie Sommars appeared in four movies but found her niche in TV where she was highly successful. She is probably best recognized as the ADA in Matlock.

Synopsis: 

Since this happens to be the only series episode that was based on an actual EQ short story, I went back and re-read the source. Story first, episode follows:

This really is one of the best short tales, and that’s saying a lot: Ellery Queen was a master of the short form, both on the page and on the airwaves. He put Agatha Christie to shame – and you know that’s hard for me to say. 

Ellery has been dragged up to Long Island on a dark and stormy night via an invitation from “one of JJ’s questionable friends.” (no, not my pal JJ from The Invisible Event, although his posse is quite . . . no, this is JJ McCabe, EQ’s version of the fictional S.S. Van Dine, through whose friendship readers got access to the first cases – and who quickly became superfluous and was dropped). At the start, Ellery is at the train station, very wet, and less than pleased with the state of affairs:

“People were always pushing so. Put him up on exhibition, like a trained seal. Come come come, Rollo; here’s a juicy little fish for you! Got vicarious thrills out of listening to crime yarns. Made a man feel like a curiosity. Well, he’d be drawn and quartered if they got him to mention crime once!”

Mr. and Mrs. Richard Owen have invited Ellery to their new Long Island home to attend the ninth birthday party of their son, Jonathan and to meet Emmy Willowes, a famous actress who is currently starring in Owens’ production of Alice in Wonderland. When Ellery arrives, a rehearsal is in progress for the birthday show, a rendition of the mad tea party from Alice, with Owen playing the Hatter, his wife Laura the Dormouse, his architect and friend Paul Gardner is the March Hare, and, of course, Emmy is Alice. Rounding out the party is Owens’ mother-in-law, Mrs. Mansfield, and Paul’s luscious wife Carolyn. As excited as everyone is about the upcoming performance, Ellery notices a queer tension besetting the group because – well, that’s what detectives notice before foul play ensues!

“He lay back, crossing his palms behind his head, and stared into the half-darkness. The mattress was deep and downy, as one had a right to expect of the mattress of a plutocrat, but it did not rest his tired bones. The house was cozy, but it did not comfort him. His hostess was thoughtful, but uncomfortably woebegone. His host was a disturbing force, like the storm. His fellow guests; Master Jonathan snuffling away in his junior bed — Ellery was positive that Master Jonathan snuffled . . .”

With all the present-day complaints about Ellery Queen, I had forgotten how fun he could be to read, but this is witty stuff. And the mystery plot itself is laced with wit: the morning dawns, and Mr. Owen has disappeared. Was he kidnapped or killed? If the former, why no message? If the latter, where is his body? Ellery’s previous midnight ramblings yield some interesting clues, like a mysteriously disappearing clock, but as the day progresses, tensions rise and answers are not forthcoming. And then things get murkier: all the guests and the servants are slipped a heavy drug in their evening coffee. To what purpose? 

And then the packages begin to arrive . . . 

It’s an incredibly charming story, maybe lacking a bit in the clever fair-play (sorry, Scott!) clueing for which Queen is known, but a fine knock-off of Lewis Carroll himself. The explanation of the packages is really fun, and the topsy-turvy circumstances resolve into a neat little point – exactly what you want from a short mystery.

My Take: 

The plot adapts beautifully to TV, making me wish the producers had used more of the original material. Most of the changes are minimal and add little to the production. Here’s where (as Scott Ratner warned us) Peter Fischer decides to be clever by changing everyone’s surname to match that of a classic mystery writer: the Owens (Andrews and Fleming) becomes the Lockridges, Millan the chauffeur Millan becomes Doyle the bodyguard (Harris), Emmy Willowes (Sommars) becomes Emmy Rinehart, and Mrs. Mansfield (Matthews) is Mrs. Allingham. A new character is added – Jim Backus plays Howard Biggars, Spencer Lockridge’s representative – and young Jonny moves from son to nephew, probably because the actors playing his “parents” are too old to have a young son. 

There are other mild changes to character and motivation, some more effective than others, but all in all this is completely faithful to the original and that fidelity pays well. I still have fourteen episodes to watch and remember, but I’m calling this one as the best of the lot!

SPOILERS: Gur qrqhpgvbaf bss gur Purfuver Png pybpx, jubfr yhzvabhf fzvyr inavfurf naq ernccrnef, vf n jbaqreshy pyhr. Ryyrel’f hfr bs gur zlfgrevbhf tvsgf gb guebj gur zheqrere bss xvygre vf nyfb n terng ehfr. V guvax vg’f dhvgr snve bs Svfpure gung jura Ryyrel gheaf gb gur nhqvrapr gb vffhr uvf punyyratr guvf gvzr, gurer vf ab fhqqra zbzrag bs vyyhzvangvba cerprqvat vg. Guvf vf gur bayl cebcre jnl, fvapr Ryyrel unf xabja jub gur xvyyre vf sbe n qnl. Naq gur hfr bs n snxr “qrnq obql” gb qenj bhg Tneqare’f pbasrffvba (n uverq npgbe va gur fgbel, Iryvr va gur fubj) znxrf sbe bar bs gur orfg qrabhrzragf.