Sherlock Holmes

Richard Franklin – Appeared in Sherlock Holmes of Baker
Street (an amalgam of A Case of Identity, The Mazarin Stone and
The Dying Detective), first performed at the Ipswich Drama
Centre on 6 November 1974.
John Gielgud – Noted Shakespearean actor who teamed up
with Ralph Richardson as Watson in The Adventures of Sherlock
Holmes (1954), a radio series by Harry Alan Towers for the BBC
Light Programme. The 12 adaptations ran from 5 October to
21 December 1954 (with Orson Welles as Moriarty in The
Final Problem).
Robert Gilbert – Appeared in the 1922 UK provincial tour
of Doyle’s play The Speckled Band.
William Gillette – In 1898, Doyle produced a play called
Sherlock Holmes and sent it to actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm
Tree but, when Tree demanded changes, Doyle lost interest in
it. Doyle’s literary agent then sent it to American theatrical
manager Charles Frohman who passed it to popular stage actor
William Gillette. Gillette rewrote Doyle’s play (basing it
mainly on A Scandal in Bohemia and The Final Problem), but the
manuscript was destroyed in a San Francisco hotel fire. Gillette
wrote out the whole play again, and in May 1899 he visited
England to seek Doyle’s approval. After touring in Buffalo,
Syracuse and Rochester, it received its Broadway premiere at
the Garrick Theater, New York, on 6 November 1899. Its UK
premiere was on 2 September 1901 at the Shakespeare
Theatre, Liverpool.
The play ran for 236 performances in New York, after which
Gillette toured America until summer 1901.When the London
run finished in April 1902 (after 216 performances), four
companies toured the country with various Sherlock Holmes,
including Gillette himself for eight weeks after the London
run. In America, the play was remounted nine times, only once
S H E R L O C K H O L M E S
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without Gillette, culminating in his farewell tour in 1932. In
the UK, it received its third outing in 1974 (see John Wood).
In 1905, Charles Chaplin played the role of page-boy Billy at
the Duke of York’s Theatre.
In all, Gillette played the role over 1,200 times and was for
many the definitive Holmes. His play encouraged many imita-
tors, including one written by himself called The Painful
Predicament of Sherlock Holmes, in which a lady client doesn’t
allow the detective to get a word in edgeways. Its first UK
performance was at the Duke of York’s Theatre, London, on 3
October 1905.
After such a successful theatrical career, it comes as a
surprise to discover that he only made one film, entitled simply
Sherlock Holmes (1916). As the title suggests, it was a version of
his own stage play, slightly opened out by scriptwriter HS
Sheldon and filmed in Chicago by the Essanay company. He
twice appeared on radio: The Speckled Band was the first in a 
35-episode series called The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes on
WEAF-NBC, USA, in 1930 (Richard Gordon continued in
the role) and an adaptation of his stage play for WABC followed
on 18 November 1935.
Julian Glover – Respected stage and film actor who featured
in  Sherlock’s Last Case by Matthew Lang (a pseudonym for
Charles Marowitz) performed at the Open Space Theatre,
London, from 24 July 1974.