On Monday, June 27, 2011 8:56:03 PM UTC-4, K.M. Richards wrote: > > > The Ellery Queen series with Jim Hutton ran in the 1975-76 season and > was the lead-in to Mystery Movie during its last nine months (Ellery > 8:00-9:00, Mystery Movie 9:00-11:00). As MM had gone to two-hour > episodes beginning with the previous season, perhaps NBC and Universal > felt trying to do Ellery in that length would have been excessive? > > The original two-hour pilot for Ellery Queen aired as a special episode of the Sunday Mystery Movie in the spring of 1975. On the Ellery Queen DVD set, the version of the pilot used is a syndication copy, retitled "Too Many Suspects," in which the series' regular theme song (by Elmer Bernstein) is replaced by the soundtrack of the standard Mystery Movie opening credits: the Mystery Movie theme (by Henry Mancini), complete with Hank Sims announcing "tonight, a special Mystery Movie presentation..." The failed 1971 pilot movie, "Ellery Queen: Don't Look Behind You," starring Peter Lawford and Harry Morgan, was intended as a pilot for the original lineup of the Mystery Movie. According to a poster on the IMDB, NBC almost picked Ellery Queen over McMillan and Wife for the third spoke of the wheel.
In his interview segment on the DVD set, William Link says that the 1971 pilot failed because it was filmed while he and Richard Levinson were in Europe, and creative control was taken away from them. (I remember seeing part of the 1971 pilot on TV in the eighties... I really wish it had been included on the DVD for comparison.) -Tim -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to tvornottv@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to tvornottv-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
