As everybody knows, that celebrated American inventor of underacting lent his considerable gifts as a playwright to the indestructible legend of the Conan Doyle dectective, and produced the play which is as much a part of the Holmes literature as any of Sir Arthur's own romances, and as nobody will ever forget, he gave his fce for him. For William Gillette was the aquiline and actual embodiment of Holmes himself. It is too little to say that William Gillette resembled Sherlock Holmes; Sherlock Holmes looks exactly like William Gillette... sounds like him, too, we're afraid, and hope devoutly that the Mercury Theater and the radio will take none of the glamour from the beloved fable of Baker Street, from the pipe and the violin and the hideous purple dressing gown, from the needle and cigar on the window ledge, and the dry final famous lines, "Elementary, my dear Watson, elementary, the mere child's play of deduction."
-Orson Wells
Legends of Radio, "The Ultimate Sherlock Holmes Collection,"
The Mercury Theater on the Air, September 25, 1938.
Men of the Day No.1055: Caricature of Mr William Gillette. Caption reads: "Sherlock Holmes" Produced for Vanity Fair magazine on 27 February 1907. Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle IN 1887. Art by Leslie Ward (1851-1922) also known as "Spy" .
WILLIAM GILLETTE:
A CONNECTICUT YANKEE AND THE AMERICAN STAGE
FUN FACT
William Gillette was accused of being a spy in 1914 and held at Scotland Yard for the better part of an evening, until Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself could vouch for Gillette.
Holmes at Home: The Life of William Gillette
By Emily E. Gifford (connecticuthistory.org)
William Gillette was an American actor, playwright, and stage director most famous for his stage portrayal of Sherlock Holmes and for the extraordinary stone castle he built on a promontory above the Connecticut River in East Haddam. Born in the Nook Farm neighborhood of Hartford, Connecticut, Gillette grew up in a politically progressive atmosphere. His father, former US Senator Francis Gillette, supported reform movements including public education and the abolition of slavery; his mother, Elizabeth Daggett Hooker Gillette, was a direct descendant of Connecticut Colony co-founder Thomas Hooker. The family’s neighbors included Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain.
As a boy, Gillette built a miniature puppet theater and entertained friends and family with short plays. Along with friends, he co-founded an amateur journal, Hail Columbia, a general interest publication that included articles, stories, puzzles, and jokes and was published regularly for nearly two years (1866–1867). In later years, Gillette credited his Hartford Public High School experiences in English and public speaking with his more “natural” style of acting; in an era of melodrama and actors proclaiming every line, Gillette spoke his lines more conversationally, a style of relative underacting that appealed to audiences ready for something new.
The Connecticut Historical Society and the Friends of Gillette Castle State Park have assembled a complete timeline of Gillette's life and work.
Listen to an interview with Henry Zecher, author of the first definitive biography of Gillette, titled William Gillette, America's Sherlock Holmes
on the I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere podcast.
William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes
Below is a copy of the 1916 silent film with William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes. The film was thought to be lost until a copy was found in Paris in 2014. It was restored through the joint effort of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival and the Cinémathèque Française.
This is a filmed version of Gillette's own adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's work-the very play which starts our theatrical adventure. READ MORE about how Gillette came to bring Sherlock Holmes to the stage.
The script can be found further down this page!
Click the double arrow in the upper right corner and select "presentation mode" to enlarge these files. The item on the left contains mages of Gillette as Holmes in his own play at The Garrick Theatre in 1899. The item on the right is Gillette's script.
William Gillette, Playwright and More
Though Gillette is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Homes whom he brought to life in theaters starting in 1899, he pioneered a more natural and less melodramatic style of acting. 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 nineteenth 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 situation and incident.
In January 1916, Vanity Fair magazine published his essay entitled "When a Play is Not a Play."
"YOU MAY READ the Directions for a Play, and from these Directions imagine as best you can what the play would be like; but you could no more read the Play than you could read a Fire or an Automobile Accident or a Base-Ball Game. The Play—if it is Drama—does not even exist until it appears in the form of Simulated Life."
William Gillette also innovated special effects, some of which he patented. One of these was a new and improved method of reproducing the sound of a galloping horse. Since it was a method rather than a physical device there were no illustrations in his application. Rather, there was prose describing “a new and useful method of imitating the sound of a horse or horses approaching, departing, or passing at a gallop, trot, or any other desired gait, the same to be used in producing stage effects in theatrical or other performances or entertainments, exhibitions, &c.”
Gillette Castle
Built in 1914 by William Hooker Gillette, the actor, director, and playwright most famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, the ornate, 14,000-square-foot stone fortress sits 200 feet over the Connecticut River atop the most southerly hill in a chain known as the Seven Sisters and is surrounded by 184-acres of gorgeous Connecticut woodlands. After his passing, the State of Connecticut purchased the castle and adjoining acreage to create a state park.
William Gillette gave specific directions in his will that the property did not fall into the hands "of some blithering saphead who has no conception of where he is or with what surrounded."
(State of CT Parks Department)
Take a tour of the house!
click button to read!
FUN FACT: Gillette had the light switches inside the castle made to look like railroad switches due to his love of trains that started in childhood. Always wanting to drive one, in 1927,Gillette built a quarter-scale, narrow-gauge railroad around his 122-acre property. The railroad included two engines (one steam, one electric), several passenger cars, and three miles of track complete with bridges, turnarounds and a tunnel. There is a railroad station (called “Grand Central”) with a view of the Connecticut River that used to house Gillette’s railway cars, and the modern walking trails follow much of the old railroad bed. The grounds, now a state park, also contain a covered bridge, a tunnel, several wooden bridges and Gillette’s goldfish pond.