UCH of what the general public regards as the archetypal image of Sherlock Holmes is due to William Gillette, who personified Holmes for many years in his stage play (named, appropriately enough, “Sherlock Holmes”):

Possibly best known in his day for embodying the celebrated character of Sherlock Holmes, created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (with whom the actor also became a close personal friend), 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.” [Wikipedia]

I’ve always loved the posters I’ve seen for the production, but one in particular is a favourite — the one reproduced below.

I’ve never really found a good reproduction of this poster. The closest I’ve found, I’ve scanned from the wonderful book The Life & Times of Sherlock Holmes by Philip Weller with Christopher Rodin, and then cleaned it up quite a bit in Photoshop.

As a little thank-you to all the readers who have visited my modest site, and the dozens who are sending me so many fascinating materials and links, I thought I’d offer it as a small printable poster. Note that the graphic is not perfect, due mostly to the original source, but it’s significantly better than any other version I’ve seen yet. It should blow up to 8×10 inches without any significant deterioration in quality, and if you bring it to your local Kodak kiosk, you should be able to have it print off a beautiful glossy version worthy of framing. You may have to adjust the brightness and contrast at the machine, so be sure to preview it. (Note that this is intended for personal use only, not for commercial purposes.)

Download: Frohman_Gillette_Lyceum.jpg [1.1 Mb] — Right-click in your browser on the link, and click “Save file (or target) as…”.

If anyone is interested, I can provide a similar download for the other popular Gillette poster later.

N today’s mobile society, it’s becoming far easier –and perhaps even more desirous– to bring Holmes with you in forms other than those derived from dead trees (as much a fan of dead trees as I am). We’ve already seen here how Old Time Radio shows can be snapped onto your iPod in a matter of minutes, but what about carrying the actual texts digitally?

While there are a number of online services that allow one to use a Palm or other PDA (personal data assistant) to download and read ebooks –that is, “electronic books” for those unfamiliar with the term– these are often rather expensive, with pricing approximately the same as published paper books. In the limited selection of classics available, this seems quite costly indeed, especially given that copyright has elapsed for most of them (there’s therefore no royalties to be paid), and there’s no physical materials or costs to pass long to the consumer.

Well, don’t fret, because many of the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be downloaded for free at Blackmask Online : Mystery/Arthur Conan Doyle. They have a variety of formats, including ones that can be opened in Adobe Acrobat, or a regular web browser (the “zipped” archives). But I love this site because of the various mobile formats, and in particular the files readable under Plucker or iSilo on my Palm. All I have to do is download, drag them to my install bucket, hit the button, and a few minutes later, I have dozens of works ready to go.

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HILE my collection of Sherlock Holmes DVDs are well rounded-out with Brett, Rathbone and others, some of the earliest films have always eluded me, and in particular those of Wontner and Owen as the Master Detective. I did find Wontner’s The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes for $1 in the discount bin at a local department megastore beginning with the letter “W” (which shall remain nameless), but all three copies they had were defective, crashing Windows and refusing to be read by either Mac OS X or Linux. And so it was a pleasant surprise to trip across four Wontner and Owen films online in a BitTorrent archive, free for download in several different formats and qualities, including iPod-ready video. (The films actually fell into the public domain years ago.) They can be found in the Mystery section of site called PublicDomainTorrents.com.

The quality is not the greatest, of course –the films were made in the 30’s, and these copies are not taken from the masters– but they’re still a great find for me nevertheless. If you’re interested in downloading some of these little treasures, point your favourite BitTorrent client (I use Azureus) to PDT and catch Reginald Owen in A Study in Scarlet (1933, and bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the novel), and Wontner in The Sign of Four (1932), The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes (1935), and Murder at the Baskervilles (1937, a.k.a., Silver Blaze). There are also four of Universal’s Rathbone/Bruce films from the 1940’s, namely Dressed to Kill, Terror by Night, The Woman in Green, and Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon. You may have noticed the latter four films offered cheaply from many different distributors, and the reason is elementary: no copyrights = no royalties.

Note that getting torrents requires you to have a high-speed connection, and sometimes a lot of patience — the download speed depends on how many other people are downloading and/or sharing the same files. If you’re stuck on dial-up, find the downloads too slow, or the technology of torrents proves intimidating, you can also have them mailed to you as DVDs, AVI files, or even iPod-ready videos, for just a small copying and shipping fee.

If you’re so inclined, you can also convert and burn these files to make your own DVDs. Ah, a weekend project! And don’t forget: VLC is an excellent free player that handles all these media files with aplomb.

n my other life at DIYPlanner.com, I produce free templates and forms to help people become more productive or creative. I’ve always had a yearning to make something Holmes-related, though, and seeing we’ll be discussing various stories using the “standard abbreviations,” I thought this would be an excellent opportunity to create my first Sherlockian reference card.

This is a template for producing four double-sided 3×5″ cards that bear the abbreviations (as developed by Jay Finley Christ) for all 60 Holmes stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as well as the year that each one was first published.

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