The private life of Sherlock Holmes (movie)

[Hikari]

A quick Herlockian review of the new Blu-ray version of The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes.

 

Firstly, for anyone that hasn’t seen it yet, it’s a wonderful movie. Like Mark Gatiss it’s my favourite. For the Holmes nerd it has great extras which include three interviews (a film historian, the editor of the movie and Christopher Lee. But best of all we get the first sighting of the ‘missing’ footage. The movie was originally intended to be well over three hours long but was eventually cut drastically.

 

We get stills and the script of an opening scene where Watson’s grandson arrives at Cox and Co to open his grandfathers box. The bank manager is also a member of The Sherlock Holmes Society Of London And has delayed his retirement for this day. He ends up trying on the deerstalker.

 

Then we get stills of a scene on a train with Holmes and Watson in a carriage when a man rushes in. Holmes deduces that he’s recently jumped out of a window after being shot at by his lovers husband. We get the voices with this one which are great to hear.

 

Then there is the case of The Upside Down Room. Holmes and Watson are called to a room with a corpse but everything in the room is upside down. Bed and chairs on the ceiling etc. Holmes deduces that it was all set up by Watson. Watson wanted to provide a distraction for Holmes from cocaine. Holmes says something like “well you had me fooled for all of ten minutes.”

 

Finally, and best of all, there’s footage with subtitles of a very funny scene on a ship where Holmes lets Watson try and solve a murder.

 

Well worth getting. Brilliant stuff. And if you were just thinking of getting the movie get this version. An absolute must

[Carol the Dabbler]

Then there is the case of The Upside Down Room. Holmes and Watson are called to a room with a corpse but everything in the room is upside down. Bed and chairs on the ceiling etc. Holmes deduces that it was all set up by Watson. Watson wanted to provide a distraction for Holmes from cocaine. Holmes says something like “well you had me fooled for all of ten minutes.”

 

Wonder if this is where Moftiss got the idea for Anderson's Jack-the-Ripper room?

 

We have the original DVD, but I'll put this one on our wish list -- our interest is in inverse proportion to the price!

[HerlockSholmes]

 

 

Then there is the case of The Upside Down Room. Holmes and Watson are called to a room with a corpse but everything in the room is upside down. Bed and chairs on the ceiling etc. Holmes deduces that it was all set up by Watson. Watson wanted to provide a distraction for Holmes from cocaine. Holmes says something like “well you had me fooled for all of ten minutes.”

Wonder if this is where Moftiss got the idea for Anderson's Jack-the-Ripper room?

 

We have the original DVD, but I'll put this one on our wish list -- our interest is in inverse proportion to the price!

Understandable Carol. Give it a month or two and you’ll no doubt be able to pick one up much cheaper on eBay.

[HerlockSholmes]

I’ve just finished reading ‘Knight Errant,’ which is an autobiography of Robert Stephens that I picked up on eBay for less than £3. An enjoyable book. Stephens is one of those people that you’d like to have as a dinner guest. Pretty much liked by all and best friend of Jeremy Brett. Plenty of great thesp-related anecdotes here but there’s only a short chapter on ‘The Private Life....’ but it was a difficult time for him. His marriage to Maggie Smith was breaking up and Wilder wasn’t an easy director to work for as he took perfectionism to limit. Stephens attempted suicide during the shoot but after a period of recovery went back and finished the movie. From his experience it’s probably inderstandable that he advised Brett against playing Holmes. Thankfully Brett ignored the advice.

[Arcadia]

Thankfully for us! From what I understand, it was not so healthy for Brett.

 

I wonder if that's what I was detecting when I watched TPLOSH ... I was surprised by how melancholy it was. I was expecting a laugh a minute comedy, and instead saw a version of Holmes that seemed very fragile to me. Interesting.

[HerlockSholmes]

I know what you mean. He was going through a really tough time just as he took on a role in a movie directed by a guy who took nitpicking to new levels! Even the fact that Watson was played by his great friend and drinking buddy Colin Blakely didn’t really help. It was pretty much a recipe for disaster and yet the result was a brilliant film.

 

Before the movie was made there was talk of a stage version (or a musical, I can’t recall which) starring Peter O’Toole as Holmes and Peter Sellers as Watson.

[Arcadia]

Oh, I can see Peter O'Toole as Holmes! That could have been brilliant! 

 

Peter Sellars as Watson? Hm. That, I have more trouble picturing. He seems the more Holmes type to me. 

[HerlockSholmes]

With Sellers as Watson I’d have been constantly thinking ........

 

https://youtu.be/64yianfGvzc

 

 

Coincidentally, with Colin Blakely as a police officer.

[Arcadia]

Well, you can't deny that would certainly have been a different take on the character! Now I'm kind of wishing I could see it ... although the acting styles of the two Peters are so diverse, I'm still having trouble imagining how it would work. (Image Lawrence with Clouseau as a sidekick ... nope, nope, nope!) :d

[Carol the Dabbler]

Of course that's like saying you can't imagine Bilbo Baggins as John Watson.  ;)

[Arcadia]

... the acting styles of the two Peters [O'Toole and Sellers] are so diverse, I'm still having trouble imagining how it would work. (Image Lawrence with Clouseau as a sidekick ... nope, nope, nope!) :D

 

 

 

Of course that's like saying you can't imagine Bilbo Baggins as John Watson.  ;)

Well ... I can't! :P

[Hikari]

 

... the acting styles of the two Peters [O'Toole and Sellers] are so diverse, I'm still having trouble imagining how it would work. (Image Lawrence with Clouseau as a sidekick ... nope, nope, nope!) :D

 

 

 

Of course that's like saying you can't imagine Bilbo Baggins as John Watson.  ;)

Well ... I can't! :P

 

 

Some folks who watched The Hobbit first and then came to Sherlock had a hard time integrated 'Bilbo Baggins as John Watson' into their mind palaces.   Given that MF is a brilliant character actor and blows the doors off both roles, it was easy for me to accept him as Bilbo after meeting him as Watson (though the first time I actually *met* him was as 'Nude Stand-in Guy' from Love Actually.)

 

If you think about it, Bilbo is not that far off John Watson, really.  The two share remarkable similarities.  Both cherish the comforts of home & hearth.  Both regard themselves as nothing particularly special and their lives uninteresting (Bilbo is OK with this, more so than John) . . until an Extraordinary Adventure falls into their unsuspecting laps.  JW meets Sherlock Holmes; Bilbo meets a wizard who invites him on a quest . .and introduces him to a charismatic leader figure whom Bilbo comes to love and support unconditionally, loyal to the point of putting his own life on the line any number of times, against the forces of evil.  Bilbo Baggins is Thorin Oakenshield's Watson, a little guy who goes to the wall for his friend with Herculean courage . . and if you doubt it, queue up the scene at the end the first film with the Eagles.  Bilbo carries a sword, not a Webley, but in all the salient characteristics, he is the loyal second to his 'Sherlock' too.

 

Since I am directly comparing the Hobbit to Sherlock, I hope this comment will be deemed acceptable to stay here, but if it gets moved, I will know where to look for it.

 

[Hikari]

I’ve just finished reading ‘Knight Errant,’ which is an autobiography of Robert Stephens that I picked up on eBay for less than £3. An enjoyable book. Stephens is one of those people that you’d like to have as a dinner guest. Pretty much liked by all and best friend of Jeremy Brett. Plenty of great thesp-related anecdotes here but there’s only a short chapter on ‘The Private Life....’ but it was a difficult time for him. His marriage to Maggie Smith was breaking up and Wilder wasn’t an easy director to work for as he took perfectionism to limit. Stephens attempted suicide during the shoot but after a period of recovery went back and finished the movie. From his experience it’s probably inderstandable that he advised Brett against playing Holmes. Thankfully Brett ignored the advice.

 

Very interesting to know.  I didn't realize that Brett and Stephens were best mates.  And then they both wound up playing Sherlock Holmes!  Shades of Cumberbatch and Miller, though I don't think those two are that tight.  They had a collegial relationship while working together, but Ben had some choice things to say when Elementary was announced, and perhaps the two are not quite so amiable these days.

 

Jeremy was already dealing with a mental illness when he took on the role of Sherlock; he'd been bipolar for his entire life.  It's hard not to make the assumption that playing Holmes exacerbated his condition; it probably did, as any demanding role/'schedule would have done.  I understand that there were periods, when he was in a manic phase, that Brett actually believed himself to *be* Sherlock Holmes.   It is kind of fitting, really, that an actor prone to manic depression should be tapped to play a character with the same tendencies.   I never realized, until I read the Canon in its entirety, how dark Sherlock could often get.  His moods bounce up and down like a rubber ball.  I would have to rely on any Conan Doyle scholars among us (Herlock Sholmes) to say whether Arthur had these tendencies himself.  He doesn't strike me as the type, but his father was a legendary and feckless drunkard who abandoned the family, so ACD was acquainted with darkness.

[HerlockSholmes]

There’s a photograph in the book of Stephens 2nd wedding with Brett as best man.

 

I think that the effects of playing Holmes took its toll on both men but for different reasons. Stephens had no mental health issues but was going through a messy marriage break up, he was drinking heavily and to make matters worse the film was a very stressful one due to Wilder’s method of directing. Every gesture and line had to be perfectly timed. He would order constant re-shoots for seemingly trivial reasons. I’m not quoting an exact example here but if an actor had to put a glass on the table whilst saying the word ‘never,’ Wilder would insist on which syllable of the word he did it on. If the actor put it down on the ‘ne’ part he would make them do it again because he wanted it on the ‘ver’ part.

 

Brett, as you pointed out Hikari, was bi-polar for which he was prescribed Lithium (a side effect of which is water retention hence Brett’s weight gain.) He also had an enlarged heart. These facts combined with the fact that Brett wanted the series to be as near to perfect as possible (including is own performance) led to major problems and a breakdown. Sadly it eventually led to his death on September 12th 1995 at the far too young age of 62.

 

As far as we know Hikari Doyle had no mental health issues (unless you include believing in Spiritualism and fairies of course

[Hikari]

Thanks for the expanded info, Herl.

 

I found a number of very unflattering articles about Conan Doyle's behavior toward his eldest children after his marriage to Jean Leckie.  It is under the title 'Conan Doyle, A Hero Revisited'.  He basically rejected his two children by Touie in favor of Jean and her kids, cutting his elder daughter out of his estate and leaving her the paltry sum of 2000 pounds at his death.  Out of his millions of royalties, it was a very miserly gesture.  Bluntly put, Jean was toxically jealous of any reminders of Arthur's first wife, and Touie's kids were living reminders that another woman had come first in Arthur's affections.  Mary Conan Doyle died basically destitute while her younger half-siblings inherited all.  (The two boys died very young, 45 and 59 respectively--owing to their profligate party boy lifestyles which their father's money made possible.  Jean lived to a grand old age and seems to be the only one of Arthur's kids who did anything much with her life.  Kingsley, Touie's son, died in 1918 of influenza while he was training to be a doctor like his father, so he never figured in the estate.  Had he lived, perhaps he would have addressed the inequity in stronger terms, man-to-man.

 

You know all of this, of course . .this is for the benefit of anyone else reading who didn't know.  It has colored my view of Conan Doyle and not for the good.  He gave us Sherlock Holmes and John Watson, and for that we must be grateful . . but he also seems to have been a rather avaricious and spineless man who allowed his forceful and nasty second wife to lead him around by the testicles, to the detriment of all of his children.  He seems easily led all around, since it was Jean who got him heavily into the spiritualism and that did no favors at all for his reputation in later years.

 

You may also be familiar with the article entitled 'Heartless Jean', further detailing the second Mrs. Doyle's grasping hateful nature and her ongoing feud with Touie's surviving daughter.  Arthur was p---ywhipped and whatever Jean said, went in that household.

 

So I find myself in the rather extraordinary position of respecting and loving a fictional character while I don't have much use for his creator.  If Arthur were still alive, I wouldn't go out of my way to meet him.  It's a disappointing development, but his feet were firmly made of clay and his children paid the price.  Art wasn't a drunk like his own father but he had flaws that were quite as distancing to his own children in the end.

[HerlockSholmes]

I think that I read Conan Doyle: A Hero Revisited a while ago but I can’t remember where? I wouldn’t mind reading it again. Where can I find it? My brain is letting me down here.

 

I know that I’m a bit biased when it comes to Doyle (I know, you’d never have guessed it) but from the biographies I’ve read I don’t think Doyle was particularly avaricious or nasty but you’re right that he was over influenced by Jean. She was a complete fraud as far as I’m concerned with her automatic writing and her ‘spirit’ guide. Doyle was besotted though and it definately led to ‘problems’ which he dealt with badly. He also donated over £400,000 to a spiritualist magazine! That’s a lot of money now. Pre-1930 it was enormous.

Dennis and Adrian playboy wastrels who cared little for anything but themselves. Dame Jean was different though. Or to use her full title: Air Commendant Lena Annette Jean, Lady Bromet, DBE, AE, ADC. As you know she got her title for her work with the Women’s Royal Airforce during the War. She battled for the rights to her father’s work and eventually gained control of most of it. When she died she left The to The Royal Institute For The Blind (she had sight problems all of her life) the Institute eventually sold them back to Doyle’s descendants ( none were direct descendants though.) At least she genuinely cared about her father’s legacy.

[Hikari]

I think that I read Conan Doyle: A Hero Revisited a while ago but I can’t remember where? I wouldn’t mind reading it again. Where can I find it? My brain is letting me down here.

 

I know that I’m a bit biased when it comes to Doyle (I know, you’d never have guessed it) but from the biographies I’ve read I don’t think Doyle was particularly avaricious or nasty but you’re right that he was over influenced by Jean. She was a complete fraud as far as I’m concerned with her automatic writing and her ‘spirit’ guide. Doyle was besotted though and it definately led to ‘problems’ which he dealt with badly. He also donated over £400,000 to a spiritualist magazine! That’s a lot of money now. Pre-1930 it was enormous.

Dennis and Adrian playboy wastrels who cared little for anything but themselves. Dame Jean was different though. Or to use her full title: Air Commendant Lena Annette Jean, Lady Bromet, DBE, AE, ADC. As you know she got her title for her work with the Women’s Royal Airforce during the War. She battled for the rights to her father’s work and eventually gained control of most of it. When she died she left The to The Royal Institute For The Blind (she had sight problems all of her life) the Institute eventually sold them back to Doyle’s descendants ( none were direct descendants though.) At least she genuinely cared about her father’s legacy.

 

Dame Jean passed away before I became a Serious Sherlockian but I admire all that she did for the war effort and for her father's literary legacy.  I don't blame her (or those feckless brothers) for their parents' attitude.  Children learn what they live, after all.  They never had a chance to get to know Mary properly because their mother poisoned that well.

 

I'm glad to see that she had a vital career in her own right and made contributions that warranted her being made a Dame.  I was confused for a while over her title since her name was identical to her mother's.  Jean was Lady Doyle, but I thought, surely a knighthood (female equivalent) isn't hereditary?  Jean, Jr. earned hers, fair and square.  Being heiress to all those millions didn't seem to completely spoil her, but I'm sure she lived very well for all her long life.

[Arcadia]

That's all rather interesting. I know nothing about Doyle. What happened to his first wife?

 

And what did Jean leave to the Institute? I think you left out a word there, Herlock ... ?T

[Hikari]

That's all rather interesting. I know nothing about Doyle. What happened to his first wife?

 

And what did Jean leave to the Institute? I think you left out a word there, Herlock ... ?T

 

Ah, Arcadia,

 

Conan Doyle's marital life reads like  an Edwardian soap opera.

 

Arthur's first wife Louisa (whom everyone called Touie)  had two children with him before she contracted tuberculosis, which in those days was a death sentence, but it was usually a lingering one.  Touie was ill for a decade before she succumbed .  Very early on in her illness, Arthur, then 37 years old, met 21-year-old Jean Leckie, a trained opera singer.  Herlock Sholmes would know better than I if the dishy Miss Leckie was the inspiration for Irene Adler in 'Scandal in Bohemia' but the timeline probably doesn't fit.  It's tempting to think so, though.

 

All through the long, slow years of waiting for Touie to die, Conan Doyle resolutely claimed thoughout his lifetime that he and Miss Leckie only saw each other socially for the most platonic of proper connections.  What else could a Roman Catholic man say in those more restrained times than ours.   Even if there was no hanky panky . . always room for doubt there--scuttlebutt had it that Arthur's mother, Mary would come along to the couple's assignations in hotels, ostensibly as chaperone.  Who knows what they might have got up to while she was in the loo or whatever . .?

 

Touie finally had the decency to kick off, giving her husband her blessing on her deathbed to marry Miss Leckie.  Had she known how Jean would subsequently treat her children when she was gone, Touie might have been less forgiving.

 

Jean and Arthur were finally able to be married when she was 31 and he was 47.  She was beautiful, but what a towering rhymes with witch.  Since ACD was so besotted with her, he allowed her to pull any Wicked Stepmother stuff on his kids by Touie that she wanted to, out of a fear of losing her, it's hard to regard him as an admirable figure.  His behavior toward his older children was in a word, shocking.  Had he chosen a nicer, more giving woman as his second wife, he would have been a different father to them, one supposes.  He was obsessed with Jean to the point where he was not capable of seeing sense where she was concerned.

[HerlockSholmes]

Well summed up Hikari

[HerlockSholmes]

That's all rather interesting. I know nothing about Doyle. What happened to his first wife?

 

And what did Jean leave to the Institute? I think you left out a word there, Herlock ... ?T

Sorry Arcadia,

 

It was the USA right’s to Doyle’s work (but only the work published before November 1st 1925.) It’ s all very complicated and I certainly don’t understand the complexities of copyright law. I’ve just looked for a concise overview of the situation and found this one one Wiki:

 

Literary Estate

 

“Upon the death of her brother, Adrian, in 1970, Dame Jean became her father's literary executor and the legal copyright holder to some of the rights to the Sherlock Holmes character as well as her father's other works. She assiduously defended Sherlock Holmes' character. She and her brothers, Adrian and Denis Conan Doyle, Arthur Conan Doyle's children by his second wife (Jean, Lady Conan Doyle) inherited the copyrights with the estate when their mother died in 1940.[citation needed]

 

Dame Jean said that Sherlock Holmes was her family's curse because of the fighting over copyrights.[16] She and the widows of her brothers initially shared control of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle′s literary trust; however, the women did not get along.[17] Denis Conan Doyle had married a Georgian princess known as Princess Nina M'divani and died in 1955.[18]

 

Using a loan from the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), in 1970 Princess Nina bought the estate and established Baskervilles Investments Ltd. in the Isle of Man.[16] Eventually, the princess fell dramatically behind on the loan, and the RBS ended up with the rights to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's works.[16][17] The bank then sold the rights to Lady Etelka Duncan whose former son-in-law, Sheldon Reynolds, produced two series of Sherlock Holmes adaptations, in the 1950s and the 1990s. His ex-wife, Lady Duncan's daughter, administered the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Literary Estate until November 2014.[17]

 

Conan Doyle Estate Ltd., a privately owned UK company formed in 2005, claims that Dame Jean regained some of the US rights following the passage of the Copyright Act of 1976, although all works of Arthur Conan Doyle's published after 1 November 1925 remain with the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Literary Estate, which sued the Executors of the Dame Jean Conan Doyle Estate for infringement of copyright. When Warner Brothers made Sherlock Holmes, released in 2010, the studio was granted a license in 2006 by the Arthur Conan Doyle Literary Estate and ended up signing a "Covenant not to Sue" a year later with Conan Doyle Estate Ltd.[17]

 

At her death at age 84, Dame Jean's will stipulated that any remaining copyrights she owned were to be transferred to the Royal National Institute for the Blind.[19] According to a 1990 interview, Dame Jean's eyesight was poor from an early age.[20] The National Institute for the Blind sold the rights back to the Doyle heirs. (As of 2015 there were eight surviving Doyle heirs. None are direct descendants, as neither Jean nor her brothers had any children.)[21][22]”

 

Hope this helps? It’s a minefield!

[Arcadia]

 
:P

[HerlockSholmes]

Although I’ve read many Doyle biographies I can’t recall where the name ‘Touie,’ came from? Doyle met the Louisa and her mother on a train. They later met him because of Louisa’s brother Jack who was seriously ill with Cerebral Meningitis. Doyle offered to care for him at Bush Villas. Unfortunately he didn’t live long. Doyle then began seeing Louisa.

 

I was wondering if the name ‘Touie’ came from a childish pronunciation of Louise (possibly by Jack) that stuck as a nickname? The origin of the name Touie might already have been explained and I might have just missed it (or forgotten it) so if anyone knows for sure or has any other suggestions I’d be glad to hear them

[Hikari]

Arcadia,

 

I got sucked into the Adventure of the Copyright Lawsuit when I read up on the backstory of one of the very first Holmes pastiche collections I read, In the Company of Sherlock Holmes.  Co-Editor Leslie Klinger (leading American Sherlockian and oh, by day, a top copyright lawyer) had collaborated with Laurie King on an earlier collection, A Study in Sherlock in 2011, and at that time had paid the $5000 licensing fee demanded by the Conan Doyle Estate Ltd. for the use of the characters created by Sir Arthur.  All of the Holmes stories are in the public domain in the UK, but the final stories collected in The Case-Book are protected by copyright in the U.S. in their order of publication until this expires in 2023 with the last story.  Any writer or artist or filmmaker who wants to use conceptions of Holmes and Watson in their 'later years' as they are presented in the Case-Book has to ask for permission from the Estate and pay up these hefty licensing fees for each and every occurrence, not just a one-off.  Mr. Klinger had examined the fee structure being demanded by the Estate, deemed it usurious and declined to pay up a second time.  The Estate threatened to sue, and Klinger's publisher withdrew the book for publication.  So Leslie countersued the Estate in federal court, igniting a 'Free Sherlock!' movement and ultimately winning the judgment.   This was in 2014.  The Estate would lose again in the U.S. District Court of Appeals. 

 

Undaunted, it proceeded to give filmmaker Bill Condon a hard time over "Mr. Holmes", which concerns an SH in retirement on the Sussex Downs--the period ostensibly covered by the copyright still in force, even though Sir Arthur never wrote any stories featuring a 93-year-old Holmes.  There is an interesting article from Forbes.com called 'The Strange Case of Mr. Holmes vs. U.S. Copyright Law'.  You can also read about Leslie Klinger's legal victory in full if you Google 'Klinger vs. Conan Doyle Estate'.

 

When Dame Jean Conan Doyle passed away at 84 years of age, she named 8 people who comprise the Estate of Conan Doyle, Ltd.  None are Conan Doyles, because none of Sir Arthur's children from either marriage had any children of their own.  The Estate has a very nifty expensive-looking website, no doubt designed by a top agency, which features some of the items which the executors have been all too happy to license with the Conan Doyle imprimateur (for a fee, naturally) which can be purchased.  Some of the items include fine Scotch and deluxe gentleman's watches, almost as though Sherlock Holmes were James Bond.  I can see why Les Klinger was so p!ss*d.

[Hikari]

Although I’ve read many Doyle biographies I can’t recall where the name ‘Touie,’ came from? Doyle met the Louisa and her mother on a train. They later met him because of Louisa’s brother Jack who was seriously ill with Cerebral Meningitis. Doyle offered to care for him at Bush Villas. Unfortunately he didn’t live long. Doyle then began seeing Louisa.

 

I was wondering if the name ‘Touie’ came from a childish pronunciation of Louise (possibly by Jack) that stuck as a nickname? The origin of the name Touie might already have been explained and I might have just missed it (or forgotten it) so if anyone knows for sure or has any other suggestions I’d be glad to hear them