The Adventures of Ellery Queen (December 21, 1950)

Ellery Queen, the fictional mystery writer/sleuth, began life in novels written by Frederic Dannay and Manfred Bennington Lee from 1928 to 1971. The popularity of the character led to film adaptations, and a series which ran on CBS Radio in 1939. Queen's radio adventures would later switch among the NBC, CBS, and finally ABC networks, where it ended it's run in 1948.
The first television version, titled "The Adventures of Ellery Queen" like the radio incarnation, premiered on the DuMont network on October 19, 1950 as a live series. Richard Hart starred as Queen, with Florenz Ames in the role of Ellery's father, Inspector Richard Queen.
Tragically in January of 1951, Richard Hart died of a heart attack. The role of Ellery Queen was taken up by Lee Bowman, who remained with the series, including the program's move to ABC television, where it aired until November 26, 1952. 93 episodes in total were broadcast, but only a number of kinescopes survive to this day.
Ellery Queen would appear again in another series called "Ellery Queen, Detective" in 1954. This filmed syndicated version starred Hugh Marlowe (the first Ellery Queen on radio). It was seen in syndication from '54 to 1959, and was also known as "Mystery is my Business".
Queen would pop up yet again on NBC television in "The Further Adventures of Ellery Queen" from 1958-59, starring George Nader, then later Lee Philips.
Finally in 1975, Ellery Queen made his color television debut in the simply titled "Ellery Queen", which ran for one season on NBC. Jim Hutton played Ellery.
In this season one DuMont episode, "The Hanging Acrobat", Queen (Richard Hart) gets involved in a murder investigation at a small rural carnival.

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Irving Pincus went on to produce 222 episodes of ‘The Real McCoys’ Donald Richardson went on to direct such programs as Lost In Space, Bonanza, Emergency, One Day At A Time, etc. This was likely shot at the Du Mont studios in the John Wanamaker department store in Manhattan - in 1950 Du Mont would acquire the old historic Central Opera House on E. 67 St. for a (then) state-of-art studio complex, but it had to be gutted and they could not start to move in until 1952, it was completed in 1954 just in time to see Du Mont shut down the network. The Du Mont Tele-Centre was home to WABD/WNEW/WNYW TV and became the Metromedia Tele-Centre and today the Fox Tele-Centre. Du Mont often culled their set decorations from the shelves of John Wanamaker. Their programs in the early 1950’s were famous for using little-known theatre and radio actors seeking supplemental gigs. You can spot the actors reading dialogue off of cue cards.