TO PAGE: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 |
BOYHOOD
he
two cousins now known as "Ellery Queen" were born in
|
Manny graduated
from Boy's High in 1921 and went on to the N.Y. University, whilst working as a
Western Union messenger. "In the 1920s, when Dad applied to New York University as Emanuel
Benjamin Lepofsky, he discovered that Jewish students were among the ethnic
groups barred from attending the main NYU campus. Later, when he was about
to graduate from the Greenwich Village campus of NYU with a summa cum laude
degree in English, Dad told a faculty friend of his dream of becoming a
college English professor at his alma mater. The “friend” replied, “Oh,
Manny, no Jew will ever get tenure in the NYU system—you are all so much
smarter than we Gentiles, it wouldn’t be fair to the rest of us.” This
prompted my father to abandon his professorship dreams, and change his name."
(The Story is the Thing, Rand B. Lee)
It was Mike Simmons who took Manfred
Lee into Gotham Pictures (May 1928).
However in 1929 Manfred worked as a writer at Pathé, where he was
commissioned, among other things, to compile the AMPA yearbook together with
Mike Simmons, the presentation in March would form one of the distinctive
features of the Hollywood Masque Ball staged at the New York Astor Hotel.
Dannay had his own ambitions wanting to be a poet. Even now
faith dealt him a feebler hand. Prohibition meant his father was out of business and he
had to quit Boy's High before his graduation. In 1921 at sixteen and in his third year
High School he went working to help out the family. His after- school job as a soda
fountain clerk set aside his first full-time position was as a bookkeeper but not his
last. For the next seven years he jumped from job to job and the family's financial
position changed. Danny could even receive his high school diploma
(1922) and even took some
courses in the Arts Students' League (to paint). By 1928 Fred worked as a copy writer, art director for a N.Y. advertising agency.
He left the United Advertising agency for the copy
department at the Caples Company, a national ad agency. There he was art
director at least until 1932 and was art and typographic counsel to Superior
Typography, Inc.
One of those fascinations was Joseph Bowne Elwell, the greatest bridge player alive, the so-called "Wizard of Whist", a tutor of the game to the King of England and the millionaire Vanderbilts. Author of best-selling bridge textbooks, an unofficial "spycatcher" and intelligence agent, a heavy gambler on the stock exchange, the owner of a large stable of race horses, a developer of Florida real estate, a dealer of bootleg liquor, and an industrious philanderer. Joseph Elwell is believed to be the inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jay Gatsby in his book, The Great Gatsby. Today Joseph Elwell is remembered for being murdered in June 1920 in a classic "locked room" mystery---to this day still unsolved. Someone managed to sneak into his art-filled house in Manhattan, shoot Elwell in the head, and vanish into thin air.....leaving Elwell in a room locked from the inside! The Slaying of Joseph Bowne Elwell is author Jonathan Goodman's fascinating account of the corrupt life and mysterious death of one bizarre man. The Elwell case has been used as the basis of many crime novels (including one of the most famous, S.S. Van Dine's The Benson Murder Case), films, and a play. Supposedly this case resulted in the formation of the writing partnership. They would set their teen-age fantasies aside and write a "serious" book in the Van Dine-manner. They only needed the spark to set it off...
|
|
Introduction | Floor Plan | Q.B.I. |
List of Suspects | Whodunit? | Q.E.D. | Kill as directed | New | Copyright Copyright © MCMXCIX-MMXIX Ellery Queen, a website on deduction. All rights reserved. |