Sherlock Holmes

   Arthur Conan Doyle's stories of the Victorian detective are among the most durable sources for dramatic and motion picture adaptation. Few treatments have attained the success of William Gillette's Sherlock Holmes, produced by Charles Frohman on 6 November 1899 at the Garrick Theatre with Gillette himself as leading man. The adaptation conformed to the melodramatic techniques of 19th-century theatre as it focused on Holmes's attempt to aid Alice Faulkner, a young woman in possession of the letters of her late sister, who died brokenhearted as a result of being jilted by a member of the royal family. Bent on avenging her sister, Alice is caught between attempts by the royals to save face and the unscrupulous Jim and Madge Larrabee, con artists who hope to secure the letters to demand a huge ransom from the royal family. Behind the Larrabee plot is the evil genius of crime, Dr. Moriarty, who is determined to outsmart Holmes. The resilient Holmes not only defeats the criminals, but restores the letters to Alice, with whom he has fallen in love. Sherlock Holmes won huge audiences, running for 256 performances in its original production, and Gillette spent much of his career playing the role in various tours and in a New York revival as late as 1931 and on radio. Other actors have assayed Gillette's role, particularly John Wood in a Royal Shakespeare Company revival in 1974 and Frank Langella* in a Williamstown Theatre Festival* production filmed for television* in 1981. Despite the fact that numerous other stage and screen versions of the Holmes tales have been popular, the troubled, erudite Holmes is forever associated with Gillette.