Meet Barnaby Gibbs: an incurable optimist, Sherlock Holmes fan, and a man who knows he’s not particularly good at anything. One night, while checking on a friend’s empty house, he encounters a stranger, dressed entirely in black, holding a bag full of stolen belongings and attempting to write a poem about sapphires. There is only one conclusion a reasonable man could come to: this is the notorious cat burglar / con-man known as the Rhyming Bandit! However, Barnaby is not a reasonable man, and when the stranger explains he is actually the famous detective Antoine Feval, a new crime-fighting duo is born.

The comedy is running in Toronto from the 15th to the 25th of this month. More information is available at the Diesel Playhouse. Next up are runs in New Zealand and New Mexico.

I’ve asked Bob to write a short introduction to Solar Pons for us, and he has graced us with the following….

Solar Pons?

Who is that? The Sherlock Holmes reader is painfully aware of how many stories featuring the world’s first consulting detective are available. While many are of admirable quality, many, many more are not. But one suspects that the Master himself would flash that wry
smile in acknowledging that the finest pastiches feature a detective not named Holmes! Young August Derleth, disappointed to learn that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would not be writing any additional Holmes tales, took it upon himself to continue the tradition of the great detective. Thus was created Solar Pons, ‘The Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street.’

Solar Pons and his trustworthy companion, Doctor Parker, reside at 7B Praed Street, taken care of by their long-suffering landlady, Mrs. Johnson. Of the multitude to follow in the footsteps of Sir Arthur, none as faithfully evoke the images of the dynamic duo from Baker Street. The spirit of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson lives on in the tales of August Derleth.

www.SolarPons.com is the first website dedicated solely to the adventures of Solar Pons. The Holmes fan that has not yet discovered these stories is likely in for a treat.

If you haven’t yet seen it, count on spending an entertaining hour or so browsing through his lavish Solar Pons Gazette, of which I’m told there is a short Christmas issue forthcoming, to be followed by another large edition next year.

Here is the first article, which covers a Canadian lecture by ACD, and which appeared in the Toronto Star on November 24th, 1897. It is transcribed below, and you can also download an image of the article, or a PDF of the full page.

An Author’s Life

Dr. A. Conan Doyle Sketches His Own Career.
Tells of the Creation of Sherlock Holmes.
An Interesting Lecture by an Interesting Man.

Dr. Conan Doyle gained success from writing a department of literature in which his heart never was. He said last night in his lecture at Massey [?] Music Hall that Sherlock Holmes was dead, and that he would not be resurrected.

It is the historical novel, with its gay, bright pictures of chivalry and deeds of daring like those in which Scott won his fame that the worthy author longs for and will make his future work.

Dr. Doyle says that he is not Sherlock Holmes. He claims no superiority as a detective. He says that he has been deluged with letters requesting him to attempt to solve mysterious [sic] but that he has never undertaken any case. He says he is not a sharp man, and that he only in writing puts himself in the position of a shrewd man and imagines what the shrewd man would do.

“It is rather embarrassing to speak about one’s self,” said Dr. Doyle when he began his address. “I would prefer to talk about some other author’s work, but I suppose all are interested in me on account of what I have written.”

Dr. Doyle is a giant in size. He looks to be about six feet four and is not at all slim. His style of lecturing is not at all attractive, and it was believed that had he chosen any other subject, as he said he had wished, that he would not have been so entertaining.

He stood all the evening behind a high desk, and spoke from a carefully prepared manuscript. The audience was a Sherlock Holmes-Conan Doyle one, and every one present listened intently to all that was said.

The lecture was an autobiographical sketch. It began with early reminiscences, when in childhood he met and sat on the knee of William Makapiece Thackeray. He hold of his first short story, written at the age of six, of his entrance into literary work and his short story writing.

When he came to tell of Sherlock Holmes he read some short sketches from the memoirs and adventures of the far-famed detective.

He told of his historical novels, of the writing of “Micah Clarke,” “The White Company,” “The Great Shadow” and “The Refugees.”

Of the last he spoke most probably because it was based on a Canadian subject. He said that his work in that had been a labor of love, for he had attempted to join together whatever interested two factions of the English-speaking race, whose common language had oftentimes been used only for libel and mutual reproach.

The program was completed by a reading from an unpublished piece, “The Lord of Chateau Noir,” which is one of the strongest extracts of all his works.

My heartfelt thanks goes out to Mr. Visser for taking the time and effort to make these articles available to us.

Clues on Collecting Sherlock Holmes
by Phillip Gold, ABAA
221Books, Westlake Village, CA, USA

Phillip Gold, who has selected this issue’s Pick of the Month, shares some elementary tips on how to collect books featuring the famous detective.

Assembling a collection of cornerstone titles will be a challenging, and perhaps a lifelong endeavor. But don’t fail to inject some of your own interests and perspectives into the process. That’s the secret to assembling a unique and significant collection. Books about the world’s first consulting detective, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, have been a consistently popular collecting genre since the appearance of A Scandal in Bohemia in The Strand Magazine in July 1891.

(Via the Baker Street Journal blog.)

Those wanting to find an online version of the famous “Shaw 100″ can find it within the doors of The Diogenes Club, as well as within the social book-cataloguing club LibaryThing.

It’s difficult to deduce much about its origins. As as educated guess, I’d certainly say it was an American production –the jarring accents certainly give that away– and it was produced by an amateur-grade production company with decent studio access. The sound is clear, and while the show does have a few funny lines and situations, it’s far from top quality writing or acting. No web searches, ranging from Google to eBay to copyright databases, I’ve done have led me to any further information about the recording, nor the production company, which leads me to believe it is probably defunct. As for dating this, it does appear to be a recording from the sixties or seventies, but most shows produced from the late sixties to the early eighties do have a certain “sound” that is indicative of the equipment and effects common across that time period. Owing to the obvious, most people just assume the production date of this is 1965.

At any rate, this is a rare play that does have an interesting premise (pre- Austin Powers), wherein the very aged Holmes and Watson go searching for a new case in the mid-sixties. The jokes are no funnier nor worse than most other parodies, and so should fit nicely into the library of most Sherlockians who collect such things.

Download: Sherlock Holmes, 1965, by Midnight Productions

If you do know anything more about his recording, I’d love to hear from you.

Allen himself was quite a sharp wit, and was frequently embattled by the censors because of his political and social commentary, often ad-libbed to cover flubs in the program. (Most shows had to be carefully scripted before being approved by the overly nit-picky network censors.) Although his shows don’t today carry the timelessness of Benny’s, it’s usually because his references to American and world events were more frequent, and barely covered by a thin veneer of satire, unfortunately lost on most modern audiences.

Since we profiled a show of Benny as Sherlock, it seems only fitting that we offer his rival as yet another incarnation of the sleuth, this one named Fetlock Bones. This episode of the Texaco Star Theater certainly falls under the zany madcap category. (Those wanting to skip ahead to the parody can find it around the 18 minute mark, but will miss part of the set-up.)

Download: Texaco Star Theater - Fetlock Bones with Fred Allen, originally aired April 9th, 1944 (6.4 MB)

Benny was also known for his trenchant parodies, often far more entertaining than the pieces he spoofed, and so, when the much-lauded Rathbone/Bruce film The Hound of the Baskervilles was filling the theatres in 1939, an obvious target was the master detective himself.

While I wouldn’t consider this a rare recording among OTR fans, it’s one that several Sherlockians of my Internet acquaintance haven’t yet heard. And, as always, Benny delivers where lesser comedic characters like Miss Sherlock fall flat on their deerstalkers.

Download: Jack Benny - The Hound of the Baskervilles, originally aired June 11, 1939 (6.6 MB)

Download: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle speaking, 1930 (2.7 MB)

If anybody has any more information on this file, or any more recordings of ACD that you wouldn’t mind sharing, I’d love to hear from you.

This next week, I’m doing something a little different on this blog. While my dead-tree Sherlockian library pales by most (just two of the aforementioned bookshelves), I do have quite a hefty audio library, mostly digital nowadays. I have to re-catalogue my collection fairly soon, but my recordings –including radio plays, audio books, interviews, and the like– number well over a thousand. For the next few days, I’m going to provide downloads of some of the more rare and unusual files, along with short introductions and source notes, whenever possible.

First, a note about copyrights. Most collectors of Old Time Radio shows (known simply as OTR) follow a general rule of thumb: shows publicly aired before 1978 are generally considered to be in the public domain, especially in the United States, as there was no copyright protection issued for such broadcasts under the then-extant copyright laws of 1909. The Berne Convention, which took effect January 1, 1978, officially accorded these rights to radio broadcasts, and retroactively accorded certain limited rights to recordings made within the five years previous, but only if official application was made, which was very rare. (It was not possible to make works in the public domain copyrighted ex-post-facto.) Now, I’m not a lawyer, nor do I play one on television, so I’m walking this well-worn path, which is allegedly in accord with the staff of the U.S. Library of Congress. (For more information about OTR copyrights, please see the information on the RadioLovers.com copyright page.) Many other recordings (that weren’t publicly broadcast) have fallen into the public domain because there was never an application for copyright, the copyright has expired, or the copyright was never renewed. If you or your organisation have any copyright claim to the materials I present here, please contact me and I’ll rectify the situation and give due notice.

Whew.

Today, we have a true rarity, and what’s more, a blazing example of terrible OTR. It took me a few years to find the two episodes I know to exist, and once I finally found them, I chalked the effort up to completionist obsession. Wrote the radio expert Jack French, in an essay on Lady Crimefighters:

During World War II no more women sleuths arrived on the scene but 1946 was a banner year when three new ones debuted on network radio. One was as much comedienne as crime solver, Meet Miss Sherlock. This was a CBS summer sustainer that recounted the adventures of Jane Sherlock, a scatterbrained amateur detective, and her boyfriend, Peter Blossom, a civil attorney who occasionally fainted.

There were two separate versions of this show; the first ran from July 3, 1946 to September 26, 1946 while the second one ran from Sept 28, 1947 to Oct 26, 1947. Both series were produced and directed by David Vaile, with scripts by E. Jack Neuman and Don Thompson. The announcer was Murray Wagner and the live orchestra was headed by Milton Charles. Sondra Gair had the title lead in the 1946 version, Captain Dingle of the NYPD was a youthful Bill Conrad and Joe Petruzzi played Peter Blossom.

When the series resumed in the fall of 1947, Betty Moran did the first epiosde but her voice was not “dithery” enough so Monty Margetts was brought in and she played the lead until it went off the air two months later. Barney Phillips was the voice of Captain Dingle. This series was more comedy than adventure, although crimes were eventually solved. Only two episodes have survived; both feature Gair in the 1946 version.

The scripts are insipid, the acting mundane, the jokes lousy, and the political incorrectness worthy of a good burning in effigy. Still, I did promise you some unusual recordings. I promise that tomorrow’s entry will be less likely to affront your sensibilities. (It shouldn’t be that difficult.)

Download: Meet Miss Sherlock - Case of the Deadman’s Chest (MP3, 6.9 MB), originally aired July 7th, 1946