Summary: Dead Man's Cavern (Aired April 13, 1944) On radio, The Adventures of Ellery Queen was heard on all three networks from 1939 to 1948. During the 1970s, syndicated radio fillers, Ellery Queen's Minute Mysteries, began with an announcer saying, "This is Ellery Queen..." and contained a short one-minute case. The radio station encouraged callers to solve the mystery and win a sponsor's prize. Once a winner was found, the solution was broadcast as confirmation. Tuska cited Ellery Queen, Master Detective (1940) and Ellery Queen's Penthouse Mystery (1941) as the best of the Bellamy-Lindsay pairings. "The influence of The Thin Man series was apparent in reverse", Tuska noted about Ellery Queen's Penthouse Mystery. "Ellery and Nikki are unmarried but obviously in love with each other. Probably the biggest mystery... is how Ellery ever gets a book written. THIS EPISODE: April 13, 1944. Program #1. NBC network origination, AFRS rebroadcast. "The Adventure Of Dead Man's Cavern". A corpse is found in a cave with only one set of footprints going into the cave. AFRS program Name: "Mystery Playhouse." The script was used previously on October 22, 1939 (as "The Haunted Cave"). This is the west coast broadcast, the east coast broadcast took place on April 15, 1944. The AFRS transcription has April 14, 1944 etched on the disc matrix. Sydney Smith, Marian Shockley, Santos Ortega, Ted de Corsia, Frederic Dannay (writer), Manfred B. Lee (writer), Bob Steel (producer, director), Ernest Chappell (announcer), Charles Paul (organist), Marjorie Lawrence ("Guest Armchair Detective," soprano), Beverley Kelley ("Guest Armchair Detective," Publicity Director of The Ringling Brothers Circus). 27:38. Episode Notes From The Radio Gold Index.
