Profile: BSI

"Call Huggins and have him organise the Irregulars! The game's afoot...!"

Real life has a way of distracting me from my projects. I have thank everyone for their patience. I know I've been talking for months (or years) about updating my website, "The Great Mouse Detective: Disney's Underappreciated 26th Animated Film." I am not only updating the site, but completely re-formatting it. Something like this takes a lot of time and planning and writing and organising.

This is a screen-capture of the Baker Street Irregulars' brand-new profile from the "Pastiches" section. I have no images to add to this because I have to draw something completely new that has all seven characters, cleaned up, and coloured. Arghhh, I need a damn proofreader, too! Is anyone interested?

You can see what the Irregulars look like HERE

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Each Irregular is named after a famous Sherlock Holmes actor:

British veteran "becomer" actor, Jeremy Brett (born Huggins, 1933-1995) is best known for his sniggering, lovesick, and drop-dead gorgeous Freddie Eynsford-Hill in the 1964 smash, My Fair Lady, as he portrayed Sherlock Holmes for Granada Television in five features, thirty-six episodes, a rare charity short, and a lost short in a span of ten years. All around the world, Brett is argued one of the best, if not the best Holmes, in creation, challenging only by Basil Rathbone himself. His Holmes was dark-hued portrayal that is cantankerous, affected, whimsical, flamboyant, rude, arrogant, tragic, infuriating, precipitous, eccentric, charming, intelligent, handsome, and so utterly human — and can only have been drawn from the deepest possible understanding of the text. No other Holmes has come close to Brett's portrayal of the brilliant, obsessed mind, teetering on the knife's edge, dividing madness and sheer genius. He was one of the few Holmeses that stayed as true as possible to the Sacred Writings; no other Holmes has been more successful at this than he. The author's daughter, Dame Jean Conan Doyle, told him that he was "the Sherlock Holmes of my childhood." After the death of his second wife, Brett suffered a breakdown and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder (manic depression), but the doctors prescribed medicine that conflicted with his weak heart. Jeremy Brett died in his sleep in 1995. For me, Mr. Brett is Holmes.

For several generations, Connecticut-born actor, playwright, director, and stage-manager William Gillette (1853-1937) was the image of Sherlock Holmes for millions of fans all over the world. Born in the era of melodrama, with its grand gestures and sonorous declamations, he created in his plays characters who talked and acted the way people talk and act in real life. Gillette wrote and starred in Sherlock Holmes - A Drama in Four Acts, which opened in 1899 in New York City, though he given Sir Arthur Conan Doyle co-credit for the play, he have little to with the writing. Despite adding an uncanonical, very Victorian-esque love interest, it was a smash and he took it to London in 1901 and would star as Sherlock Holmes for thirty-four years, playing him more than 1300 times before American and British audiences. It was Gillette who made the deerstalker cap a fixture to the sleuth's legend, by wearing it in his play, and was also responsible for the signature calabash (or meerschaum) pipe since is was easier to speak his lines with a curved pipe than a straight one. When Frederic Dorr Steele began illustrating the Holmes stories for Collier's Weekly in 1903, he immortalised Gillette as his model. Gillette played Holmes again in 1916 (lost) film and a 1930 radio-play (adapted by Orson Welles), which made him the first radio Sherlock Holmes in history. Tall, slender, and handsome, he was one of the world's premier actors and playwrights before and after the turn of the last century, a matinee idol of enormous appeal, and an imaginative genius who made some important contributions to the theater that are still in use today. He was a ladies' man, a train buff, and an eccentric inventor of locks. Gillette died in 1937 at the age of eighty-two and decreed, amusingly, in his will that his beloved Connecticut castle home would not be sold "to some blithering sap-head." He is one of my favourite "photographed" Holmeses and, like many Sherlockians; I wish I could have seen him in action! Unfortunately, his first and only film, Sherlock Holmes (1916), did not survive and has been lost through the ravages of time, however I was able to listen to a 1936 radio-short of his famous theatrical play, playing Holmes for the last time — Gillette died, due to a pulmonary haemorrhage, fifteen months later.

"The Gentleman of Horror" Peter Cushing (1913-1994) is perhaps one of the important figures in sci-fi and horror films, playing such immortal roles as the obsessive Dr. Frankenstein and the neurotic Dr. Van Helsing, in Hammer Film Productions for over twenty years. He also appeared in films for the other major horror producer of the time, Amicus Productions, including Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965) and its later horror anthologies, as well as a couple of Dr. Who features during the mid-1960s, but is perhaps his best-known, outside of horror films, as Grand Moff Tarkin in George Lucas' phenomenal sci-fi film, Star Wars (1977). Cushing portrayed Sherlock Holmes thrice in his long, versatile career: The Hammer Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), the televised The Masks of Death (1984), and the several episodes for the BBC Sherlock Holmes in 1968 after Douglas Wilmer left the series. Though some Sherlockians argue that Cushing was miscast as Holmes, often saying he was too short for the part, nevertheless Cushing was an exemplary Holmes, resonating incredible intelligence, twitching mania, resourcefulness, reasonable arrogance, edginess, and inner quest for perfection, with a habit of pointing a index finger up to the ceiling when he's trying to make a point. Bringing both the right intellectual air and the coiled spring of physical intensity, the "definitive" Holmes of the 1960s was restless, slightly uptight, pessimistically optimistic, and extremely playful; there isn't a scene where he wasn't playing with a prop or pointing a quick, arched finger to the sky. And there's nothing better than a Holmes who loves muffins! After Star Wars, he continued appearing in films and television sporadically, as his health allowed; the great Cushing died in Canterbury hospice, due to prostate cancer, at the age of eighty-one — a week before the premiere of Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror (1994), which he co-narrated with his dear friend and fellow Holmes actor, Christopher Lee. (Ironically, Peter Cushing had a severe case of musophobia — a fear of rodents!)

Anthony Edward Brett would become "the first great movie Holmes," although he would achieve this title under the name, Eille Norwood (1861-1948). Norwood was primarily a stage-actor in England when he landed the role that would make him famous throughout the world. In 1921, a British film company named Stoll decided to film a series of shorts based on Conan Doyle's stories. For the next two years, they would produce forty-five of the twenty-minute films, along with two longer ones. Conan Doyle's short stories fit the twenty-minute length quite well. Norwood, at the age of fifty-nine, played a brilliant, cerebral detective that was confident, quick, dramatic, peculiar, lonely, and acutely sensitive, which is not an easy task in silent atmosphere. Conan Doyle, himself, loved the films and was impressed by Norwood appearance, which resembled his idea of Holmes; however, the fact that they "modernised" Holmes to the 1920s did bothered the creator, introducing telephones, motor cars, and luxuries of which the Victorian Holmes would have never dreamed of. Conan Doyle presented him with a loud, eye-piercing Turkish-rug patterned dressing-gown as a gift, which the actor wore on camera several times. Norwood had an extreme talent for disguises and, with makeup and wigs; he could completely transform himself and be unrecognisable. With forty-seven films under his belt, Eille Norwood holds the record for the most appearances as Holmes than any other actor, but did not stop there. It came to no surprise that he took the title role in a new stage play, written by J.E. Harold Terry and Arthur Rose, called The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Sadly, very few of Norwood's films have survived the brutal ravages of time, which is true of so many silent films and much of his legacy died with it. Nevertheless, I am very honoured to have seen a few of the amazing Stoll reels. He is ranked as one of the greatest Holmeses — and I profusely agreed.

There are more Sherlock Holmes stories not written by Conan Doyle; some are quite bad but every now and then a good one comes along! Nicholas Rowe (1966-    ) played one of the more unique Holmeses in Steven Spielberg's 1985 film, Young Sherlock Holmes, or the more fittingly titled Young Sherlock Holmes and the Pyramid of Doom, merging fantasy film, classic literature, and old-fashioned British melodrama in one summer blockbuster that, lamentably, flopped. Holmes is a snooty, witty, and charming University of London undergraduate that chases after suspicious Egyptian cultists. This movie explained Holmes' aloofness to women, losing his first and only love, and his deep bitterness towards Professor Moriarty. At the time, Nicholas Rowe was a student in the prestigious Eton College when this son of a Member of Parliament got the call to be allowed to read the script. Tall, thin, uncharacteristically romantic, and exquisitely more beautiful than handsome, he was eye-candy for hordes of histrionic, young teenage girls! (Today, he has quite a cult fan following.) The story, of course, was obviously "un-Doylean," but upon reflection, it's an entertaining, if unbelievable, film. Of course, specials thanks Industrial Light and Magic, Young Sherlock Holmes holds the record for being the first live-action feature film to have a complete CGI (computer graphics image) character — the knight coming out of the stained glass window. Also note, Nicholas Rowe had better looks, better acting, and certainly a better story than Guy Henry's horrible 1982 eight-part mini-series, Young Sherlock: The Mystery of the Manor House. Mr. Rowe is presently working in market research and has worked sporadically in films ever since.

Though I am cheating by a technicality by adding this comedic actor into the Irregulars, since he does not play "Sherlock Holmes," per se. The "Great Stone Face" Buster Keaton (1895-1966), instead, portrayed the hapless title character of Sherlock, Jr. (1924). And yet it's almost impossible to describe the astounding creativity of this masterpiece; Hollywood had never seen anything like it before and, even today, after ninety years, people still ask, "How'd he do that?!" Sherlock, Jr. is one of his most famous of Keaton's comedies, which he acted, choreographed, stunted, and directed entirely himself. This spectacular Keaton feature had special effects never attempted before and stunts never attempted before either. In the film, Keaton is working in a local moving-picture theatre as a projectionist where, after his work hours, he goes to visit his girlfriend, but is embarrassed by his rival. Shortly after falling asleep in the projection room, Buster leaps into the movie and, with his skilled cinematographer, Elgin Lessley, the silent screen's comic-genius made one of the greatest films of all time. One of my favourite scenes is the explosive #13 ball in which the detective miraculously "missed" in the solo pool game. (He broke is neck in one of the stunts in this film, where Keaton runs on top of a moving train and grabs the chain of a water spout and couple of hundred pounds of water fell on top of him and fell on the metal railroad track. Filming had to stop that day due to a headache, but continued the next day. Keaton never knew he broke his neck until years later, after a routine check-up.)

Of the many incarnations of Sherlock Holmes on film and television, surely the most curious and intriguing is the Russian television series, featuring Vasili Livanov (1935-    ) as the Great Detective. The son of Boris Livanov, an eminent actor of the Moscow Art Theatre and probably the most acclaimed stage-actor of his generation, Vasili Livanov achieved cult stardom as a voice-actor of a number of Soviet cartoons, such as Bremenskie muzykanty (1969) and Krokodil Gena (1971). Vasili Livanov was shot to international fame during the 1980s, when he was starring as Sherlock Holmes in the surprisingly popular Russian TV series by director Igor Maslennikov (who has an uncanny likeness to Conan Doyle), consisting of five serials broken into eleven episodes. It must have been a difficult task to create Victorian London in Russia, but the producers have done an exemplary job of it with first-rate costuming and elaborate sets. The series has an edgy atmosphere of grotesque Gothicism, begetting an exotic, if oppressive, air of Eastern Europeanism. His Holmes was larger-than-life, but mortal, man who would sit as still as a statute and suddenly contrast by bursting out in both humour and hyperactivity. His Holmes was a refined, intellect, witty, endearing, approachable, and sensitive image of Holmes, with just the right balance of quirkiness and vulnerability. His laughter was contagious, as was his tears. He is among the most believable Holmeses ever portrayed. On April 2006, Livanov was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes. His statue, as Holmes, was unveiled in Moscow in April 2007, despite the fact the series was filmed closer to St. Petersburg.

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CLIPS:
     - Jeremy Brett: The opening of "Scandal in Bohemia"
     - Jeremy Brett: Meeting the Napoleon of Crime, Professor Moriarty, in "The Final Problem"
     - William Gillette: Holmes on Radio, part 1
     - William Gillette: Holmes on Radio, part 2
     - Peter Cushing: Holmes searches for clues in "Boscombe Valley Mystery"
     - Peter Cushing: Deductions of Henry Baker's hat from "The Blue Carbuncle"
     - Eille Norwood: Disguising himself
     - Nicholas Rowe: The historical first fully-animated CGI character on film in Young Sherlock Holmes
     - Nicholas Rowe: Holmes tracks down the cultist's hideout in Young Sherlock Holmes
     - Buster Keaton: Moments of Sherlock, Jr., includes the infamous neck-breaking (literally) stunt on the train and marvels of early film special effects as he "enters" the film
     - Vasili Livanov: Holmes returns from the "dead" in "Okhota na tigra"
     - Vasili Livanov: Holmes and Watson analyse Dr. Mortimer's walking stick in "Sobaka Baskerviley"

© Diane N. Tran.