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William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes

November 10, 2011 by CPH Education Department in Ken Ludwig's The Game's Afoot

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Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had killed off Sherlock Holmes in 1893, but soon found himself in need of money to build a new home. A new play about the detective seemed a surefire success, and Doyle wrote a script featuring Holmes and Watson in their early years. When Doyle’s dramaturgy proved lacking, Gillette was hired to do the job.

Gillette’s script combined elements from several of Doyle's stories, but when his version premiered in 1899, Gillette made Holmes his own. Many things we think of as ‘classic Holmes’ are, in fact, Gillette’s doing. Conan Doyle’s Holmes was an intellect-heavy "machine rather than a man," but Gillette’s Holmes was daring, and emotionally expressive. He sported a deerstalker cap on stage, as was featured in Sidney Paget’s drawings from the 1890’s. Gillette introduced the curved ‘briar’ pipe, supposedly because he thought it easier for the audience to see his face from the seats with a bent pipe. He also employed a magnifying-glass, establishing it as essential to the character. Gillette even created the phrase, "Oh, this is elementary, my dear fellow"—which was later reused by Clive Brook, the first movie Holmes to speak, as "Elementary, my dear Watson." Gillette played the role over 1,300 times in the course of his career (including in Cleveland, in 1901 and 1930), with box office receipts totaling over $1,500,000.

Related Shows: Ken Ludwig's The Game's Afoot