Actor and playwright, born in Hartford, Connecticut, USA. Best known for his authoritative, striking presence in plays that he had himself adapted from other works, he made an extremely successful Sherlock Holmes in 1899, later performing the role in England, and frequently reviving it throughout his life. His original plays include two successful Civil War dramas, Held by the Enemy (1886) and Secret Service (1896).
William Hooker Gillette (b. July 24, 1853, Hartford, Connecticut;
Possibly best known in his day for embodying the celebrated character of Sherlock Holmes, created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Gillette imposed his cachet forever on the character's stereotype: deerstalker cap, cloak, curved pipe and the phrase: "Oh, this is elementary, my dear Watson."
Gillette also wrote, produced and performed a play entitled Sherlock Holmes (adapted from a version originally written by Conan Doyle).
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, such as fighting for the abolition of slavery, public education, temperance, and women's suffrage, and who constructed most of town's infrastructure. In the Gillette home, Gillette grew up with his three brothers and a sister.
As a student, Gillette specialized in oratory and engineering. Then Gillette briefly worked for a stock company in New Orleans. Gillette returned to New England, and on Mark Twain's own recommendation, debuted at the Globe Theater of Boston with Twain's stage-play 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.
Playwright, director and actor
In 1881, while performing at Cincinnati, Gillette was hired as playwright, director and actor, by Gustave and Daniel Frohman.
Ignoring his critics, Gillette instead strove to fill all the theater's seats.
Usually leaning toward cold roles enduring extreme situations, Gillette was also regarded as the "aristocrat of the stage" and an innovator in interpretation.
Indeed, 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 the common people.
In 1882 Gillette married Helen Nichols of Detroit.
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, William Gillette performed his play Secret Service at Adelphi Theater of London, with great success and was praised by the critics also.
Conan Doyle had finished his Sherlock Holmes saga with The Final Problem, published in 1893. After this publication Conan Doyle found himself in need of further income, as he was planning to build a new house. 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.
Conan Doyle offered the production to Henry Irving and Beerhom Tree.
Noting that Conan Doyle was hopeless and weighing that Gillette could do it, the literary agent A. There, Frohman suggested the prospect of an adaptation by Gillette. Doyle insisted on only one thing: there was to be no love interest in "Sherlock Holmes."
Gillette, who read the entire collection for first time then, liked the idea and started the piece's outlining in San Francisco, while touring with Secret Service still. On one occasion, Gillette referred by telegraph: "May I marry Holmes?" . Or anything you want."
Coins famous phrase
William Gillette's version consisted of 4 acts.
Different to the only-intellectual original, "a machine rather than a man", William Gillette portrayed Sherlock Holmes as brave and open to express his feelings. Gillette also introduced to Holmes' costume the cloak and the curved pipe, instead of the straight one, so Gillette, a great smoker also, could pronounce his lines. 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", one of Holmes' best known quotes.
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.
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. 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 destroyed. Gillette wrote the piece again nevertheless, in a month and by memory.
Traveling in 1899 to present it to Conan Doyle, they met in Ulster's train station. Gillette showed up disguised as Sherlock Holmes.
Holmes tour
After a pre-debut presentation streak starting October 1899 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. 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".
The company also toured nationally, along the western United States, from October 8, 1900, to March 30, 1901.
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.
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.
Worldwide fame
In his lifetime, Gillette presented Sherlock Holmes approximately 1,300 times (third in the historical stage-record), before American and English audiences.
Meanwhile, around the world, other productions took place, based on Gillette's Sherlock Holmes.
Even Gillette parodied Holmes once and, ironically, on this one occasion the critic praised the production. Gillette repeated the piece in London, while promoting his sentimental drama Clarice (September-October 1905). But, when the production of Clarice became a failure, Gillette replaced Clarice with Sherlock Holmes.
Models for Holmes' portrait
The magazines Collier's Weekly (USA) and The Strand (UK) pushed Conan Doyle avidly, offering to continue 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).
Gillette posed 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 with 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.
Gillette Castle
Gillette announced his retirement many times along his career, despite not actually accomplishing this until just before his death.
In 1912, while sailing the Connecticut river, Gillette spotted a hill, part of the Seven Sisters, over a ferry's pier in Hadlyme.
During the five years of construction, Gillette lived aboard the Aunt Polly or at a home he had purchased in Greenport, Long Island. The castle possessed 24 rooms and 47 doors, with puzzled hand-carved locks, which were also devised by Gillette.
The mansion was finished in 1919, at a cost of 1 million US dollars. Gillette called it Seven Sisters. Gillette also enjoyed strolls on his property in company of his guests, Albert Einstein among them.
The castle is preserved as part of Gillette Castle State Park.
Last years and farewell tour
Naturally, Sherlock Holmes was Gillette's foremost production with 1,300 performances (in 1905, 1906, 1910, 1915 and 1923).
In 1929, at the age of 66, Gillette started the farewell tour of Sherlock Holmes, in Springfield, Massachusetts.
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.
Gillette died on April 29, 1937, in Hartford, due to a pulmonary hemorrhage.
Trivia
Around June 1903, in one of the shadow companies touring UK, Charles Chaplin (12 years old) was hired to play Billy the pageboy. 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. 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 latter event now celebrates Sherlock Holmes's birthday, by Baker Street's fellows. Gillette's Sherlock Holmes was the first radio-drama transmitted in stereo in the UK, on November 15, 1958. Gillette had the same butler for 30 years, hired in 1890: Yukitaki Ozaki was a political refugee from Japan. Gillette improved Aunt Polly 's interior, maintaining it for years. Gillette was also fond of his motorcycle. Gillette supported Connecticut Governor Wilbur Cross, advising him on political strategies. Visiting Washington D.C., Gillette was invited to the White House. 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.Bibliography
In his life, Gillette wrote 13 original plays, 7 adaptations and some collaborations, encompassing farce, melodrama and novel adapting. Gillette's first play. First Gillette's drama in years of the American Civil War. Performed by Maurice Barrymore (Philadelphia) and William Gillette (Broadway). First Gillettes's starring role in a play by James M. Second Gillette's starring role in a play by James M. 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. 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. In 1922, Goldwyn Pictures filmed another version of Gillette's play. It was directed by Albert Parker and John Barrymore played Holmes.Radio
In October 20, 1930, Gillette performed the first radio-version of Holmes in history: The Adventure of the Speckled Band. It was an original theater version by Conan Doyle, re-adapted by Edith Meiser. In November 18, 1935, Gillette (80 years old) performed his own Sherlock Holmes in the WABC radio of New York, re-adapted by Edith Meiser; It was the pilot for a new Holme's series by Lux Radio Theater. New York Times said that Gillette was "still the best, with all his shades and improvisation".As novelist
William Gillette wrote two novels.
Legacy
Tryon, North Carolina
In 1890, after his first visiting of Tryon, North Carolina, Gillette built the first of his two residences there. Nowadays, in November, is celebrated the William Gillette Festival, around the still surviving house, with personal items on display and souvenir selling.
Tryon's Festival home (External Link)Gillette's Castle
After Gillette died, his will appointed to preclude for his castle any "blithering sap-head who has no conception of where he is or with what surrounded".
Located in 67 River Road, East Haddam, Connecticut, it was reopened in 2002.
Gillette´s Castle at Connecticut (External Link)
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