Lost William Gillette film - found!

Well you will probably have heard it already elsewhere but William Gillette's lost Sherlock Holmes film has been found.

This is a significant discovery. In 1897 Conan Doyle wrote a Sherlock Holmes play which he hoped to see staged. His idea was that it would assist in paying for his new house Undershaw. It found its way into the hands of William Gillette and he, with Conan Doyle's permission, redrafted it for the stage.

It was first played in New York in 1899 and found its way to the Lyceum Theatre in London in 1901 which allowed it to run almost in parallel to the serialisation in the UK of The Hound of the Baskervilles in The Strand Magazine.

The master playing the master
In 1916 the play was adapted into a film and this is the film that was lost until now. It provides modern audiences with the opportunity to experience something of what it must have been like to be in the audience when Gillette brought the famous detective to the stage. It also means that there is one less "lost" film and renewed hope that other rediscoveries will happen.


Written by Alistair Duncan
Buy my books here

Comments

Popular Posts