The top 10 list of Sherlock Holmes influencers
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Which ten persons – apart from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself – have had the biggest influence on the 125 years of Sherlock Holmes? Persons whose decisions – positive or negative – and deeds have changed the future of the detective.
The order is just approximately chronological. And this is of course my personal list. Please comment – or why not write a blog post – if you are of another opinion.
1. William Gillette. It can’t be underestimated what he did for the future of Sherlock Holmes. In a time when the detective actually had ceased to exist (because of that Reichenbach incident), he spread the word of Sherlock Holmes in the US and his 1899 play “Sherlock Holmes” went on to be a success in many of the European countries. He was also the one who made Moriarty into a really known supervillain and not just a character in one single short story. And when the Royal Shakespeare Company played Gillette’s “Sherlock Holmes” in 1974, it was the start of a new Holmes boom.
2. Ronald Knox. His 1911 essay “Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes” started the world of Sherlockiana. He didn’t mean to do exactly that, he just wanted to do a satirical attack on the higher criticism of the Bible. Which is also the reason why Sherlockians e.g. use the word “Canon” when they talk about Conan Doyle’s Holmes stories.
3. Christopher Morley. When he founded The Baker Street Irregulars in 1934, he formed the base for worldwide continued interest in Sherlock Holmes. Thanks to the many Sherlockian societies, people have had a chance to get together with a common interest, which among other things has stimulated the writing of a lot of books, both non-fiction and fiction. There had certainly been literary societies, but they had probably been concentrated on Conan Doyle, since such societies normally circle around the author.
4. Basil Rathbone. It wasn’t Basil Rathbone’s decision to make the films in which he plays Sherlock Holmes, and maybe another actor could have played the detective. But the way Rathbone played Holmes made the detective even more an icon, for many years to come. From the ’40s to the mid ’80s this was what Sherlock Holmes looked like. And sounded – we should not forget all the radio plays!
5. Adrian Conan Doyle & Denis Conan Doyle. Okay, I know they are two persons, but they together represent an era, when they ruled – or at least tried to rule – over everything Sherlockian. They made life difficult for pastiche writers and they decided who was to make Sherlock Holmes films and such. In their decisions they of course made many good things, but in guarding the copyright (and their own fortunes) they stopped a lot of interesting Sherlock Holmes projects.
6. Princess Nina Mdivani Conan Doyle Harwood. The widow of Denis Conan Doyle. She really messed things up in the ’70s. I don’t know about all the legal things, but the copyright issues regarding the Sherlock Holmes stories became very complicated because of all her affairs. And regarding “princess” – well, she wasn’t really one, but that’s another story…
7. Dame Jean Conan Doyle. After Adrian Conan Doyle’s death in 1970, she was the only surviving child of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Her feelings towards the pastiches and film/tv productions were much warmer than the ones expressed by her brothers – even if she absolutely had opinions about certain books. She died in 1997. As Christopher Redmond put it in a tweet to me: She re-established a “Doyle estate” with some copyright control; encouraged the growth of ACD studies.
8. Nicholas Meyer. His 1974 book “The Seven-Per-Cent Solution” started the Sherlock Holmes pastiche boom – and he sold two million copies. His pastiche style was a new one – he was the one who started the tradition with an “editor” (i.e. the author himself) finding an old Watson manuscript. And he was also one of the first who let Holmes meet famous persons of the late 19th century and early 20th century.
9. Michael Cox & Jeremy Brett. The Granada tv series about Sherlock Holmes was of course a team effort, and there were many more important persons in the production. But in the centre were the producer Michael Cox and the actor Jeremy Brett. And it’s impossible to separate Cox and Brett at this top 10 list. As Trevor Hancock wrote in a tweet to me: Brett was the heart, Cox the brain.
10. Steven Moffat & Mark Gatiss. Of course Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman are important – and absolutely essential – for the success of the BBC series “Sherlock”, but never before has the persons behind a Sherlock Holmes production been so much in focus. Which they absolutely deserve! They have reinvented the detective. Thanks to “Sherlock” there is a huge new interest in Sherlock Holmes, maybe bigger than ever before.
And 10 runners-up
Dr. Joseph Bell (the model for Holmes), Herbert Greenhough Smith (editor at The Strand Magazine), Sidney Paget (British illustrator), Frederic Dorr Steele (American illustrator), P. G. Wodehouse (invented in 1915 the expression “Elementary, my dear Watson!”), Vincent Starrett (author of “The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes” and one of the first real Sherlockians), Edgar W. Smith (key Sherlockian in BSI), Sheldon Reynolds(producer of influential TV series in the ’50s), William S. Baring-Gould (author of “Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street” and editor of “The Annotated Sherlock Holmes”), John Bennett Shaw (the world’s greatest Sherlock Holmes collector and one of the most famous Sherlockians).
Thanks to Christopher Redmond, Vincent W. Wright, Lasse Lohse, Kathryn Davies, Trevor Hancock and Per Olaisen for great input on Twitter and Facebook when I prepared for this blog post! Especially Christopher has suggested many of the names for the runners-up – and how to squeeze 13 persons into the top 10 list…
(The photos in this blog post are unfortunately used without permission… Please, let me know if you want me to remove any of them.)
