The Mandarin Mystery

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Charlotte Henry and Eddie Quillan in The Mandarin Mystery (1936)

Two murders are committed and a $50,000 Chinese Mandarin stamp is stolen, tossed around and eventually recovered as an aggregation of costly-stamp counterfeiters are uncovered through the ma... Read allTwo murders are committed and a $50,000 Chinese Mandarin stamp is stolen, tossed around and eventually recovered as an aggregation of costly-stamp counterfeiters are uncovered through the mastermind investigation by Ellery Queen.Two murders are committed and a $50,000 Chinese Mandarin stamp is stolen, tossed around and eventually recovered as an aggregation of costly-stamp counterfeiters are uncovered through the mastermind investigation by Ellery Queen.

See production info at IMDbPro

IMDb RATING

5.3/10

475

YOUR RATING

See production info at IMDbPro

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Did you know

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Trivia
Even though records show the film as 66 minutes long, copies that are available today are only 53 minutes long and have fade-outs throughout as though the movie were playing on commercial television. It's unclear what happened to the missing minutes, but the cuts were made by Republic Studios in 1952 when they sold their library to television syndication.

Goofs
No philatelist, not even in the 1930s, would treat a rare stamp the way the Chinese Mandarin was treated in this film. Touching the stamp with bare hands, keeping it loose in a folded up piece of paper, licking and posting a stamp, etc. While "hinges" (tiny bits of sticky paper) could be used by everyday collectors to attach a stamp to a book or display case in this era, elite collectors still would have been loathe to ruin a stamp so rare.

Quotes
Ellery Queen: [to Inspector Queen] Congradulations. You now have two suspects. Now all you need is one murderer.

Connections
Edited into The Gay Rub: A Documentary (2018)

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Review

Featured review

5/10

Give me the 'real' Ellery!

If one can simply forget the literary Ellery Queen, this is an OK murder mystery (locked room murder, etc. etc. ). the problem, for Ellery Queen fans is that the whole thing, on that basis, is WAY off the mark. Queen is an analytical detective, and his father and the Police are not dolts. The books are written with more twists and turns and excellence that most others on the mystery shelf (with the possible exceptions of S.S. Van Dyne (Philo Vance) and, of course, Agatha Christie.)Dropping the comparison, one must note the ridiculousness of some of the plot e.g. the whole world knows the value of the stamp - it even appears on the Times Square news bulletin - yet the girl carries the stamp in an envelope in her open pocketbook. Despite all of this, Quillan is a fun actor, definitely not Ellery but giving the film the spunk it desperately needs. Charlotte Henry does not have a 'clue' and thus cannot handle the idiocy of what her character says and does. Still, on a chilly night, with the rain on the window, and curled up on a comfortable chair, this passes the time quickly.