Gillette as Sherlock Holmes.
William Hooker Gillette (b. July 24, 1853,
Hartford, Connecticut; d.
April 29, 1937, Hartford, Connecticut) was an American actor, playwright and
stage-manager.
Gillette was a major stage actor in the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While he was not
the first actor to portray Sherlock Holmes, he was the first to truly embody the master
sleuth and became best known for that role until his retirement in 1932.[1] Through Gillette's portrayals of Holmes, the use of the deerstalker cap (first used in some
Strand illustrations by Sidney Paget) and curved pipe, became synonymous with the
character.[1] Gillette was seen as the definitive
Holmes of his day, appearing on stage as the character for over thirty years, starring in an excellent silent motion picture
based on his play, and voicing the character twice on radio.[2]
Born in the era of melodrama, with its grand gestures and sonorous declamations, he created in his plays characters who talked
and acted the way people talk and act in real life. Held by the Enemy, his first Civil War drama, was a major step toward modern theater in that it abandoned many of the crude
devices of 19th century melodrama and introduced realism into the sets, costumes, props and sound effects. In Sherlock
Holmes, he introduced the fade-in at the beginning of each scene, and the fade-out at the end, instead of the slam-bang
finishes audiences were accustomed to. Clarice in 1905 was significant because, for the first time, he sought to achieve
dramatic action through character rather than through incident and situation. His finest play, Secret Service, not only
came closest to the status of the "well-made play," but it later marked the film debut of the great twentith century actress
Meryl Streep.
Youth
The neighborhood where William Gillette was born, Nook Farm (in Hartford, Connecticut), was
a literary and intellectual node, abiding Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe. His father was Francis Gillette,
a former US Senator with reformist ideas, fighting for the
abolition of slavery, public education, temperance, and women's suffrage, and constructing most of town's infrastructure. His
mother was Elisabeth Daggett Hooker, a descendant of Thomas
Hooker, the puritan leader, who founded the town. In the Gillette home, young Will grew
up with his three brothers and a sister. One other sister, Mary, died as a small child. One of his brothers, Edward H. Gillette, became a newspaper editor and congressman.
His oldest brother, Frank Ashbell, went to California and died there in 1859 from consumption (tuberculosis). The next
brother, Robert, joined the Union army and served in the Antietam campaign, was invalided home sick, recovered, and joined the
Navy. Assigned to the U.S. Gettysburg, Robert took part in both assaults on Fort Fisher, but was tragically killed the
morning after the surrender of the fort when the powder magazine exploded. When brother Edward went west to Iowa, and sister
Elisabeth married George Henry Warner, both in 1863, William was left as an only child in the household.
As a student, Gillette specialized in oratory and engineering. But he had always wanted to be an actor and, at age 20, left Hartford to begin his
apprenticeship. He briefly worked for a stock company in New Orleans and then returned to New England where, on Mark Twain's own recommendation, he
debuted at the Globe Theater of Boston with Twain's stage-play The Guilded Age, in 1875. Afterward, Gillette was a stock actor for six
years through Boston, New York and the Midwest.
During these years, Gillette irregularly attended a spate of institutions, although he never completed their programs:
Trinity, Harvard, Yale (1875), Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, NYC-College and Boston
University. His family was not overly happy about his chosen profession, but (contrary to many sources) he was not
disinherited. In fact, his father, Francis, who had held the strongest objections to the theater in general, offered the least
resistance, and drove him to the train station, telling his son that he had driven two other sons to this same station and they
had never returned; William was to make sure he was the exception. Francis supplied him with an allowance on which to subsist
(his apprenticeship was without pay). And, when his health went downhill late in 1878, William forsook the stage for more than a
year to care for his father in his final illness.
Playwright, director and actor
Gillette in Secret Service.
In 1881, while performing at Cincinnati, Gillette was hired as playwright, director
and actor, by Gustave and Daniel Frohman. Taken to New York with a salary of $50-week, the first play he wrote and produced was
The Professor. It debuted in the Madison Square Theater, lasting 151
performances, with a posterior tour through many states (as far west as St. Louis,
Missouri). That same year, he performed his consecrating piece Esmeralda, written together with Frances Hodgson Burnett.
Ignoring his critics, Gillette instead strove to fill all the theater's seats. He was committed to catching the
spectator by sprightly effects and many improvements on sound systems, stage and illumination, for example the use of sudden
blackouts for dramatization, fade-in/fade-out at scenes' beginning, etc. Often, he added large pantomime segments, that were also effective on the audience.
Usually leaning toward cold roles enduring extreme situations, Gillette was also regarded as the "aristocrat of the stage" and
an innovator in interpretation. His acute realism was accented by his particular charisma, replacing much dialog with physical
action also. This was something he denominated in The Illusion of the First Time in Acting, as mentioned to the
American Academy of Arts and Letters (1913).
In fact, historians have noted that he did "natural acting and not the melodramatic declaiming, proper of the 1800s." In other
words, Gillette was an "artist based on his personality." It can be considered that all Gillette's traits had historical
consequences, as since his time American theater began to reach out to the common people.
In 1882 Gillette married Helen Nichols of Detroit. They were blissfully happy. She died in 1888 from peritonitis, caused by a
ruptured appendix. He was terribly grief-stricken for years and, at this vulnerable moment, was struck down with tuberculosis. He
did not act again for six years, and he never remarried.
Career as Sherlock Holmes
Charles Frohman was a young Broadway
producer, who had been successful with the exchanging of theater productions between the USA and the UK. After he produced some of Gillette's plays, the two formed a greater partnership. Their productions
had great success, sweeping Gillette into London's society spot, which had been
historically reluctant to accept American theatre.
In 1897, Gillette performed his play Secret Service at the Adelphi Theater of
London, with great success and was praised by the critics also. This was a significant play because it is considered
today to have been the greatest play he wrote. It also marked his first appearance on a British stage, which drew the attention
of British audiences and critics.
Meanwhile, Conan Doyle had finished his Sherlock Holmes saga with The Final Problem, published in 1893. After this publication Doyle found himself
in need of further income, as he was planning to build a new house. He decided to take his character to stage. While two previous
plays had been done by Charles Brookifield, the skit "Under the clock" in 1893, and
John Webb, the play "Sherlock Holmes" in 1894, Doyle wrote a new 5-act play nevertheless,
with Holmes and Moriarty in their freshmen years as detectives.
Doyle offered the production to Henry Irving and Beerhom
Tree. But Irving turned it down and Tree demanded that Doyle readapt Holmes to his peculiar acting profile; Doyle turned
down the deal, considering that this would debase the character.
Noting that the play needed a lot of work, literary agent A. P. Watt sent the script to
Charles Frohman who, assessing that this was impossible, traveled to London to meet Doyle nonetheless. There, Frohman suggested
the prospect of an adaptation by Gillette. Doyle endorsed this and Frohman obtained the staging-copyright (1897). Doyle
insisted on only one thing: there was to be no love interest in "Sherlock Holmes." Frohman agreed.
Gillette, who then read the entire collection for first time, liked the idea and started the piece's outlining in
San Francisco, while still touring in Secret Service. Both artists
became confident. On one occasion, Gillette telegraph Doyle: "May I marry Holmes?" . The unwavering Conan Doyle responded:
"You can marry him, or kill him, or anything you want."
Coins famous phrase
Gillette's version consisted of 4 acts. Epitomizing several of Doyle's stories, he mainly utilized the plots
"A Scandal in Bohemia" and "The Final Problem". Also, it had elements from "Study in Scarlet", "The
Sign of the Four", "The Boscombe Valley" and "The Greek Interpreter".
Different from the only-intellectual original, "a machine rather than a man," Gillette portrayed Holmes as brave and open to
express his feelings. He wore the deerstalker cap on stage, which was originally featured in illustrations by Sidney Paget in the 1890s. Gillette also introduced to Holmes' costume the cloak and the curved briar,
instead of the straight pipe pictured by illustrators, supposedly so that Gillette could pronounce his lines; actually, it's as
difficult to pronounce lines whether the pipe is bent or straight, and it may have been that Gillette's face was easier to see
from the seats when a bent briar in his mouth. Gillette also made use of a magnifying-glass, a violin and a syringe, which were all established as "props" to the Sherlock Holmes character.
Gillette formulated the complete phrase: "Oh, this is elementary, my dear fellow", which was later reused by
Clive Brook, the first spoken-cinema Holmes, as: "Elementary, my dear Watson",
perhaps Holmes' best known quote and one of the most famous sayings in the English language.
Irene Adler, the woman of the series, was replaced by Alice Faulkner, young and beautiful lady who was planning to avenge her sister's murder but eventually falls
in love with Holmes; and the pageboy, nameless in the Canon, was given the name Billy by Gillette, a name he carried over into
the Basil Rathbone films.
The tentative title was: "Sherlock Holmes in an Unknown Episode, not Published in the Great Detective's Career, showing his
connection with the Weird Ms. Faulkner case". But it was reduced later to: "Sherlock Holmes - A Drama in Four
Acts."
After the Baldwin Hotel blaze in San Francisco, in November 1898, both original
scripts, Conan Doyle's and Gillette's adaptation, were partially destroyed. Gillette wrote the piece again nevertheless, in a
month and by memory and/or with notes he had kept.
Traveling in 1899 to present it to Conan Doyle, they met in Ulster's train station. Gillette
showed up disguised as Sherlock Holmes. With the character's posing, he approached slowly and said: "You're the writer, no doubt
about it." Conan Doyle approved the script and the two became life-long friends.
Holmes tour
Wiliam Gillette as Sherlock Holmes
Lithograph - 1900
Library of Congress Collection
After a copyright performance in England, and a pre-debut presentation streak starting on October 23, 1899, at the Star
Theatre in Buffalo, Rochester,
Syracuse in New York, and Scranton and Wilkes-Barre in Pennsylvania, Sherlock Holmes debuted in the Garrick Theater of New York in November 6, 1899, performing until June 16, 1900. It
was an instant success. Gillette applied all his dazzling special effects over the massive audience.
But he faced sharp, even derisive, criticism from the newspapers, especially about Holmes falling in love. In Conan Doyle's
original novels, Holmes was said to have an "aversion to women". As a matter of fact, throughout 34 years, the critics
would rarely praise the production.
The company also toured nationally, along the western United States, from October 8, 1900, to March 30, 1901. This was
bolstered by another company also, with Cuyler Hastings, through minor cities and
Australia.
After a pre-debut week in Liverpool, the company debuted in London (September 9, 1901), at
the Lyceum Theater, performing in Duke of York's Theater later.
It was another hit with its audience, despite not convincing the critics. The 12 weeks originally appointed were at
full-hall. The production was extended until April 12, 1902 (256 presentations), including a gala for King Edward VII, in February 1. Then, it toured through the British Islands, with two ancillary groups: north (with H.A.
Saintsbury) and south (with Julian Royce).
At the same time, the play was produced in foreign countries (such as Australia, Sweden,
South Africa). In the USA, Gillette toured again from 1902 to 1903, until November of 1903,
when Gillette launched his next play: The Admirable Crichton, requested personally by its author, J.M. Barrie.
Worldwide fame
In his lifetime, Gillette presented Sherlock Holmes approximately 1,300 times (third in the historical stage-record),
before American and English audiences. He was also shown widely, through appearances in many magazines, by way of photographs or illustrated caricatures, and was also well represented on the covers of theater
programs.
Meanwhile, around the world, other productions took place, based on Gillette's Sherlock Holmes. These were either
satiric, which were very successful, and/or undue; some lasted
several seasons. Frohman's lawyers tried to curb the illegal phenomenon exhaustedly, traveling overseas, from court to court.
Even Gillette parodied Holmes once and, ironically, on this one occasion the critic praised the production. The Fearfully, The Harrowing (1905) was a one-act piece, a preamble to the main production, conceived as
an homage to Joseph Jefferson Holland, a member of the company who had died while touring. It was
later retitled The Painful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes, and featured Holmes, with his typical pose but not uttering a
word, listening to an alienated woman calmly. Gillette repeated the piece in London,
while promoting his sentimental drama Clarice (September-October 1905). The juvenile Charles Chaplin portrayed Billy the pageboy there. But,
when the production of Clarice became a failure, Gillette replaced Clarice with Sherlock Holmes. Chaplin
repeated his role again.
Models for Holmes' portrait
The magazines Collier's Weekly (USA) and The Strand (UK) pushed Conan Doyle avidly, offering to continue the Sherlock Holmes series
for a generous salary. The new chapters were first published in 1901, first with a prequel and later with Holmes revived
definitively (1903). It continued for another quarter-century.
Gillette was the model for pictures by the artist Frederic Dorr Steele, which
were featured on Collier's Weekly's covers then and reproduced by American media. Additionally, Steele contributed to
Conan Doyle's book-covers, Gillette's short stories (Baker Street
Irregulars) and, later, doing marketing when Gillette made his farewell performances.
As international copyright did not yet exist, Conan Doyle's series were widely printed throughout the USA, mostly with
pictures of William Gillette on-stage. P. F. Collier & Son owned the copyrights of
Steele's illustrations and issued drawings in many editions.
By means of such international exposure, Gillette became the image of Holmes for decades, created the very image of Holmes
that remains to this day, and made the detective so real that many, both then and now, believe the detective really lived.
Gillette Castle
In 1913, while sailing up the Connecticut Riverin his houseboat, Gillette spotted a
hill, part of the Seven Sisters, over a ferry's
pier in Hadlyme. He docked, disembarked and climbed up.
He was so amazed by the view that he purchased 115 acres of land, the next month. He decided to build up a castle at this
location based on the Norman fortress Robert the
Devil. The design of the castle and its grounds features numerous innovative designs, and the entire castle was designed, to
the smallest details, by Gillette himself.
During the five years of construction, Gillette lived aboard the Aunt Polly or at a home he had purchased in Greenport,
Long Island. The material for the castle was carried up by an aerial-trolley designed by
him. The castle's walls tapered from 5 feet thick at the base to 3 feet at the upper levels. The castle possessed 24 rooms and 47
doors, with hand-carved puzzle locks, which were also devised by Gillette. The main salon measured 30 by 50 feet and was 19 feet
in height, featuring a complex mirrored system of surveillance of the castle's public rooms from his bedroom. He explained this
as a means "to make great entrances in the opportune moment."
The mansion was finished in 1919, at a cost of 1 million US dollars. Gillette called it
Seven Sisters. Its small train was his personal pride. The train's layout was 3 miles long, and it travelled all around
the property, crossing several bridges and goning through one tunnell designed by Gillette.. Gillette also enjoyed strolls on his
property in company of his guests, who included the noted physicist Albert Einstein,
former U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, and former Mayor of Tokyo Yukio Ozaki.
After Gillette died with no wife or children, his will stated
- I would consider it more than unfortunate for me – should I find myself doomed, after death, to a continued consciousness
of the behavior of mankind on this planet – to discover that the stone walls and towers and fireplaces of my home – founded at
every point on the solid rock of Connecticut; – that my railway line with its bridges, trestles, tunnels through solid rock, and
stone culverts and underpasses, all built in every particular for permanence (so far as there is such a thing); – that my
locomotives and cars, constructed on the safest and most efficient mechanical principles; – that these, and many other things of
a like nature, should reveal themselves to me as in the possession of some blithering saphead who had no conception of where he
is or with what surrounded.
In 1943, Connecticut's government took the property, re-baptizing it Gillette's Castle and Gillette Castle State Park.
Located in 67 River Road, East Haddam, Connecticut, it was reopened in 2002. After a four years of restoration, costing
11 million dollars, it now includes a museum, park, and many theatrical celebrations. It receives 100,000 annual visitors, who
can hike or picnic there.
The castle remains a distinctive feature of the view from the Connecticut River.
Last years and farewell tour
Gillette announced his retirement many times throughout his career, despite not actually accomplishing this until just before
his death. The first announced retirement took place after the turn of the century, after he purchased the boat Aunt Polly which was 144 feet in length and weighed 200 tons.
Naturally, Sherlock Holmes was Gillette's foremost production with 1,300 performances (in 1899-1901, 1905, 1906, 1910,
1915, 1923, and 1929-1932). While performing on other tours, he was always forced to include at least one extra performance of
Sherlock Holmes, by popular demand.
In 1929, at the age of 76, Gillette started the farewell tour of Sherlock Holmes, in Springfield, Massachusetts. Scheduled for two seasons,
it was eventually extended into 1932.
In the New Amsterdam Theater of New York, on November 25, 1929, a great
ceremony took place. Gillette received a signature book, autographed by 60
different world eminences. There, in his speech, Conan Doyle stated: "I consider the production a personal gratification... My
only complaint is that you made the poor hero of the anemic printed page a very limp object as compared with the glamour of your
own personality which you infuse into his stage presentment." Former President Calvin
Coolidge commented that the production was a "public service". And Booth Tarkington told him, "I would rather see
you play Sherlock Holmes than be a child again on Christmas morning." On the same occasion, the critics concurred, praising the
performance sentimentally. The definitive farewell appearance took place on March 19, 1932, in Wilmington, Delaware.
His last appearance on stage was in Austin Strong’s Three Wise Fools in 1936, co-starring with Charles Coburn, James
Kirkwood, Brandon Tynan, Isabell Irving, and Mary Rogers, daughter of the late comedian Will Rogers.
Gillette died on April 29, 1937, in Hartford, due to a pulmonary hemorrhage. He
was buried in the Hooker family cemetery, at Farmington, Hartford County,
Connecticut, next to his wife.
Trivia
- Around June 1903, in one of the shadow companies touring UK, Charles
Chaplin (12 years old) was hired to play Billy the pageboy. He was saved from impoverishment then. Repeatedly,
years later, at his heyday, Chaplin touched on this anecdote beholdenly when interviewed.
- Orson Welles did an homage adaptation of Gillette's Sherlock Holmes, imitating
Gillette's style, in his The Mercury Theater on the Air (September 25, 1938).
"It is not enough to say that William Gillette resembles Sherlock Holmes; Sherlock Holmes looks exactly like William
Gillette." (Welles)
- Gillette was married for six years, until the death of his wife. He was very depressed for the following five years and never
married again. But later, he was regarded as a philanderer since many women were seen in his company and at his castle. He
corresponded with one of them in particular, for decades.
- in 1918, he starred in James Barrie's Dear Brutus, with 18-year-old Helen Hayes
as his imaginary daughter. This began a close friendship with Hayes that lasted until his death, and by her own account provided
the finest and most profound learning experience in Hayes' long and illustrious career.
- Although he had penned novelizations of some of his plays, he wrote an original and excellent mystery novel, The
Astounding Crime at Torrington Road, which was published to great critical acclaim in 1927.
- Invited by Vincent Starrett, Gillette was a guest at the first dinner meeting of The Baker Street Irregulars, on December 7, 1934, in New York. The Irregulars still
celebrate his memory with the Gillette Memorial Luncheon on the Friday of their weekend
celebration of Sherlock Holmes's birthday every January.
- Gillette was the first to play Holmes on radio, doing the first broadcast in a 35-program series on WEAF-NBC on Monday night,
October 20, 1930, at 10:00 p.m.. A potential audience of twenty million heard the half-hour playlet that night. Richard Gordon
finished out the rest of the series and then did several more.
- Gillette's Sherlock Holmes was the first radio-drama transmitted in stereo in the
UK, on November 15, 1958. It was adapted by Raymond Raikes.
- Gillette had the same butler for 30 years, hired in 1890: Yukitaki Ozaki was a political refugee from Japan. Ozaki's brother,
Yukio Ozaki, was the famous Mayor of Tokyo who, in 1912, gave to the United States the Yoshino Cherry Blossoms.
- Gillette improved Aunt Polly 's interior, maintaining it for years. Despite his efforts, the boat caught fire in 1932
and was destroyed. Some wreckage can still be seen by the river's edge at low tide, and some artifacts are exhibited inside
Gillette's Castle.
- Gillette was also fond of his motorcycle. He used to drive it around the countryside and was frequently caught speeding and
ticketed by local police. One day in 1917, while racing down the road by the castle, his brakes gave out and he and the
motorcycle went roaring down the road, over the ferry that had docked, and into the Connecticut River. His attempt to quickly
rescue the vehicle had to be barred by some onlookers.
- Since his father had been a founder of the Republican Party in Connecticut, when the new party was the party of reform,
Gillette remained a life-long Republican.
- Gillette campaigned for Theodore Roosevelt during the 1912 presidential campaign, and was later bitterly disappointed when
Roosevelt did not receive the Republican nomination in 1916.
- Gillette supported Connecticut Governor Wilbur Cross, advising him on political
strategies.
- Visiting Washington D.C. in 1930, Gillette was invited to the White House by President Herbert Hoover.
- The first full-length biography of Gillette, The Masque of Sherlock Holmes: the Extraordinary Life of William
Gillette, by Henry Zecher, among the "World's foremost authorities on Gillette", is awaiting
publication.
- Gillette became a close personal friend with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator
of Sherlock Holmes. Other notable friends of his were the great actor Maurice Barrymore
(patriarch of the Barrymore acting family), political cartoonist Thomas Nast, theatrical critic Alexander Woollcott, Utah wartime
governor and doctor/dentist/lawyer/wheeler-dealer Frank Fuller, Broadway's legendary actress Helen Hayes, and the leading
theatrical producer of era, Charles Frohman.
Bibliography
In his life, Gillette wrote 13 original plays, 7 adaptations and some collaborations, encompassing farce, melodrama and novel
adapting. Two pieces about the Civil War highlights: Held by the Enemy (1886) and Secret Service
(1896). Particularly, Secret Service was successful with both the public and the praising critics. He reaped 3 million
dollars in gaining, great deal of it by copyright.
- 1881, The Professor. Original. Gillette's first play. About an appealing professor coveted by the girls, while
grappling with the rude boys.
- 1881, Esmeralda. Adaptation (original by Frances Hodgson Burnett).
Light comedy. Starred by Annie Russell. Later by Viola
Allen. (Film: 1915)
- 1884, The Private Secretary. Adapted from the German Der Bibliothekar (by Gustav Von
Moser). Well Known. Many changes over the original: Rev. Mr. Spaulding became a medium. Also, it had several
modifications throughout five years of presentations.
- 1886, Held by the Enemy. Original. Successful. First Gillette's drama in years of the American Civil War. (Film: 1920)
- 1894, Too Much Johnson. Original. Successful. (Films: 1919, 1938)
- 1896, Secret Service. Original. Foremost production until Sherlock Holmes. On Civil-War 's Captain
Thorne, Union-spy infiltrated as press correspondent (Lewis Dumont). Performed by Maurice Barrymore (Philadelphia) and William Gillette (Broadway). It lasted a year on stage. (Films:
1919, 1931, 1977 TV)
- 1899, She Loved him So. Original.
- 1899, Sherlock Holmes. (Films: 1916, 1922 UK, 1932, 1939 UK, 1981
TV, 1982 TV)
- She (Fire Goddess). Adaptation (H.R.Ridder Haggard).
- 1903, The Admirable Crichton. First Gillettes's starring role in a play by James M. Barrie.
- 1906, Clarice. Original. Sentimental comedy.
- 1910, Electricity. Original.
In-life editions of Sherlock Holmes
- 1922. First publication by Samuel French. It was based in 1923's reposition.
- 1935. Published by Doubleday, Doran & Co.. It was a pricey edition, containing Gillette's
foreword, multi-paged feature on trivial data and illustrations by Frederic Dorr Steele.
Filmography
- In 1916, Gillette starred the first cinema-adaptation of his Sherlock
Holmes. Albeit it wasn't the first movie about Holmes. It was a seven-reel silent movie by Essanay Film Manufacturing Co.. Marjorie Kay played Alice Faulkner
and Ernest Manpani was Moriarty. The acid critic noted that Gillette was "about to lose his
physical strength to perform the character" since then, insisting that he would not be able to repeat it over the 60 years
old. No copy of the film has survived.
- In 1922, Goldwyn Pictures filmed another version of Gillette's play. It was
directed by Albert Parker and John Barrymore
played Holmes.
- Secret Service. 1931. Radio Pictures. 69 minutes. Romantic drama in Civil
War. It was directed by J. Walter Ruben and Richard Dix was
the Union's spy.
- In 1977, as part of the Broadway Theatre Archive, a production of Secret Service was filmed starring a pair of young
unknowns – John Lithgow as Captain Thorne and, as Edith Varney in her very first appearance on film, Meryl Streep. This is the
only play by Gillette still available on commercial VHS or DVD.
Radio
- On October 20, 1930, Gillette performed the first radio-version of Sherlock Holmes in history: The Adventure of the Speckled Band. It was based on the original theater version
by Conan Doyle, re-adapted by Edith Meiser, and was the first time Sherlock Holmes was portrayed
on radio. It was transmitted by WEAF-NBC (New York) and sponsored by G.
Washington Coffee Co.. This show became the pilot of a series, and after Gillette, Holmes was performed by several
actors along five seasons.
- On November 18, 1935, Gillette, now 80 years old, performed his own Sherlock Holmes on WABC radio of New York. His play was again re-adapted by Edith Meiser. Reginald
Mason played Dr John H. Watson and Charles Bryant played Professor Moriarty. Its
duration was 50 minutes. This play too was the pilot for a new Holmes series by Lux Radio
Theater. The New York Times said that Gillette was "still the best,
with all his shades and improvisation."
As novelist
- 1927, The Astounding Crime on Torrington Road. Only mystery novel.
Legacy
Tryon, North Carolina
In 1891, after his first visiting of Tryon, North Carolina, Gillette began building his bungalow, which he later enlarged into a house. He named it
Thousand Pines and it is privately owned today. In November, the town of Tryon celebrates the William Gillette Festival,
honoring Gillette.
New York City
On December 7, 1934, Gillette attended the first dinner meeting of the Baker Street Irregulars in New York. To this day, the
BSI honors him with the William Gillette Memorial Luncheon on the Friday afternoon of their annual January meeting in New York
City.
Quotations
- "I want to make money on Holmes quick, so as to be through with it!"
- "Oh, this is elementary, my dear fellow."
- "There isn’t any reason in the world why we can’t do as well in this farewell business as any other country on the face of
the globe. We have the farewellers and the people to say farewell to. If I can only keep it up I will be even with my competitors
by the Spring of 1922, and by the Winter of 1937 I will be well in the lead."
- "It just seems, somehow, that every five years finds me back again, so you can expect me back at it again once more in 1941.
Probably in 1976, when they are celebrating the two-hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the Declaration of Independence, or
what ever it is, 40 years from now, I'll still be farewelling. I should apologize for being here, but I am a man among Yankees,
and they take promises with a grain of salt – in fact they usually take them home and pickle them in brine, so they probably knew
I'd be back. Besides I have several good excuses – but they really don't count. And besides – and you men who follow horse racing
will know what I mean – I'm not running against anyone, they're merely letting me trot around the track."
- "Farewell, Good Luck, and Merry Christmas."
References
- ^ a b William Gillette at Holmes on Screen. Accessed 6 May 2007.
- ^ Riley, Dick; Pam McAllister (2005). The Bedside Companion to Sherlock Holmes. Barnes & Noble
Books, Pages 59-60. ISBN 978-0-7607-7156-3.
- "Sherlock Holmes: The Published Apocrypha", compiled by Jack Tracy.
- "The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", compiled by Peter Haining.
External links
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