Readers of The Pittsburg Press got a jump on the rest of the country when the latest story about Sherlock Holmes was published in the United States in 1892.
The Press ran part one of the “Adventure of the Speckled Band” on Feb. 11. That was three days before Arthur Conan Doyle’s latest Holmes story appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Boston Sunday Herald. And according to The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia, several weeks would pass before the American edition of The Strand Magazine would publish the tale. (British readers got an earlier look at the story. “The Speckled Band” had appeared in Great Britain in the February 1892 edition of The Strand.)
Sherlock Holmes stories, plays and movies and Conan Doyle himself all have long been popular among Pittsburgh readers and audiences.
Here’s the latest example: Local theater-goers now have an opportunity to see a stage version of “The Speckled Band” presented by the Kinetic Theatre Co. Andrew Paul directs the Pittsburgh revival of the play that continues through June 30. The Kinetic Theatre’s “Speckled Band” marks the sixth local theater production in eight years based on characters in the Holmes stories.
As he has in all but one of the previous shows, actor David Whalen again is playing the fictional detective.
Conan Doyle wrote four novels and 56 short stories about Holmes that were published between 1887 and 1927. Fans of Holmes and his friend Dr. John Watson refer to the collected works as the Canon. Since 1934, when the Baker Street Irregulars was formed, some of the most ardent of those readers have organized themselves into literary societies to read and discuss Conan Doyle’s tales.
Pittsburgh has had its share of such so-called “scion” societies — regional offshoots of the New York City-based Irregulars. Jim Zunic, a longtime Sherlockian from Natrona Heights, said that local groups devoted to Holmes stories have included The Priory Scholars at the University of Pittsburgh in the late 1940s, The Pennsylvania Small Arms Co. in Mt. Lebanon in the 1970s and The Reigate Squires in New Kensington.
Mr. Zunic is a founding member of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, a Holmes society organized in 1974. Members of that group continue to meet monthly for story discussions, for the celebration of Conan Doyle’s birthday and for talks on subjects related to detective fiction and life in the late Victorian era.
Literary detection
It was Mr. Zunic who alerted Mr. Paul several years ago about the existence of a dramatized version of “The Speckled Band.” The good news was that it had been written by Conan Doyle himself, based on what the author called one of his personal favorites among the Holmes stories. The bad news was that the play was out of print.
“In effect, this current show started with my own detective work,” Mr. Paul said. He eventually found a script for the play, no longer under copyright, on a British website. “Conan Doyle took the bones of the original story and improved it with a finely tuned sense of good stagecraft,” Mr. Paul said.
The stage version begins with a coroner’s inquest into the suspicious death of a young woman. “From that first scene the audience senses that something is not right … but wonders how a crime possibly could have been committed in a locked room,” he said. “I’m hoping our production will help to resurrect the reputation of Conan Doyle’s play, which kind of fell off the map.”
“We’ve learned that there has been a fan base here for each play featuring Holmes,” Mr. Paul said. “We don’t have a hard time selling tickets.”
Pittsburgh’s first Holmes
Hundreds of movies, radio programs and television shows have been made about Holmes and Watson. Ask people about who was best known for playing the Baker Street detective, and three names are likely to be offered: Basil Rathbone (14 films between 1939 and 1946), Jeremy Brett (41 TV episodes between 1984 and 1994) and Benedict Cumberbatch (13 TV episodes between 2010 and 2017).
In the first decades of the 20th century, Pittsburgh theater-goers would have offered another name: William Gillette.
Gillette was 76 when in May 1930 he starred in “Sherlock Holmes” at the Nixon Theater. At that point in his career, he had been playing the detective since 1899, first on stage and later in movies. A prolific playwright, he co-wrote his stage version of “Sherlock Holmes” with Conan Doyle.
Pittsburgh’s theater critics treated Gillette’s return to the city and to the role for which he was best known like the visit of an old friend. “Last night was a glorious adventure in the theater, an interlude of purest melodrama,” Karl Krug of The Pittsburgh Press wrote on May 6, 1930. “They tell me that William Gillette’s slender figure has not changed,” Mr. Krug wrote. “[He] still plays ‘Sherlock Holmes’ as only he can play it.”
Harvey Gaul, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s arts editor, wrote that same day that although Gillette was in his 70s, “he looked 50.”
“After the second act, Mr. Gillette made a felicitous speech in which he said he ‘didn’t like to say good-bye or farewell, but only good night,’ “ Gaul wrote. “And as for us, we wish he’d merely said good morning and was starting all over again in ‘Secret Service’ and ‘Sherlock.’”
The show closed on Saturday, May 10, and the Monday edition of the Post-Gazette published a story about Gillette’s valedictory remarks from the stage of the Nixon. Gillette’s last line in the play “Sherlock Holmes” was “This is my last case, Watson.”
“There was an extra touch of sadness in that line,” the P-G story said. “In those few words, William Gillette in effect was bidding farewell to the profession that he had endowed with honor and respect for most of his 75 years.” (The actor was shortly to turn 77, and he or his press agent apparently had shaved some months from his age.)
While he never returned to Pittsburgh, Gillette continued to tour in “Sherlock Holmes” for another two years. He then retired from the stage and took his “last bow” on April 29, 1937, dying at 83.
Studying the master
Conan Doyle made Sherlock Holmes an avid reader and regular user of the “agony columns” — the personal notices — in London’s newspapers. That made it appropriate that when Maureen Movshin sought to start up a new organization for readers of the Holmes stories, she would run a classified ad in Pittsburgh newspapers seeking people “Interested in Baker Street Irregulars.”
Jim Zunic was one of the people who saw that advertisement in July 1974, and he contacted Ms. Movshin. Their new group called itself the “Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers.” The name, which suggests an organization of military re-enactors, is taken from the British Army unit that Dr. Watson would have served with in Afghanistan. The names of all the Baker Street Irregular scion societies refer to people, places or things mentioned in the Holmes stories.
Over the decades, local Sherlock Holmes societies have sponsored Sherlockian conventions where members from multiple groups gather to share research, take quizzes and play trivia games.
Mr. Zunic doesn’t find it surprising that people in Pittsburgh should enjoy Conan Doyle’s short stories and novels. “He had a vigorous style of writing,” Mr. Zunic said. Conan Doyle’s detective is a man “who provides a dollar’s work for a dollar’s pay. That attitude is admired here.”
Mr. Zunic is the last founding member of the Fusiliers still active with the organization. He is a former brigadier, or president, of the society.
The current brigadier is lawyer Marsha Maietta of Bellevue. “The more I read the stories, the more I appreciate the wit, the humor, the clever turn of phrase,” she said. “I like that Holmes solves problems. And if he doesn’t always follow all the rules in pursuit of justice, he follows the rules that should be.”
The only requirement for membership in the Fusiliers is a fondness for the Sherlock Holmes stories, she said. New members are always welcome.
A visit from the master
Conan Doyle made just one visit to Pittsburgh, and when he came here, it was not to talk about Sherlock Holmes.
When he spoke at Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland on April 20, 1923, he argued the case for spiritualism. Sherlock Holmes was among the earliest of literature’s scientific-minded detectives; his creator, however, was a firm believer that with the aid of a human “medium” the living could contact and converse with the dead.
Conan Doyle had become an advocate for spiritualism after he lost multiple family members, including his son. He lectured often on the subject in England and abroad.
He answered questions about the subject posed by a reporter from The Pittsburgh Gazette Times the night before his lecture. In that interview at the William Penn Hotel on Grant Street, he defended the trustworthiness of psychic photography to capture pictures of the deceased on film. But he admitted that some “spirit plates” contained doctored images, produced by combining negatives.
It turned out that the dead had quite a lot to say about the afterlife.
In his talk at Carnegie Music Hall, Conan Doyle provided a description of heaven communicated to him “in messages from spirits,” The Gazette Times reported on April 21. “Bits from these [spirits] tell of ‘music and flower-bordered walks and every exquisite pleasure,’” he said.
Likely the most controversial aspect of Conan Doyle’s sold-out talk involved marriage. “Earthly marital ties are severed and each may choose himself a new mate,” he told his audience. Everybody went “into the next world on a rule of general divorce, free to make new relationships.”
Conan Doyle maintained his personal belief in spiritualism until his death in 1930. He was 71.
Len Barcousky (lbarcousky@gmail.com) is a former Post-Gazette editor and reporter. He has been reading and re-reading Sherlock Holmes tales for almost 60 years. He is a member of the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers and is waiting patiently for Pittsburgh CLO to present “Baker Street” as part of its summer season.
First Published: June 16, 2019, 11:00 a.m.
