Did anyone read It!

Apparently when a doll house was made for Queen Mary, started in 1920, that contained a new Sherlock Holmes story written by ACD.
Did anyone read it?

Somewhere in this little library is there an unknown Sherlock Holmes story?

Some nice photos.


And yes it has been read.

And just to cap things off. . . . .

The bowler, not the cowboy hat or sombrero, was the most popular hat in the American West, prompting Lucius Beebe to call it "the hat that won the West".^[

Source

Who would have thought. . . .

John Wayne was fond of literature, his favorite authors being Charles Dickens, Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie. His favorite books were David Copperfield, and Conan Doyle's historical novels The White Company and Sir Nigel.

Under "I did not know this. . . "

"(Orson) Welles's first radio performance was on the Todd station, an adaptation of Sherlock Holmes that he also wrote."

SDofSH - "Here's a story, of a lovely lady. . . ."

While known, now, mostly for being Mrs. Brady, Florence Henderson was also a wonderful singer.

Florence Henderson 1934-2016

Starred in 1970's 'Song of Norway'

Which also featured the wonderful Robert Morley (1908-1992)

Who, as we know, played Mycroft in 1965's 'A Study in Terror'

So, there you have it, there you are.

Seven Degrees of Sherlock Holmes - the Man from Uncle edition - Robert Vaughn

With the death of the last of the Magnificent Seven (1960), Robert Vaughn was best known for his time as an international spy in The Man from Uncle. For those of us in the 60's not mature enough for Bond, this was a great show.

Robert Vaughn 1932 - 2016

He had a very (very) small role in The Ten Commandments (1956)

Which we all know starred Charlton Heston who was in many Sherlock Holmes stories.

Charlton Heston (1923-2008)

Heston was Sherlock Holmes in stage and in film in The Crucifer of Blood.

Howard, thanks for the additional info.

Robert Vaughn at least once played Holmes on The Hollywood Palace.

Vaughn was Holmes, Phyllis Diller was Moriarty and Charlie Manna played Watson.

Bringing Robert, as Howard suggests, within One Degree of Sherlock Holmes.

Seven Degrees of Sherlock Holmes - George Kennedy

George Kennedy was one of myall time favorite character actors.
He past away last month, and this SDoSh is for him.

George Kennedy (1925-2016)

was in 1973's 'Lost Horizon' 

which also featured the late great Sir John Gielgud (1904-2000)

who, as we have already shown, was in 1978's 'Murder By Decree'

So, there you have it, there you are.

Happy St. Parrick's day!

Arthur Conan Doyle’s Irish Mystery

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By Tom Deignan, Contributor
December / January 2013

As Sherlock Holmes fans celebrate the 125th anniversary of the novel in which Arthur Conan Doyle introduced his famous sleuth, Tom Deignan investigates the author’s Irish roots.

The two recent Sherlock Holmes movies starring Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law have earned well over one billion dollars worldwide, so it’s no surprise that screenwriters are currently toiling away at another installment of the lucrative franchise. Current Hollywood buzz has it that filming of the third Sherlock Holmes flick will begin sometime next year, with the movie in theaters possibly by Christmas 2014.

Sherlock Holmes — who celebrates his 125th birthday this year — shows no signs of slowing down. Author Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous creation, who first appeared in the 1887 murder mystery novel A Study in Scarlet, has had a long life in books and on radio, in television and stage adaptations, and in the movies.

Generations of Sherlock Holmes fans have watched the sleuth, alongside his trusty sidekick Dr. Watson, wield his trademark magnifying glass in order to navigate fog-shrouded British streets, debating theories in plummy accents. The most iconic Holmes, perhaps, is Basil Rathbone, who played the great detective in over a dozen films, and even Robert Downey, Jr.  earned raves for his British accent.

Though he never really went out of style, Doyle is currently enjoying a renaissance. In addition to the film franchise, consulting detective Holmes is also the subject of two hit television series that give Doyle’s stories a contemporary spin: In Britain, the BBC mini-series Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, and in the U.S., the new CBS show Elementary, featuring Johnny Lee Miller, Lisa Liu, and Aidan Quinn.

Exploring Irish History
Given Sherlock Holmes’ undeniable British pedigree, it may come as a surprise to some that his creator actually comes from a strong Irish Catholic background. Indeed, both the Conan and Doyle families — not to mention the Foleys, on the great writer’s mother’s side — all hail from Dublin. One of Arthur’s uncles, Henry Doyle, was a prominent artist who went on to serve as director of the National Gallery of Ireland.

As for Arthur Conan Doyle himself, though best known for creating Sherlock Holmes, he also wrote many stories that explore Irish themes and characters. Perhaps most interesting to Irish Americans is the fourth and final Sherlock Homes novel, The Valley of Fear (1915), which may have been inspired by two notable episodes in Irish history — the rise of the Molly Maguires, the secret organization that sought to improve labor conditions in Pennsylvania in the 1870s, and the Phoenix Park murders in Dublin in May of 1882. (Lord Frederick Cavendish, the newly appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Thomas Henry Burke, the Permanent Undersecretary, were fatally stabbed by members of the Irish National Invincibles.)

More broadly, Doyle (1859 – 1930) was alive to witness some of the most tumultuous years of Irish political history, from the post-Famine years to the Easter Rising to the Irish Civil War.

Doyle actively followed the so-called “Irish question” and corresponded with prominent Irish nationalists such as Erskine Childers and Roger Casement.

However, from his fiction to his political positions, Doyle was complicated. For example, despite his strong Irish roots, he once defended British policy in Ireland. So it is fitting that the greatest mystery writer of them all has created quite a mystery about his own past: Precisely how did Arthur Conan Doyle’s Irish background influence his writing?

A Dublin Family
John Doyle (Arthur’s grandfather) was born in Dublin in 1797, into a devoutly Catholic family with an artistic bent. John, who was already showcasing his work at 17, married fellow Dubliner Marianne Conan, a daughter of a tailor, in 1820. Two years later they sought a new life in London, where they soon had three children while John was struggling to succeed as a painter.

After changing his artistic style, John Doyle eventually found success as a political cartoonist. The children kept on coming, as the family moved to the more affluent neighborhood of Hyde Park. They lived in a home where party guests included Benjamin Disraeli and Charles Dickens.

John and Marianne gave birth to Arthur Conan Doyle’s father, Charles, in 1832.

The great writer’s mother, meanwhile, was born in Dublin. The daughter of a doctor who died young, Mary Foley moved to Edinburgh, Scotland, where her mother  established a boardinghouse. Charles also had moved to Scotland as a young man. Mary Foley and Charles Doyle married in 1855 and settled in Edinburgh.

Doyle himself acknowledged his strong Irish roots in his 1924 autobiography Memories and Adventures. “I, an Irishman by extraction, was born in the Scottish capital,” Doyle wrote.

Of his parents, he said: “Two separate lines of Irish wanderers came together under one roof.”

A Visit to Waterford
Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born on May 22, 1859. He was baptized at St. Mary’s Cathedral and received a Jesuit education into his teenage years, before studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh.

Doyle was only 20 years old when he published his first story in a Scottish journal. As early as 1881, Doyle spent time with family in Ireland, visiting Waterford during a time of agrarian unrest that came to be called “The Land War.” Doyle wrote of his time in Ireland in an essay (with photographs) called “To the Waterford Coast and Along It.”

In 1885, Doyle married Louisa Hawkins, and the couple went to Ireland for their honeymoon. Throughout the 1880s, however, Doyle struggled as both a writer and doctor. Patients were not exactly knocking down the door of his practice, and publishers and journals rejected many of Doyle’s manuscripts. One magazine that finally agreed to publish a new work by Arthur Conan Doyle was Beeton’s Christmas Annual. The November 1887 edition of that magazine contained a story called “A Study in Scarlet.” Critics in The Scotsman and Glasgow Herald newspapers liked the story. Little did they know that the history of literature was about to change.

Sherlock — and Support for Irish Home Rule?
“A Study in Scarlet” was the first story to feature a detective named Sherlock Holmes and his sidekick Dr. Watson. Doyle eventually achieved widespread popularity, with Holmes starring in three subsequent novels: The Sign of the Four (1890), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902) and The Valley of Fear (1915).

But just as he was more or less creating the modern detective novel, Doyle was also exploring Irish themes in stories such as “That Little Square Box,” “The Heiress of Glenmahowley,” “Touch and Go: A Midshipman’s Story,” and “The Green Flag.”

“These stories are testimonies to Doyle’s keen and sympathetic interest in Irish political grievances,” writes Catherine Wynne, author of the scholarly text The Colonial Conan Doyle.

And yet, despite his roots and his visits to Ireland, the now-successful Arthur Conan Doyle opposed Irish Home Rule in the early 1900s.

“I was what was called a Liberal-Unionist, that is, a man whose general position was Liberal, but who could not see his way to support Gladstone’s Irish Policy,” Doyle himself wrote in his memoirs, referring to the British prime minister who supported Home Rule for Ireland.

The famous writer’s attitude changed in the coming decade. In February 1912 he wrote a letter to Roger Casement stating: “Yes, I feel strongly for Ireland and hope I may strike some blow in that cause.”

On the other hand, Doyle felt compelled to add: “I see the British point of view very clearly, also. However, from both points of view, I am convinced that Home Rule is the solution.”

Scholars such as Catherine Wynne believe Doyle never quite resolved the tensions he felt about Ireland. On the one hand he saw himself as an Irishman, visited Ireland and followed the political situation there. But he was also a successful writer who shied away from more radical political ideas. Wynne believes this conflict manifested itself in Doyle’s writing, leading him to follow the tradition of Gothic Irish literature, a genre perhaps best exemplified by the Dublin-born writer Bram Stroker, the author of Dracula.

Doyle and Ireland
Doyle’s “preoccupations with colonialism are demonstrated in recurring obsessions with land, mind, racial identity and sexuality,” Wynne writes. “The Gothic is an important mode within the colonial context because… it gives a voice to those who are without power and are disenfranchised.”

Doyle’s complex take on Irish matters is perhaps most evident in the final Sherlock Holmes novel, Valley of Fear.

Part of the novel takes place in 1875, and features a meeting on a train during which two passengers (one carrying a gun) identify themselves as members of a secret society most critics believe was based on the Molly Maguires.

Doyle was said to be fascinated by James McParland, the detective who infiltrated the Molly Maguires. He met with William Pinkerton – head of the private detective agency that McParland worked for – and many speculate that hearing the Molly Maguires story from Pinkerton inspired Doyle to write Valley of Fear and to base the detective character on McParland, who was born in Armagh.

One of the key characters in Valley of Fear is lost at sea. However, Sherlock Holmes fears he was in fact executed and thrown overboard. This echoes the death of James Carey, who informed on his fellow comrades in the Irish National Invincibles, the group that perpetrated the murders in Phoenix Park. Carey was shot dead on board a ship by Donegal man Patrick O’Donnell, an Irish revolutionary who likely had relatives who belonged to – you guessed it – the Molly Maguires. O’Donnell may even have visited Pennsylvania as part of his search for the informant who exposed the Phoenix Park assassins.

In the end, Arthur Conan Doyle’s relationship with Ireland may have been complicated, but it was most certainly intimate. In fact, if Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law stay at this long enough, it’s more than likely that they will someday be in a scene featuring an Irish-American coal miner with a gun on a train.

Source

Do you agree?

Sherlock Holmes; The Ten Greatest Watsons.

From a long time ago, but still fun . . . .

When Steven Spielberg Went in Pursuit of Young Sherlock Holmes, He Nabbed An Unlikely Suspect

By John Stark

His face is a mystery, more haunting than pretty. Pale skin. Deep-set eyes. A nose that rivals Ichabod Crane's. This is not the kind of face that movie careers are traditionally built on. But this is the face that Steven Spielberg selected after a three-month search for an actor to play the title role in Young Sherlock Holmes. Some critics think the reason Nicholas Rowe won the part over several thousand other hopefuls is—well, elementary, my dear Watson. The 19 year old, they say, looks like Spielberg, who produced the reported $18 million film, directed by Barry (Diner, The Natural) Levinson. "I have never had anyone tell me I look like Spielberg before," says Rowe. "All of a sudden I hear this and I don't know what to think. I don't think I look like him at all. I'm 6'4". [Spielberg is about 5'10".] I'm English and he's Jewish. It's silly. As far as I know, Spielberg doesn't like his looks much anyway." Rowe is less self-critical. "I don't think of myself as a pretty boy like Matt Dillon or Rupert Everett. But I think I'm not unattractive to look at. I don't mind the way I look, I mean." 

Blame it on his upper-crust British accent. Or the way he takes a sip of his room-service tea before announcing, "It's drinkable." But Rowe, with his penetrating, deep blue eyes, seems mature beyond his years. For someone who's achieved a major break so fast, he's remarkably low-key. "Do you find me boring?" he asks, pushing his long, light brown hair out of his face. "I think that we Brits have this rather snooty image. But we are not like that through and through." Looking from his hotel window at the shops along Beverly Hills' Rodeo Drive, Rowe pronounces his own verdict on fake friendliness. "When you go into those stores people say, 'Hi, I'm Pat and I'll be serving you.' Europeans tend to view Americans as a friendly lot. But I just feel they're rather phony. Nice, friendly, but phony all the same." 

An only child, Rowe was born in Edinburgh, where his father, Andrew, edited a business journal. His mother, Alison, was a singer with the Edinburgh Choir. "I never really needed anything," Rowe says. "Everything was provided." When Nicholas was 7, his parents separated, he was shipped off to boarding school, and his sugar-glazed world fell apart. "I was really shocked," he recalls. "It seemed to happen so suddenly. It's still a subject I avoid talking about." 

Until he moved into his own flat in January, Nicholas shared digs in London with his father, who, like his mother, has remarried. Two years ago Andrew Rowe gave up his job publishing a small London newspaper and ran successfully for Parliament. "I really admire Dad because he's a Tory Wet," Nicholas says. "He's not opposed to Prime Minister Thatcher, but he's not a sycophant to her, either." 

As for dating, Rowe says, "I haven't had time to get serious with anyone. I am not, to be perfectly honest, in love. Sometimes I would really love to have somebody to just hold or whatever. I really do have the urge to spend time with someone special." Right now, he says, "Most of my close friends are girls. I don't know why. Girls have a certain kind of sympathy. A sense of understanding that a lot of boys don't." 

Even though he completed prestigious Eton in 1984, Rowe doesn't rub it in. "I'm not one of those good old boys who had great-grandfathers who went to Eton," he says. "It was just my father who went. He put my name on the list when I was born so I'd be assured a place." Although Rowe excelled in languages, studying Spanish and French, he admits, "I was very much at the lower end of the academic scale." 

It was Rowe's drama master who told the lad that Hollywood casting agents were coming on campus looking for a "proper young gentleman." Rowe, who had a bit part in the 1983 British film Another Country, tested for the role of young Holmes. "It was the worst experience," he says. "When I went into my dressing room to put on my Holmes outfit, in came this other guy dressed just like me. Real live Hollywood competition!" Reading with Rowe and the other finalist was Alan Cox, then 14, who had already been cast as young Watson, Holmes' pudgy sidekick. "I felt comfortable with Nick, there seemed a chemistry between the two characters," says Cox, who may have helped Rowe get hired. "I told the casting people, 'I like the tall guy with the big nose better,' " he says. Rowe's screen test was then sent to Spielberg. When his agent called in January, Rowe asked, "Did I get the role?" The reply: "Brilliant deduction, young Mr. Holmes." 

Young Mr. Rowe's next step will be off the beaten path. "It is socially correct to earn a college degree," he says. "But I would find it emotionally and mentally difficult to spend four years in a tough university. I was accepted at Bristol but am not going to attend. After Eton, most graduates go on to college after a year of traveling. It is a tradition. One I intend to break. Rather, I plan to go on with acting until people don't want me anymore. I'm excited about the challenges that, I hope, lie ahead." Putting all the clues together, Rowe could very well be headed for stardom. Never mind his lanky build and un-movie-star looks. As any Sherlock Holmes fan knows, never, never suspect the obvious. 

Source

As if Sherlock Holmes wasn't enough . . . . .

In 1922, Conan Doyle showed O'Brien's test reel to a meeting of the Society of American Magicians, which included Harry Houdini. The astounded audience watched footage of a Triceratops family, an attack by an Allosaurusand some Stegosaurus footage. Doyle refused to discuss the film's origins. On the next day, the New York Times ran a front page article about it, saying "(Conan Doyle's) monsters of the ancient world, or of the new world which he has discovered in the ether, were extraordinarily lifelike. If fakes, they were masterpieces".^[5]

In April 1925, on a London-Paris flight by Imperial Airways, The Lost World became the first film to be shown to airline passengers.^[6] As film stock of the era was nitrate and highly flammable, this was a risky undertaking on a wood and fabric-hulled plane, a converted WW1 bomber, the Handley-Page O 400.

This is the first dinosaur-oriented film hit, and it led to other dinosaur films, from King Kong to the Jurassic Park trilogy.
Writer Doyle, also the creator of Sherlock Holmes, appears in a frontispiece to the film, absent from some extant prints.

 In 1998, the film was deemed "culturally, historically or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

School has started, take a test.

Quiz here.

I did not know this!

"Films on the list (Times All-Time 100 Movies) span a period of 80 years starting with Sherlock, Jr. (1924) directed by Buster Keaton, and finishing with Finding Nemo (2003) directed by Andrew Stanton."

Seven Degrees of Sherlock Holmes #60 - (It has been a while) Petula Clark

I love old British War movies. The ones made during or around the time of WW2.
My father served in the RAF. I had aunts and uncles who served in various capacities during the war, from ATA to North Africa. From Burma to a POW in Germany.
So that may explain my fascination with the films.
Two of my many favorites are; 'Medal for the General' and 'I know where I'm going'.
And to my surprise when I first learned of it a young actress by the name of Petula Clark appeared in both.
I think for most of my generation Petula Clark was known more as the singer who had a hit with 'Downton' in the early 60's. A song that was the beginning of a renewed career for her.

But Petula had a very big career starting in the early 1940's.
This from Wikipedia; In October 1942 nine-year-old Clark made her radio debut while attending a BBC broadcast with her father. She was there trying to send a message to an uncle stationed overseas, but the broadcast was delayed by an air raid. During the bombing, the producer requested that someone perform to settle the jittery theatre audience, and she volunteered a rendering of "Mighty Lak' a Rose" to an enthusiastic response. She then repeated her performance for the broadcast audience, launching a series of some 500 appearances in programmes designed to entertain the troops.^[5] In addition to radio work, Clark frequently toured the United Kingdom with fellow child performer Julie Andrews. Nicknamed the "Singing Sweetheart", she performed for George VI, Winston Churchill and Bernard Montgomery. Clark also became known as "Britain's Shirley Temple"^[6] and was considered a mascot by the British Army, whose troops plastered her photos on their tanks for good luck as they advanced into battle.

So, with no further ado. . .

Petula Clark - 1932

took part in the 1951 film 'White Corridors'

which also featured James Donald (1917-1993) (who could probably have a million Sherlockian connections of his own as many wonderful movies he has been in.)

took part in the movie 'Beau Brummell' 1954

which also featured the wonderfully recognizable Robert Morley (1908-1992)

who, as we should know, played Mycroft Holmes in 1965's 'A Study in Terror'

One fascinating thing about some of the these old films is to see how many movies these actors would sometimes appear together in.

This is not the only Sherlockian connection for Petula Clark, but was the first one I followed to the end.

So, there you have it, there you are.

I wonder. . .

TWIS - "At the foot of the stairs, however, she met this Lascar scoundrel of whom I have spoken, who thrust her back. . ."

Have you ever wondered what or whom a Lascar is?

Lascar found here.

A wonderful piece on Rathbone and Flynn sword fights.

Flynn & Rathbone – the perfect duelists

Read almost any study of the Golden Age of movies and sooner or later you will probably come up against a reference to the “classic pairing” of Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone as swashbuckling duellists. They are the go-to names and imagery for the genre. When you want to illustrate a classic swordfight – you use a still from THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD. In the collective consciousness these two fought each other through countless rounds in countless films. Rathbone and Flynn, Flynn and Rathbone locking swords, throwing giant shadows across our memory as they parry and thrust and leap in an eternal, immortal showdown.

So, in how many movies did they duel each other? Ten? Seven? Five?

No, actually it was two.

I will let you read the rest at the source;

And another good piece here;

Two Holmes' in one movie!

A lot of times when watching older movies I will read the list of co-starring actors and see if any of those listed became famous in other roles. My wife hates that I then tell her these little bits of trivia. (But then again my wife hates the bagpipes.) She is also trying to get my daughter to hate that I do that. My daughter is holding out.

But I digress.

While watching the Rathbone/Bruce film, "Dressed to Kill" (1946) I noticed the name Holmes Herbert. (1882-1956).
An English born actor who never made a film in his home country, but played a supporting role in many American made films with notable English Actors. And as you can see from the list, he was in several films with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce.

The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes as well as Dressed to Kill. And The Pearl of Death. (And the list goes on with other of the Holmes movies and other Rathbone films. Holmes Herbert IMDb).

A couple of years ago, one of the hosts of the Academy Awards, got in a little trouble for commenting on the fact that at that time it seemed Jude Law was in just about everything that came out that year.
If you look back at some of these old character actors, the same would seem to be the case.

We can not however blame his mother for choosing the name because she loved the works of Doyle. He was born before STUD.

But it just goes to show you can never have too many Holmes'.
Right Brad?

Kinda going with the previous post. . . Nine of London's oldest restaurants

Nine of London's oldest restaurants

Link

I did not know this!

• General Motors Theatre presented a live telecast of Billy Budd in 1955, starring a young William Shatner as Billy Budd, with Douglas Campbell as Claggart, and Basil Rathbone as Captain Vere. Britten's "Four Sea Interludes" was included as background music.
• 
  

Holmes and Stapleton together again!

Cheat Sheet.. . . .