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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Holmes on Screen

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Holmes on Screen

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HoS_BarnesHolmes enthusiasts have their peculiarities. One of mine is that I enjoy just grabbing Alan Barnes’ Sherlock Holmes on Screen from the shelf and randomly reading about some past tv or film effort starring the great detective.

Almost twenty years ago, I couldn’t find a single picture of Ronald Howard’s Holmes on the internet. So I scanned one from a book and that was the basis for HolmesOnScreen.com, which for about a decade, had more info about Holmes television and film projects than any other site on the web. With the coming of Guy Ritchie’s Holmes, I decided to shut down the site (surprisingly, I enjoyed the movie) and soon thereafter set up SolarPons.com.

But Holmes on screen has remained a major interest area for me. By my count, twenty-one The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes posts have covered that subject! Now, I’m not saying that if you read every one of the links below, you’d be a leading expert on Holmes on screen. But you’d probably know more than most folks you talk to on the subject. And hey; they’re all free!

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The MX Book of New SH Stories

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The MX Book of New SH Stories

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mX_1On October 1, The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories will be released, with a major party in London taking place to commemorate the event. It is a MASSIVE, three-volume collection containing 2 Introductions, 3 Forewords, 2 Poems, 2 Essays and 63 brand new Sherlock Holmes stories. In fact, it’s the biggest collection of new Holmes stories ever!

The stories are arranged chronologically, with Part I covering 1881-1889 (23 stories); Part II including 1890-1895 (19 stories) and Part III dealing with 1896-1929 (21 stories). The authors range from those with their first published Holmes stories to New York Times best sellers.

This collection was put together by editor David Marcum, who is my main Solar Pons buddy. He emailed me one January afternoon, telling me he had had a dream the night before. He wanted to put “together an original traditional-Canon Holmes anthology for MX.” David writes Holmes books for MX Publishing in England and he had emailed MX head Steve Emecz already that morning.

David is a Holmes purist and as he wrote to me, “there would be no weird Alternate Universe or present-day stuff, no Holmes-is-the-Ripper, nothing where Watson is at Holmes’ funeral or vice versa.” He wanted traditional stories as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would write them, narrated by Watson.

The part that I chuckle at now is that he said he planned on asking a small and select group of authors to participate. But there was no chance of that. More and more folks signed on and it grew from a single book to two to a trilogy.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Solar Pons – Who Needs a Hard Boiled Detective?

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Solar Pons – Who Needs a Hard Boiled Detective?

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PonsWolfe_NarcissusSolar Pons has already made several appearances here in The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes. And previously, I wrote that Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe is my favorite detective series of them all. So naturally, I found a way to link them together into one post. Barely.

Now, August Derleth was a born-and-raised Wisconsin boy, enamored with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales of the great Sherlock Holmes. He wasn’t much different than an awful lot of American youths in the nineteen twenties.

Except, the enterprising Derleth wrote to the author and asked if there would be any more stories. Doyle, not the friendliest person in regards to his meal ticket, did have the courtesy to send back a reply in the Fall of 1928,  saying that he was finished with Holmes.

Not discouraged at all, the nineteen year-old University of Wisconsin student made a note on his calendar, ‘In re: Sherlock Holmes’, as a reminder to write a story in imitation of Doyle’s creation. The date is lost in the mists of time, but August Derleth did in fact sit down and produce “The Adventure of the Black Narcissus” in one afternoon, starring Solar Pons and Dr. Lyndon Parker.

It appeared in the February, 1929 edition of Dragnet and Derleth would produce over seventy more tales before passing away in 1973. British author Basil Copper added over two-dozen more Pons stories with the blessing of Derleth’s Estate.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: What to Write About?

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: What to Write About?

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The itsy-bitsy spider, went up the water spout...
The itsy-bitsy spider, went up the water spout…

For the past 76 Monday mornings, The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes has appeared here at Black Gate. I’ve written a couple other posts, but this column is why they keep me around. Well, that and I work for free.

Most of my posts involve (a little or a lot of) re-reading. Which means that more often than I would like, what I want to post on a particular Monday isn’t ready to go. For example, I’ve read ten books and watched one tv pilot for a post on Erle Stanley Gardner’s ‘Cool and Lam’ private eye books (fantastic stuff). And I still need to read more.

And I’ve listened to at least six dozen radio shows for posts on Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, The Fat Man and Box 13: with more listening to go. So, for this week’s post, I thought I’d talk about some of the subjects that I have started digging into, but which I’m not ready to tackle yet:

Sherlock Holmes A to Z – A post that’s going to include at least one recommended author, movie or book title for every letter of the alphabet (this is a fun one).

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Ronald Howard – A Younger Holmes

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Ronald Howard – A Younger Holmes

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RonHoward_GunSheldon Reynolds, an American producer, went to England looking for an actor to cast as Holmes in a new television series. Alan Wheatley had appeared in six televised plays (filmed live) for the BBC in 1951. Reynolds had much broader horizons. He found Ronald Howard, son of the famous English actor Leslie Howard. It was the senior Howard who insisted that Humphrey Bogart get to reprise his role of Duke Mantee when the successful play was turned into a film. It was Bogart’s first success on screen and helped launch his career. Howard was killed during World War II when the Nazis shot down his commercial plane over the Bay of Biscay.

Ronald Howard sold his house and took his family to France in early 1954. The entire series was to be shot there to save on costs. Reynolds had used this approach before, filming the American series Foreign Intrigue, in Stockholm for reasons of economy.  This time he would be an American producer, with a British Sherlock Holmes, shooting a television show in France.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Moriarty Chronicles

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Moriarty Chronicles

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Moriarty_CardPerhaps my favorite Sherlock Holmes pastiche is 1974’s The Return of Moriarty by John Gardner. In it, Professor Moriarty (who did not perish at the Reichenbach Falls) is a Victorian Era godfather, with a criminal organization the envy of the American mob in the Roaring Twenties. A sequel followed it the next year, The Revenge of Moriarty. The trilogy was completed with Moriarty, just a few weeks before Gardner passed away in 2008.

Having completed one muddle of a screenplay about a Civil War naval battle, I took it upon myself to contact John and tell him I was writing a pilot for a proposed TV series about The Return. Extremely polite and friendly, he told me to send it to him when I was done. I did. He and his agent, less than impressed with this amateur effort from a self-taught screenwriter, understandably, passed.

I stayed in email contact with John (who was always nice) up until his death, taking one serious stab at revising the pilot and expanding it to two-hours. I never did resubmit it to his agent (John having passed away by then).

So, read on about The Moriarty Chronicles, a British TV series you, alas, will never see.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: By Crom – Are Conan Pastiches Official?

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: By Crom – Are Conan Pastiches Official?

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ConaPas_Ace2Today’s post is actually about Robert E. Howard’s Conan, but (in a stunning surprise) it’s got some Sherlock Holmes at the foundation. No, Conan never met the great detective…

Hopefully you’ve been checking in on our summer series, Discovering Robert E. Howard. There are plenty more posts coming, so stay tuned. While I very much like Howard and his works, I came late to his stories and I’m certainly no expert.

There is one area I’ve found…curious, which relates to the “official” status that seems to be accorded to the authorized pastiches written since Howard’s death. It’s quite different in the Holmes world.

There are sixty official Sherlock Holmes tales. Period. Fifty-six short stories and four novels (more novellas, really), all penned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and published during his lifetime. There are two Holmes short-shorts, “How Watson Learned the Trick” and “The Field Bazaar” and there is no disputing that they were written by Doyle. But they are not included (by anyone, I believe) in the official count.

You, oh enlightened one, know that the Doyle Estate tried to include a sixty-first story, found among ACD’s papers by a researcher, but it turned out to have been written by Arthur Whitaker.

To quote myself, from my first Solar Pons post here at Black Gate:

Parodies are stories that poke fun at Holmes. But the more serious Holmes tales, those that attempt to portray Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective to varying levels, are called pastiches. Just about the earliest ‘serious’ attempt at a Holmes copy was by Vincent Starrett, who wrote “The Adventure of the Unique Hamlet” in 1920.

Doyle’s son Adrian, sitting at his father’s very desk, produced The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes (half of the stories were co-written with John Dickson Carr, who would quit mid-project).

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Shovel’s Painful Predicament

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Shovel’s Painful Predicament

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Shovel_Martin
Yeah, it’s Shovel. You were expecting Philip Marlowe?

I wanted to have a little bit of fun this week. You, enlightened reader, have heard about William Gillette’s curtain raiser play, The Painful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes, because you wouldn’t dare miss a PLoSH post, right?

I am a serious fan of both Sherlock Holmes and the hard boiled genre of mystery fiction (which you also know because you’ve read the many columns I’ve written on both subjects…). Since Painful Predicament.. is a parody of Holmes, I decided to write a parody of a hard boiled private eye short, using Gillette’s mini-play as the model. So, I give you “Shovel’s Painful Predicament.”

I sat in my office, watching dust motes dance in the sunlight. The slats were pulled halfway, and they made a regular pattern on the floor. Unfortunately, this was the most action the office had seen in a week. Being a shamus in this town meant dry spells in jobs, not just the weather. The phone wasn’t ringing, but I wasn’t all that certain I’d paid the bill, either. I wouldn’t need an armored truck if I withdrew my bank account. Hell, I wouldn’t even need a wallet.

I heard tentative footsteps in the hallway. It sounded as if their maker was reading the doors, looking for the right one. They stopped in front of mine. I stayed behind my desk and waited. Someone pounded on the door and it rattled on its hinges. I grunted an “It’s open” in surprise. I hoped the hinges remembered how to work.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Sherlock Season 3 – What Happened?

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Sherlock Season 3 – What Happened?

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Sherlock Season 3Now, it’s certainly possible that I’m clueless (and I do LOVE Without a Clue), but I don’t think I’ve got the following all wrong regarding BBC’s Sherlock.

Except for the grumpy old man contingent (‘Get Sherlock out of modern day!’), fans of Holmes, including scholarly geeks like me who make their own newsletter, overwhelmingly liked this new show and the three episode season one.

I don’t know too many Holmes fans (other than GOM group: see above) who disliked this show. Even those who were moderately approving seemed pleased and intrigued with it and willing to tune in for another season.

So, season two came along, and more huzzahs and approval. I don’t remember Holmes friends of mine thinking it was going south. I certainly didn’t: I thought the first two seasons were brilliant and fun updatings of the great detective. I found cool references to Doyle’s tales all over the place.

Once again, no comments that it jumped the shark. Folks were absolutely looking forward to seeing how Holmes survived his Reichenbach Fall. It was one of my five all time favorite tv shows and probably battling Justified for number one.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Sidney Paget Draws the Great Detective

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Sidney Paget Draws the Great Detective

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Paget_Cornell
Australian Phil Cornell is perhaps the finest modern Holmes illustrator. Here he gives us Sidney Paget

Last month, I mentioned that it was illustrator Sidney Paget who first adorned the head of Sherlock Holmes with a deerstalker. Along with Frederic Dorr Steele, Paget is certainly one of the two most significant illustrators of the great detective.

Baker Street Essays is one of my two, free, online newsletters. The most recent issue (#5, February 2014) contained my essay, “The Illustrated Holmes.”

Strongly influenced by Walter Klinefelter’s excellent (though black and white) book, Portrait of a Profile, I believe it to be the best look at the history of illustrators of the Canon you’ll find on the internet (it’s not exactly a crowded field!).

Today’s post, with a bit of fiddling, contains the Paget portion of that essay. Did you know Sidney was chosen by mistake? The Strand Magazine meant to hire his brother, Walter, who ended up modeling for Holmes! And Doyle thought that Paget made Holmes too handsome!

A few illustrators, including the author’s own father, Charles Altamont Doyle, had provided drawings of Holmes for the first two stories, the novellas A Study in Scarlet and The Sign of Four, without making much of an impression.

And as we know, those two books didn’t do very well. It was the short story format that Doyle applied to Holmes for The Strand Magazine that turned the world’s first private consulting detective into an enduring literary and pop culture icon. And there we meet the first (and arguably foremost) Holmes illustrator…

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