Coordinates	34°03′″N118°15′″N
birth name	Philip St. John Basil Rathbone
birth date	June 13, 1892
birth place	Johannesburg, South African Republic
death date	July 21, 1967
death place	New York City, New York,United States
years active	1911–67
occupation	Actor
spouse	Marion Foreman (1914–1926) (divorced) 1 child Ouida Bergère (1926–1967) (his death) 1 adopted daughter }}

Sir Basil Rathbone, KBE, MC, Kt (13 June 1892, Johannesburg – 21 July 1967, New York City) was an English actor. He rose to prominence in England as a Shakespearean stage actor and went on to appear in over 70 films, primarily costume dramas, swashbucklers, and, occasionally, horror films. He frequently portrayed suave villains or morally ambiguous characters, such as Murdstone in ''David Copperfield'' (1935) and Sir Guy of Gisbourne in ''The Adventures of Robin Hood'' (1938). His most famous role, however, was heroic—that of Sherlock Holmes in fourteen Hollywood films made between 1939 and 1946 and in a radio series. His later career included Broadway and television work; he received a Tony Award in 1948 as Best Actor in a Play.

Early life

He was born Philip St. John Basil Rathbone in Johannesburg, South African Republic, to English parents Edgar Philip Rathbone, a mining engineer and scion of the Liverpool Rathbone family, and Anna Barbara née George, a violinist. He had two younger siblings, Beatrice and John. The Rathbones fled to England when Basil was three years old after his father was accused by the Boers of being a British spy near the onset of the Second Boer War at the end of the 1890s.

Rathbone was educated at Repton School and was engaged with the Liverpool and Globe Insurance Companies. In 1916, he enlisted for the remaining duration of World War I, joining the London Scottish Regiment as a private, serving alongside his future successful acting contemporaries Claude Rains, Herbert Marshall, and Ronald Colman. He later transferred with a commission as a lieutenant to the Liverpool Scottish, 2nd Battalion, where he served as an intelligence officer and eventually attained the rank of captain. During the war, Rathbone displayed a penchant for disguise (a skill which he coincidentally shared with what would become perhaps his most memorable character, Sherlock Holmes), when on one occasion, in order to have better visibility, Rathbone convinced his superiors to allow him to scout enemy positions during daylight hours instead of during the night, as was the usual practice in order to minimize the chance of detection by the enemy. Rathbone completed the mission successfully through his skillful use of camouflage, which allowed him to escape detection by the enemy. In September 1918, he was awarded the Military Cross. His younger brother, John, was killed in action during the war while also serving Britain.

Career

On 22 April 1911, Rathbone made his first appearance on stage at the Theatre Royal, Ipswich, as Hortensio in ''The Taming of the Shrew'', with Sir Frank Benson's No. 2 Company, under the direction of Henry Herbert. In October 1912, he went to America with Benson's company, playing such parts as Paris in ''Romeo and Juliet'', Fenton in ''The Merry Wives of Windsor'', and Silvius in ''As You Like It''. Returning to England, he made his first appearance in London at the Savoy Theatre on 9 July 1914, as Finch in ''The Sin of David''. That December, he appeared at the Shaftesbury Theatre as the Dauphin in ''Henry V''. During 1915, he toured with Benson and appeared with him at London's Court Theatre in December as Lysander in ''A Midsummer Night's Dream''.

During the Summer Festival of 1919, he appeared at Stratford-upon-Avon with the New Shakespeare Company playing Romeo, Cassius, Ferdinand in ''The Tempest'', and Florizel in ''The Winter's Tale''; in October he was at London's Queen's Theatre as the aide-de-camp in ''Napoleon'', and in February 1920 he was at the Savoy Theatre in the title role in ''Peter Ibbetson'' with huge success.

During the 1920s, Rathbone appeared regularly in Shakespearean and other roles on the English stage. He began to travel and appeared at the Cort Theatre, New York, in October 1923 and toured in the United States in 1925, appearing in San Francisco in May and the Lyceum Theatre, New York, in October. He was in the U.S. again in 1927 and 1930 and again in 1931, when he appeared on stage with Ethel Barrymore. He continued his stage career in England, returning late in 1934 to the U.S., where he appeared with Katharine Cornell in several plays.

Rathbone was once arrested in 1926 along with every other member of the cast of ''The Captive'', a play in which his character's wife left him for another woman. Though the charges were eventually dropped, Rathbone was very angry about the censorship because he believed that homosexuality needed to be brought into the open.

He commenced his film career in 1925 in ''The Masked Bride'', appeared in a few silent movies, and played the detective Philo Vance in the 1930 movie ''The Bishop Murder Case'', based on the best-selling novel. Like George Sanders and Vincent Price after him, Rathbone made a name for himself in the 1930s by playing suave villains in costume dramas and swashbucklers, including ''David Copperfield'' (1935) as the abusive stepfather Mr. Murdstone; ''Anna Karenina'' (1935) as her distant husband, Karenin; ''The Last Days of Pompeii'' (1935) portraying Pontius Pilate; ''Captain Blood'' (1935); ''A Tale of Two Cities'' (1935), as the Marquis St. Evremonde; ''The Adventures of Robin Hood'' (1938) playing his best-remembered villain, Sir Guy of Gisbourne; ''The Adventures of Marco Polo'' (1938); and ''The Mark of Zorro'' (1940) as Captain Esteban Pasquale. He also appeared in several early horror films: ''Tower of London'' (1939), as Richard III, and ''Son of Frankenstein'' (1939), portraying the dedicated surgeon Baron Wolf von Frankenstein, son of the monster's creator, and, in 1949, was also the narrator for the segment "The Wind in the Willows" in the animated feature, ''The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad''.

He was admired for his athletic cinema swordsmanship (he listed fencing among his favourite recreations). He fought and lost to Errol Flynn in a duel on the beach in ''Captain Blood'' and in an elaborate fight sequence in ''The Adventures of Robin Hood''. He was involved in noteworthy sword fights in ''Tower of London'', ''The Mark of Zorro'', and ''The Court Jester'' (1956). Despite his real-life skill, Rathbone won only once onscreen, in ''Romeo and Juliet'' (1936). Rathbone earned Academy Award nominations for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performances as Tybalt in ''Romeo and Juliet'' (1936) and as King Louis XI in ''If I Were King'' (1938). In ''The Dawn Patrol'' (1938), he played one of his few heroic roles in the 1930s, as a Royal Flying Corps (RFC) squadron commander brought to the brink of a nervous breakdown by the strain and guilt of sending his battle-weary pilots off to near-certain death in the skies of 1915 France. Errol Flynn, Rathbone's perennial foe, starred in the film as his successor when Rathbone's character was promoted.

According to Hollywood legend, Rathbone was Margaret Mitchell's first choice to play Rhett Butler in the film version of her novel ''Gone with the Wind''. The reliability of this story may be suspect, however, as on another occasion Mitchell chose Groucho Marx for the role, apparently in jest. Rathbone actively campaigned for the role, however, but to no avail.

Despite his film success, Rathbone always insisted that he wished to be remembered for his stage career. He said that his favorite role was that of Romeo.

The Sherlock Holmes films

Rathbone is most widely recognized for his many portrayals of Sherlock Holmes. In a radio interview Rathbone recalled that Twentieth Century-Fox producer Gene Markey proposed a film version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's ''The Hound of the Baskervilles'', and when asked who could possibly play Holmes, Markey incredulously replied, "''Who?!'' Basil Rathbone!" The film was so successful that it spawned a series. Fourteen feature films were made between 1939 and 1946, all of which co-starred Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. The first two films, ''The Hound of the Baskervilles'' and ''The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'' (both produced by Fox in 1939), were set in the late Victorian times of the original stories. Later installments, produced by Universal Pictures, beginning with ''Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror'' (1942), were set in contemporary times, and some had World War II-related plots. Rathbone and Bruce also reprised their film roles in a radio series, ''The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'', which began in October 1939. Rathbone appeared in the radio series as long as the film series was active, but after the films lapsed in 1946, Rathbone ceded his radio part to Tom Conway. Conway and Bruce carried on with the series for two seasons, until both dropped out in July 1947.

The many sequels typecast Rathbone, and he was unable to remove himself completely from the shadow of Holmes. However, in later years, Rathbone willingly made the Holmes association, as in a TV sketch with Milton Berle in the early 1950s, in which he donned the deerstalker cap and Inverness cape. In the 1960s, in his Sherlock Holmes costume, he appeared in a series of TV commercials for Getz Exterminators ("Getz gets 'em, since 1888!'").

Rathbone also brought Holmes to the stage in a play written by his wife Ouida. Thomas Gomez, who had appeared as a Nazi ringleader in ''Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror'', played the villainous Professor Moriarty. Nigel Bruce was too ill to take the part of Dr. Watson, and it was played by Jack Raine. Bruce's absence depressed Rathbone, particularly after Bruce died on October 8, 1953, while the play was in rehearsals. The play ran for only three performances.

Later career

In the 1950s, Rathbone excelled in two spoofs of his earlier swashbuckling villains: ''Casanova's Big Night'' (1954) opposite Bob Hope and ''The Court Jester'' (1956) with Danny Kaye. He appeared frequently on TV game shows and continued to appear in major motion pictures, including the Humphrey Bogart comedy ''We're No Angels'' (1955) and John Ford's political drama ''The Last Hurrah'' (1958).

Rathbone also appeared on Broadway numerous times. In 1948, he won a Tony Award for Best Actor for his performance as the unyielding Dr. Austin Sloper in the original production of ''The Heiress'', which featured Wendy Hiller as his timid, spinster daughter. He also received accolades for his performance in Archibald Macleish's ''J.B.'', a modernisation of the Biblical trials of Job.

Through the 1950s and 1960s, he continued to appear in several dignified anthology programs on television. To support his second wife's lavish tastes, he appeared as a panelist on the television game show ''The Name's the Same'' (in 1954), and he also took roles in cheap movie thrillers of far lesser quality, such as ''The Black Sleep'' (1956), ''Queen of Blood'' (1966), ''The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini'' (1966, with comic Harvey Lembeck joking, "That guy looks like Sherlock Holmes"), ''Hillbillys in a Haunted House'' (1967, also featuring Lon Chaney Jr.), and his last film, a low-budget, Mexican horror film called ''Autopsy of a Ghost'' (1968).

He is also known for his spoken word recordings, including his interpretation of Clement C. Moore's "The Night Before Christmas". Rathbone's readings of the stories and poems of Edgar Allan Poe are collected together with readings by Vincent Price in Caedmon Audio's ''The Edgar Allan Poe Audio Collection'' on CD. Rathbone also made many other recordings, of everything from a dramatised version of ''Oliver Twist'' to a recording of Prokofiev's ''Peter and the Wolf'' (with Leopold Stokowski conducting) to a dramatised version of Charles Dickens's ''a Christmas Carol''.

On television he appeared in two musical versions of Dickens's ''A Christmas Carol'': one in 1954, in which he played Marley's Ghost opposite Fredric March's Scrooge, and the original 1956 live-action version of ''The Stingiest Man In Town'', in which he starred as a singing Ebenezer Scrooge.

In the 1960s, he also toured with a one-man show titled (like his autobiography) ''In and Out of Character''. In this show, he recited poetry and Shakespeare as well as giving reminiscences from his life and career (e.g., the humorous, "I could have killed Errol Flynn any time I wanted to!"). As an encore, he recited Vincent Starrett's famous poem "221B."

Vincent Price and Rathbone appeared together, along with Boris Karloff, in ''Tower of London'' (1939) and ''The Comedy of Terrors'' (1964). The latter was the only film to feature the "Big Four" of American International Pictures' horror films: Price, Rathbone, Karloff, and Peter Lorre. Rathbone also appeared with Price in the final segment of Roger Corman's 1962 anthology film ''Tales of Terror'', a loose dramatisation of Poe's "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar."

Basil Rathbone has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: one for motion pictures, at 6549 Hollywood Boulevard; one for radio, at 6300 Hollywood Boulevard; and one for television, at 6915 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.

Personal life

Rathbone married actress Ethel Marion Foreman in 1914. They had one son, Rodion Rathbone (1915–1996), who had a brief Hollywood career under the name John Rodion. The couple divorced in 1926. Rathbone was involved briefly with actress Eva Le Gallienne. In 1927, he married writer Ouida Bergère. Basil and his second wife adopted a daughter, Cynthia Rathbone (1939–1969). The American actor, Jackson Rathbone, who starred as Jasper Hale in the Twilight Saga films, is distantly related to him.

During Rathbone's Hollywood career, his second wife Ouida Bergère—who was also his business manager—developed a reputation for hosting elaborate expensive parties in their home, with many prominent and influential people on the guest lists. This trend inspired a joke in ''The Ghost Breakers'' (1940), a movie in which Rathbone does not appear: During a tremendous thunderstorm in New York City, Bob Hope observes that "Basil Rathbone must be throwing a party."

The actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell described Rathbone as "two profiles pasted together".

Unlike some of his British actor contemporaries in Hollywood and Broadway, Rathbone never renounced his British citizenship. His autobiography, ''In and Out of Character'', was published in 1962.

Honours

Rathbone was made a knight bachelor for services to the stage by King George VI in 1949, and became a member of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire when he was created a KBE by Queen Elizabeth II in the 1961 New Year's Honours List. Despite this, Rathbone rarely used his titles socially and never professionally.

Death

Basil Rathbone died of a heart attack in New York City in 1967 at age 75. He is interred in a crypt in the Shrine of Memories Mausoleum at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

Filmography

{| class=wikitable ! Year !! Title !! Role |- | rowspan=2|1921 || ''Innocent'' || Amadis de Jocelyn |- | ''The Fruitful Vine'' || Don Cesare Carelli |- | rowspan=2|1923 || ''The School for Scandal'' || Joseph Surface |- | ''The Loves of Mary, Queen of Scots'' || Undetermined Subordinate Role |- | 1924 || ''Trouping with Ellen'' || Tony Winterslip |- | 1925 || ''The Masked Bride'' || Antoine |- | 1926 || ''The Great Deception'' || Rizzio |- | 1929 || ''The Last of Mrs. Cheyney'' || Lord Arthur Dilling |- | rowspan=7|1930 || ''The Bishop Murder Case'' || Philo Vance |- | ''This Mad World'' || Paul Parisot |- | ''A Notorious Affair'' || Paul Gherardi |- | ''The Flirting Widow'' || Colonel John "Johnny" Vaughn-Smith |- | ''The Lady of Scandal'' || Edward, Duke of Warrington |- | ''The Lady Surrenders'' || Carl Vandry |- | ''Sin Takes a Holiday'' || Reginald "Reggie" Durant |- | rowspan=2|1932 || ''A Woman Commands'' || Capt. Alex Pastitsch |- | ''After the Ball'' || Jack Harrowby |- | rowspan=2|1933 || ''One Precious Year'' || Derek Nagel |- | ''Loyalties'' || Ferdinand de Levis |- | rowspan=7|1935 || ''David Copperfield'' || Mr. Murdstone |- | ''Anna Karenina'' || Karenin |- | ''The Last Days of Pompeii'' || Pontius Pilate |- | ''A Feather in Her Hat'' || Captain Randolph Courtney |- | ''Kind Lady'' || Henry Abbott |- | ''Captain Blood'' || Levasseur |- | ''A Tale of Two Cities'' || Marquis St. Evremonde |- | rowspan=3|1936 || ''Private Number'' || Thomas Wroxton |- | ''Romeo and Juliet'' || Tybalt - Nephew to Lady Capulet |- | ''The Garden of Allah'' || Count Ferdinand Anteoni |- | rowspan=4|1937 || ''Love from a Stranger'' || Gerald Lovell |- | ''Confession'' || Michael Michailow, aka Michael Koslov |- | ''Make a Wish'' || Johnny Selden |- | ''Tovarich'' || Commissar Dimitri Gorotchenko |- | rowspan=4|1938 || ''The Adventures of Marco Polo'' || Ahmed |- | ''The Adventures of Robin Hood'' || Sir Guy of Gisbourne |- | ''If I Were King'' || King Louis XI |- | ''The Dawn Patrol'' || Major Brand |- | rowspan=6|1939 || ''Son of Frankenstein'' || Baron Wolf von Frankenstein |- bgcolor=#F5F5DC | ''The Hound of the Baskervilles'' || Sherlock Holmes |- | ''The Sun Never Sets'' || Clive Randolph |-bgcolor=#F5F5DC | ''The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'' || Sherlock Holmes |- | ''Rio'' || Paul Reynard |- | ''Tower of London'' || Richard - Duke of Gloucester |- | rowspan=2|1940 || ''Rhythm on the River'' || Oliver Courtney |- | ''The Mark of Zorro'' || Captain Esteban Pasquale |- | rowspan=4|1941 || ''The Mad Doctor'' || Dr. George Sebastian |- | ''The Black Cat'' || Montague Hartley |- | ''International Lady'' || Reggie Oliver |- | ''Paris Calling'' || Andre Benoit |- | rowspan=3|1942 || ''Fingers at the Window'' || Cesar Ferrari, alias Dr. H. Santelle |- | ''Crossroads'' || Henri Sarrou |-bgcolor=#F5F5DC | ''Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror'' || Sherlock Holmes |- | rowspan=5|1943 ||bgcolor=#F5F5DC|''Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon'' ||bgcolor=#F5F5DC|Sherlock Holmes |-bgcolor=#F5F5DC | ''Sherlock Holmes in Washington'' || Sherlock Holmes |- | ''Above Suspicion'' || Sig von Aschenhausen |-bgcolor=#F5F5DC | ''Sherlock Holmes Faces Death'' || Sherlock Holmes |- | ''Crazy House'' || Sherlock Holmes (Cameo appearance) |- | rowspan=5|1944 || bgcolor=#F5F5DC|''The Spider Woman'' || bgcolor=#F5F5DC|Sherlock Holmes |-bgcolor=#F5F5DC | ''The Scarlet Claw'' || Sherlock Holmes |- | ''Bathing Beauty'' || George Adams |-bgcolor=#F5F5DC | ''The Pearl of Death'' || Sherlock Holmes |- | ''Frenchman's Creek'' || Lord Rockingham |- | rowspan=3|1945 ||bgcolor=#F5F5DC| ''The House of Fear'' || bgcolor=#F5F5DC|Sherlock Holmes |-bgcolor=#F5F5DC | ''The Woman in Green'' || Sherlock Holmes |-bgcolor=#F5F5DC | ''Pursuit to Algiers'' || Sherlock Holmes |- | rowspan=3|1946 || bgcolor=#F5F5DC|''Terror by Night'' || bgcolor=#F5F5DC|Sherlock Holmes |- | ''Heartbeat'' || Professor Aristide |-bgcolor=#F5F5DC | ''Dressed to Kill'' || Sherlock Holmes |- | 1949 || ''The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad'' || Narrator (segment "The Wind in the Willows") |- | 1954 || ''Casanova's Big Night'' || Lucio / Narrator |- | rowspan=2|1955 || ''We're No Angels'' || Andre Trochard |- | ''The Court Jester'' || Sir Ravenhurst |- | 1956 || ''The Black Sleep'' || Sir Joel Cadman |- | 1958 || ''The Last Hurrah'' || Norman Cass, Sr. |- | rowspan=2|1961 || ''Mystic Prophecies and Nostradamus'' || Narrator |- | ''The Magic Sword'' || Lodac |- | rowspan=3|1962 || ''Ponzio Pilato'' || Caiaphas |- | ''Tales of Terror'' || Carmichael (segment "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar") |- | ''Two Before Zero'' || Narrator |- | 1964 || ''The Comedy of Terrors'' || John F. Black, Esq. |- | 1965 || ''Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet'' || Prof. Hartman, Lunar 7 |- | rowspan=2|1966 || ''Queen of Blood'' || Dr. Farraday |- | ''The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini'' || Reginald Ripper |- | rowspan=2|1967 || ''Hillbillys in a Haunted House'' || Gregor |- | ''Autopsia de un fantasma'' || Canuto Perez |- | 1986 || ''The Great Mouse Detective'' || Sherlock Holmes (overdubbed voice) |}

References

''Who's Who in the Theatre'' - "The Dramatic List," edited by John Parker, 10th edition revised, London, 1947, pp. 1183–1184.

External links

Biography

Basil Rathbone bio on (re)Search my Trash

Hollywood's South African–born Actors of the 1930s and 1940s (Article by Ross Dix-Peek:http://peek-01.livejournal.com/1525.html)

Category:1892 births Category:1967 deaths Category:English expatriates in the United States Category:English film actors Category:English stage actors Category:English television actors Category:British Army personnel of World War I Category:Burials at Ferncliff Cemetery Category:Old Reptonians Category:People from Johannesburg Category:Recipients of the Military Cross Category:Tony Award winners Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Sherlock Holmes films Category:Sherlock Holmes Category:White South African people Category:South African emigrants to the United Kingdom

an:Basil Rathbone ca:Basil Rathbone cy:Basil Rathbone de:Basil Rathbone es:Basil Rathbone eu:Basil Rathbone fr:Basil Rathbone it:Basil Rathbone la:Basilius Rathbone nl:Basil Rathbone ja:ベイジル・ラスボーン no:Basil Rathbone pl:Basil Rathbone pt:Basil Rathbone ru:Рэтбоун, Бэзил sl::Basil Rathbone sh:Basil Rathbone fi:Basil Rathbone sv:Basil Rathbone

Coordinates	34°03′″N118°15′″N
colour	#DEDEE9
name	Sherlock Holmes
series	Sherlock Holmes
first	''A Study in Scarlet''
creator	Arthur Conan Doyle
gender	Male
occupation	Consulting detective
family	Mycroft Holmes (brother)
nationality	British }}

Sherlock Holmes () is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve difficult cases.

Holmes, who first appeared in publication in 1887, was featured in four novels and 56 short stories. The first story, A Study in Scarlet, appeared in ''Beeton's Christmas Annual'' in 1887 and the second, ''The Sign of the Four'', in ''Lippincott's Monthly Magazine'' in 1890. The character grew tremendously in popularity with the beginning of the first series of short stories in ''Strand Magazine'' in 1891; further series of short stories and two novels published in serial form appeared between then and 1927. The stories cover a period from around 1880 up to 1914.

All but four stories are narrated by Holmes's friend and biographer, Dr. John H. Watson; two are narrated by Holmes himself ("The Blanched Soldier" and "The Lion's Mane") and two others are written in the third person ("The Mazarin Stone" and "His Last Bow"). In two stories ("The Musgrave Ritual" and "The ''Gloria Scott''"), Holmes tells Watson the main story from his memories, while Watson becomes the narrator of the frame story. The first and fourth novels, ''A Study in Scarlet'' and ''The Valley of Fear'', each include a long interval of omniscient narration recounting events unknown both to Holmes and to Watson.

Inspiration for the character of Holmes

Doyle said that the character of Sherlock Holmes was inspired by Dr. Joseph Bell, for whom Doyle had worked as a clerk at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. Like Holmes, Bell was noted for drawing large conclusions from the smallest observations. Sir Henry Littlejohn, Lecturer on Forensic Medicine and Public Health at the Royal College of Surgeons, is also cited as a source for Holmes. Littlejohn served as Police Surgeon and Medical Officer of Health of Edinburgh, providing for Doyle a link between medical investigation and the detection of crime.

Life

Early life

Explicit details about Sherlock Holmes's life outside of the adventures recorded by Dr. Watson are few and far between in Conan Doyle's original stories; nevertheless, incidental details about his early life and extended families portray a loose biographical picture of the detective.

An estimate of Holmes' age in the story "His Last Bow" places his birth in 1854; the story is set in August 1914 and he is described as being 60 years of age. Commonly, the date is cited as 6 January. However, an argument for a later birthdate is posited by author Laurie R. King, based on two of Conan Doyle's stories: ''A Study in Scarlet'' and ''"The Gloria Scott" Adventure''. Certain details in ''"The Gloria Scott" Adventure'' indicate Holmes finished his second and final year at university in either 1880 or 1885. Watson's own account of his wounding in the Second Afghan War and subsequent return to England in ''A Study in Scarlet'' place his moving in with Holmes in either early 1881 or 1882. Together, these suggest Holmes left university in 1880; if he began university at the age of 17, his birth year would likely be 1861.

Holmes states that he first developed his methods of deduction while an undergraduate. The author Dorothy L. Sayers suggested that, given details in two of the Adventures, Holmes must have been at Cambridge rather than Oxford and that "of all the Cambridge colleges, Sidney Sussex (College) perhaps offered the greatest number of advantages to a man in Holmes’ position and, in default of more exact information, we may tentatively place him there".

His earliest cases, which he pursued as an amateur, came from fellow university students. According to Holmes, it was an encounter with the father of one of his classmates that led him to take up detection as a profession, and he spent the six years following university working as a consulting detective, before financial difficulties led him to take Watson as a roommate, at which point the narrative of the stories begins.

From 1881, Holmes was described as having lodgings at 221B, Baker Street, London, from where he runs his consulting detective service. 221B is an apartment up 17 steps, stated in an early manuscript to be at the "upper end" of the road. Until the arrival of Dr. Watson, Holmes worked alone, only occasionally employing agents from the city's underclass, including a host of informants and a group of street children he calls "the Baker Street Irregulars". The Irregulars appear in three stories: "A Study in Scarlet," "The Sign of the Four," and "The Adventure of the Crooked Man".

Little is said of Holmes's family. His parents were unmentioned in the stories and he merely states that his ancestors were "country squires". In "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter", Holmes claims that his great-uncle was Vernet, the French artist. His brother, Mycroft, seven years his senior, is a government official who appears in three stories and is mentioned in one other story. Mycroft has a unique civil service position as a kind of memory-man or walking database for all aspects of government policy. Mycroft is described as even more gifted than Sherlock in matters of observation and deduction, but he lacks Sherlock's drive and energy, preferring to spend his time at ease in the Diogenes Club, described as "a club for the most un-clubbable men in London".

Life with Dr. Watson

Holmes shares the majority of his professional years with his good friend and chronicler Dr. John H. Watson, who lives with Holmes for some time before his marriage in 1887, and again after his wife's death; his residence is maintained by his landlady, Mrs. Hudson.

Watson has two roles in Holmes's life. First, he gives practical assistance in the conduct of his cases; he is the detective's right-hand man, acting variously as look-out, decoy, accomplice and messenger. Second, he is Holmes's chronicler (his "Boswell" as Holmes refers to him). Most of the Holmes stories are frame narratives, written from Watson's point of view as summaries of the detective's most interesting cases. Holmes is often described as criticising Watson's writings as sensational and populist, suggesting that they neglect to accurately and objectively report the pure calculating "science" of his craft.

Nevertheless, Holmes's friendship with Watson is his most significant relationship. In several stories, Holmes's fondness for Watson—often hidden beneath his cold, intellectual exterior—is revealed. For instance, in "The Adventure of the Three Garridebs", Watson is wounded in a confrontation with a villain; although the bullet wound proves to be "quite superficial", Watson is moved by Holmes's reaction:

In all, Holmes is described as being in active practice for 23 years, with Watson documenting his cases for 17 of them.

Retirement

In "His Last Bow", Holmes has retired to a small farm on the Sussex Downs in 1903–1904. Sussex Downs is another name for South Downs, the name of a range of chalk hills in Sussex, overlooking the English Channel. They are opposite to the North Downs, a parallel range stretching from Farnham in Surrey across the entire width of Kent. "Down" is from the Old English "dun," meaning a hill. Holmes specifically retired to a farm in the downs, 8 km (5 miles) from the town of Eastbourne as is chronicled by Watson in his preface to the series of stories entitled "His Last Bow." It is here where he takes up the hobby of beekeeping as his primary occupation, eventually producing a "Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen". The story features Holmes and Watson coming out of retirement one last time to aid the war effort. Only one adventure, "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane", which is narrated by Holmes as he pursues the case as an amateur, takes place during the detective's retirement. The details of his death are not known, but he lives on to this day through the records of his thrilling cases, and will always be remembered and regarded as the "World's Greatest Detective".

Habits and personality

Watson describes Holmes as "bohemian" in habits and lifestyle. According to Watson, Holmes is an eccentric, with no regard for contemporary standards of tidiness or good order. In ''The Musgrave Ritual'', Watson describes Holmes thus:

}}

What appears to others as chaos, however, is to Holmes a wealth of useful information. Throughout the stories, Holmes would dive into his apparent mess of random papers and artefacts, only to retrieve precisely the specific document or eclectic item he was looking for.

Watson frequently makes note of Holmes's erratic eating habits. The detective is often described as starving himself at times of intense intellectual activity, such as during "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder", wherein, according to Watson:

His chronicler does not consider Holmes's habitual use of a pipe, or his less frequent use of cigarettes and cigars, a vice. Nor does Watson condemn Holmes's willingness to bend the truth or break the law on behalf of a client (e.g., lying to the police, concealing evidence or breaking into houses) when he feels it morally justifiable. Even so, it is obvious that Watson has stricter limits than Holmes, and occasionally berated Holmes for creating a "poisonous atmosphere" of tobacco smoke. Holmes himself references Watson's moderation in "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot", saying, "I think, Watson, that I shall resume that course of tobacco-poisoning which you have so often and so justly condemned". Watson also did not condone Holmes's plans when they manipulated innocent people, such as when he toyed with a young woman's heart in The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton although it was done with noble intentions to save many other young women from the clutches of the villainous Milverton.

Holmes is portrayed as a patriot acting on behalf of the government in matters of national security in a number of stories. He also carries out counter-intelligence work in ''His Last Bow'', set at the beginning of the First World War. As shooting practice, the detective adorned the wall of his Baker Street lodgings with "VR" (''Victoria Regina'') in bullet pocks made by his pistol.

Holmes has an ego that at times borders on arrogant, albeit with justification; he draws pleasure from baffling police inspectors with his superior deductions. He does not seek fame, however, and is usually content to allow the police to take public credit for his work. It's often only when Watson publishes his stories that Holmes's role in the case becomes apparent.

Holmes is pleased when he is recognised for having superior skills and responds to flattery, as Watson remarks, as a girl does to comments upon her beauty.

Holmes's demeanour is presented as dispassionate and cold. Yet when in the midst of an adventure, Holmes can sparkle with remarkable passion. He has a flair for showmanship and will prepare elaborate traps to capture and expose a culprit, often to impress Watson or one of the Scotland Yard inspectors.

Holmes is a loner and does not strive to make friends, although he values those that he has, and none higher than Watson. He attributes his solitary ways to his particular interests and his mopey disposition. In ''The Adventure of the'' Gloria Scott, he tells Watson that during two years at college, he made only one friend, Victor Trevor. Holmes says, "I was never a very sociable fellow, Watson, always rather fond of moping in my rooms and working out my own little methods of thought, so that I never mixed much with the men of my year;... my line of study was quite distinct from that of the other fellows, so that we had no points of contact at all". He is similarly described in ''A Study in Scarlet'' as difficult to draw out by young Stamford.

Holmes' emotional state/mental health has been a topic of analysis for decades. At their first meeting in ''A Study in Scarlet'', the detective warns Watson that he gets "in the dumps at times" and doesn't open his "mouth for days on end". Many readers and literary experts have suggested Holmes showed signs of manic depressive psychosis, with moments of intense enthusiasm coupled with instances of indolent self absorption. Other modern readers have speculated that Holmes may have Asperger's syndrome based on his intense attention to details, lack of interest in interpersonal relationships and tendency to speak in long monologues. The detective's isolation and near-gynophobic distrust of women is said to suggest the desire to escape; Holmes "biographer" William Baring-Gould and others, including Nicholas Meyer, author of ''the Seven Percent Solution'', have implied a severe family trauma (i.e., the murder of Holmes' mother) may be the root cause.

Personal hygiene

Holmes is described in ''The Hound of the Baskervilles'' as having a "cat-like" love of personal cleanliness. This in no way appears to hinder his intensely practical pursuit of his profession, however, and appears in contrast with statements that, in the first Holmes story, ''A Study in Scarlet'', his hands are discoloured with acid stains and Holmes uses drops of his own blood to conduct experiments in chemistry and forensics.

Use of drugs

Holmes occasionally uses addictive drugs, especially when lacking stimulating cases. He believes the use of cocaine stimulates his brain when it is not in use. He is a habitual user of cocaine, which he injects in a seven-per-cent solution using a special syringe that he keeps in a leather case. Holmes is also an occasional user of morphine but expressed strong disapproval on visiting an opium den. The 2002 movie ''Sherlock: Case of Evil'' depicts him using heroin, though that never appears in the original stories. All these drugs were legal in late 19th-century England. Both Watson and Holmes are serial tobacco users, including cigarettes, cigars, and pipes. Holmes is expert at identifying tobacco-ash residues, having penned a monograph on the subject.

Dr. Watson strongly disapproves of his friend's cocaine habit, describing it as the detective's "only vice" and expressing concern over its possible effect on Holmes's mental health and superior intellect. In later stories, Watson claims to have "weaned" Holmes off drugs. Even so, according to his doctor friend, Holmes remains an addict whose habit is "not dead, but merely sleeping".

Financial affairs

Although he initially needed Watson to share the rent of his comfortable residence at 221B Baker Street, Watson reveals in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective", when Holmes was living alone, that "I have no doubt that the house might have been purchased at the price which Holmes paid for his rooms," suggesting he had developed a good income from his practice, although it is seldom revealed exactly how much he charges for his services. In "A Scandal in Bohemia", he is paid the staggering sum of one thousand pounds (300 in gold and 700 in notes) as advance payment for "present expenses". In "The Problem of Thor Bridge" he avers: "My professional charges are upon a fixed scale. I do not vary them, save when I remit them altogether".

This is said in a context where a client is offering to double his fees; however, it is likely that rich clients provided Holmes a remuneration greatly in excess of his standard fee. For example, in "The Adventure of the Final Problem", Holmes states that his services to the government of France and the royal house of Scandinavia had left him with enough money to retire comfortably, while in "The Adventure of Black Peter", Watson notes that Holmes would refuse to help the wealthy and powerful if their cases did not interest him, while he could devote weeks at a time to the cases of the most humble clients. Holmes also tells Watson, in "A Case of Identity", of a golden snuff box received from the King of Bohemia after "A Scandal in Bohemia" and a fabulous ring from the Dutch royal family; in "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans", Holmes receives an emerald tie-pin from Queen Victoria. Other mementos of Holmes's cases are a gold sovereign from Irene Adler ("A Scandal in Bohemia") and an autographed letter of thanks from the French President and a Legion of Honour for tracking down an assassin named Huret ("The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez"). In "The Adventure of the Priory School", Holmes "rubs his hands with glee" when the Duke of Holdernesse notes the 5000 pound sterling sum, which surprises even Watson, and then pats the cheque, saying, "I am a poor man", an incident that could be dismissed as representative of Holmes's tendency toward sarcastic humour. Certainly, in the course of his career Holmes had worked for both the most powerful monarchs and governments of Europe (including his own) and various wealthy aristocrats and industrialists and had also been consulted by impoverished pawnbrokers and humble governesses on the lower rungs of society.

Holmes has been known to charge clients for his expenses, and to claim any reward that might be offered for the problem's solution: he says in "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" that Miss Stoner may pay any expenses he may be put to, and requests that the bank in "The Red-Headed League" remunerate him for the money he spent solving the case. Holmes has his wealthy banker client in "The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet" pay him for the costs of recovering the stolen gems and also claims the reward the banker had put for their recovery.

Relationships with women

The only woman to impress Holmes was Irene Adler, who according to Watson was always referred to by Holmes as "''the'' woman". Holmes himself is never directly quoted as using this term and even mentions her name in other cases. Adler is one of the few women who are mentioned in multiple Holmes stories, appearing in person in only one, "A Scandal in Bohemia".

In one story, "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton," Holmes is engaged to be married, but only to gain information for his case. Although Holmes appears to show initial interest in some of his female clients (in particular, Violet Hunter in "The Adventure of the Copper Beeches"), Watson says he inevitably "manifested no further interest in the client when once she had ceased to be the centre of one of his problems". Holmes finds their youth, beauty, and energy (and the cases they bring to him) invigorating, distinct from any romantic interest. These episodes show Holmes possesses a degree of charm; yet apart from the case of Adler, there is no indication of a serious or long-term interest. Watson states that Holmes has an "aversion to women" but "a peculiarly ingratiating way with [them]". Holmes states, "I am not a whole-souled admirer of womankind"; in fact, he finds "the motives of women... so inscrutable.... How can you build on such quicksand? Their most trivial actions may mean volumes;... their most extraordinary conduct may depend upon a hairpin".

As Doyle remarked to muse Joseph Bell, "Holmes is as inhuman as a Babbage's calculating machine and just about as likely to fall in love". The only joy Holmes derives from the company of women is the problems they bring to him to solve. In ''The Sign of the Four'', Watson quotes Holmes as being "an automaton, a calculating machine", and Holmes is quoted as saying, "It is of the first importance not to allow your judgement to be biased by personal qualities. A client is to me a mere unit—a factor in a problem. The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning. I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money". This points to Holmes's lack of interest in relationships with women in general, and clients in particular, leading Watson to remark that "there is something positively inhuman in you at times". At the end of "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot", Holmes states: "I have never loved, Watson, but if I did and if the woman I loved had met such an end, I might act as our lawless lion-hunter had done". In the story, the explorer Dr Sterndale had killed the man who murdered his beloved, Brenda Tregennis, to exact a revenge which the law could not provide. Watson writes in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective" that Mrs. Hudson is fond of Holmes in her own way, despite his bothersome eccentricities as a lodger, owing to his "remarkable gentleness and courtesy in his dealings with women". Again in ''The Sign of the Four'', Watson quotes Holmes as saying, "I would not tell them too much. Women are never to be entirely trusted—not the best of them". Watson notes that while he dislikes and distrusts them, he is nonetheless a "chivalrous opponent".

Methods of detection

Holmesian deduction

Holmes's primary intellectual detection method is induction, which Holmes rather inaccurately calls deduction. "From a drop of water", he writes, "a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other". Holmes stories often begin with a bravura display of his talent for "deduction". It is of some interest to logicians and those interested in logic to try to analyse just what Holmes is doing when he performs his induction. "Holmesian deduction" appears to consist primarily of drawing inferences based on either straightforward practical principles—which are the result of careful inductive study, such as Holmes's study of different kinds of cigar ashes or inference to the best explanation. One quote often heard from Holmes is "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth".

Sherlock Holmes's straightforward practical principles are generally of the form, "If 'p', then 'q'," where 'p' is observed evidence and 'q' is what the evidence indicates. But there are also, as may be observed in the following example, intermediate principles. In "A Scandal in Bohemia" Holmes deduces that Watson had got very wet lately and that he had "a most clumsy and careless servant girl". When Watson, in amazement, asks how Holmes knows this, Holmes answers:

In this case, Holmes employed several connected principles:

If leather on the side of a shoe is scored by several parallel cuts, it was caused by someone who scraped around the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud.

If a London doctor's shoes are scraped to remove crusted mud, the person who so scraped them is the doctor's servant girl.

If someone cuts a shoe while scraping it to remove encrusted mud, that person is clumsy and careless.

If someone's shoes had encrusted mud on them, then they are likely to have been worn by him in the rain, when it is likely he became very wet.

By applying such principles in an obvious way (using repeated applications of ''modus ponens''), Holmes is able to infer from his observation that "the sides of Watson's shoes are scored by several parallel cuts" that:

"Watson's servant girl is clumsy and careless" and "Watson has been very wet lately and has been out in vile weather".

Deductive reasoning allows Holmes to impressively reveal a stranger's occupation, such as a Retired Sergeant of Marines in ''A Study in Scarlet''; a former ship's carpenter turned pawnbroker in "The Red-Headed League"; and a billiard-marker and a retired artillery NCO in "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter". Similarly, by studying inanimate objects, Holmes is able to make astonishingly detailed deductions about their owners, including Watson's pocket-watch in "The Sign of the Four" as well as a hat, a pipe, and a walking stick in other stories.

Yet Doyle is careful not to present Holmes as infallible—a central theme in "The Adventure of the Yellow Face". At the end of the tale a sobered Holmes tells Watson, “If it should ever strike you that I am getting a little over-confident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper ‘Norbury’ in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you”.

Disguise

Holmes displays a strong aptitude for acting and disguise. In several stories, he adopts disguises to gather evidence while 'under cover' so convincing that even Watson fails to penetrate them, such as in "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton", "The Man with the Twisted Lip", "The Adventure of the Empty House" and "A Scandal in Bohemia". In other adventures, Holmes feigns being wounded or ill to give effect to his case, or to incriminate those involved, as in "The Adventure of the Dying Detective".

Weapons and martial arts

;Pistols :Holmes and Watson carry pistols with them; in the case of Watson often his old service revolver. Watson describes these weapons as being used on seven occasions.

;Cane :Holmes, as a gentleman, often carries a stick or cane. He is described by Watson as an expert at singlestick and twice uses his cane as a weapon.

;Sword :In "A Study in Scarlet" Watson describes Holmes as an expert with a sword—although none of the stories have Holmes using a sword. It is mentioned in "Gloria Scott" that Holmes practised fencing.

;Riding crop :In several stories, Holmes appears equipped with a riding crop and in "A Case of Identity" comes close to thrashing a swindler with it. Using a "hunting crop", Holmes knocks a pistol from John Clay's hand in "The Red-Headed League". In "The Six Napoleons" it is described as his favourite weapon—he uses it to break open one of the plaster busts.

;Fist-fighting :Holmes is described as a formidable bare-knuckle fighter. In ''The Sign of the Four'', Holmes introduces himself to a prize-fighter as:

:Holmes engages in hand-to-hand combat with his adversaries on occasions throughout the stories, inevitably emerging the victor. It is mentioned also in "Gloria Scott" that Holmes trained as a boxer.

;Martial arts :In "The Adventure of the Empty House", Holmes recounts to Watson how he used martial arts to overcome Professor Moriarty and fling his adversary to his death down the Reichenbach Falls. He states, "I have some knowledge, however, of ''baritsu,'' or the Japanese system of wrestling, which has more than once been very useful to me". The name "baritsu" appears to be a reference to the real-life martial art of Bartitsu, which combined jujitsu with Holmes' canonical skills of boxing and cane fencing.

Knowledge and skills

In the first story, ''A Study in Scarlet'', something of Holmes's background is given. In early 1881, he is presented as an independent student of chemistry with a variety of very curious side interests, almost all of which turn out to be single-mindedly bent towards making him superior at solving crimes. (When he appears for the first time, he is crowing with delight at having invented a new method for detecting bloodstains; in other stories he indulges in recreational home-chemistry experiments, sometimes filling the rooms with foul-smelling vapours.) An early story, "The Adventure of the ''Gloria Scott''", presents more background on what influenced Holmes to become a detective: a college friend's father richly complimented his deductive skills. Holmes maintains strict adherence to scientific methods and focuses on logic and the powers of observation and deduction.

Holmes also makes use of phrenology, which was widely popular in Victorian times but now regarded as pseudo-scientific: In "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle", he infers from the large size of a man's hat that the owner is intelligent and intellectually inclined, on the grounds that “a man with so large a brain must have something in it”.

In ''A Study in Scarlet'', Holmes claims he does not know that the Earth revolves around the Sun, as such information is irrelevant to his work. Directly after having heard that fact from Watson, he says he will immediately try to forget it. He says he believes that the mind has a finite capacity for information storage, and so learning useless things would merely reduce his ability to learn useful things. Dr. Watson subsequently assesses Holmes's abilities thus:

#

Knowledge of Literature – nil.

#

Knowledge of Philosophy – nil.

#

Knowledge of Astronomy – nil.

#

Knowledge of Politics – Feeble.

#

Knowledge of Botany – Variable. Well up in belladonna, opium and poisons generally. Knows nothing of practical gardening.

#

Knowledge of Geology – Practical, but limited. Tells at a glance different soils from each other. After walks, has shown me splashes upon his trousers, and told me by their colour and consistence in what part of London he had received them.

#

Knowledge of Chemistry – Profound.

#

Knowledge of Anatomy – Accurate, but unsystematic.

#

Knowledge of Sensational Literature – Immense. He appears to know every detail of every horror perpetrated in the century.

#

Plays the violin well.

#

Is an expert singlestick player, boxer and swordsman.

#

Has a good practical knowledge of British law.

--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, ''A Study in Scarlet''

At the very end of ''A Study in Scarlet'' itself, it is shown that Holmes knows Latin and needs no translation of Roman epigrams in the original—though knowledge of the language would be of dubious direct utility for detective work; all university students were required to learn Latin at that time.

Later stories also contradict the list. Despite Holmes's supposed ignorance of politics, in "A Scandal in Bohemia" he immediately recognises the true identity of the supposed "Count von Kramm". Regarding nonsensational literature, his speech is replete with references to the Bible, Shakespeare, even Goethe. He is able to quote from a letter of Flaubert to George Sand and in the original French.

Moreover, in "The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans" Watson reports that in November 1895 "Holmes lost himself in a monograph which he had undertaken upon the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus"—a most esoteric field, for which Holmes would have had to "clutter his memory" with an enormous amount of information which had absolutely nothing to do with crime-fighting—knowledge so extensive that his monograph was regarded as "the last word" on the subject. The later stories abandon the notion that Holmes did not want to know anything unless it had immediate relevance for his profession; in the second chapter of ''The Valley of Fear'', Holmes instead declares that "all knowledge comes useful to the detective", and near the end of "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane" he describes himself as "an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles".

Holmes is also a competent cryptanalyst. He relates to Watson, "I am fairly familiar with all forms of secret writing, and am myself the author of a trifling monograph upon the subject, in which I analyse one hundred and sixty separate ciphers". One such scheme is solved using frequency analysis in "The Adventure of the Dancing Men".

Holmes's analysis of physical evidence is both scientific and precise. His methods include the use of latent prints such as footprints, hoof prints and bicycle tracks to identify actions at a crime scene (''A Study in Scarlet'', "The Adventure of Silver Blaze", "The Adventure of the Priory School", ''The Hound of the Baskervilles'', "The Boscombe Valley Mystery"), the use of tobacco ashes and cigarette butts to identify criminals ("The Adventure of the Resident Patient", ''The Hound of the Baskervilles''), the comparison of typewritten letters to expose a fraud ("A Case of Identity"), the use of gunpowder residue to expose two murderers ("The Adventure of the Reigate Squire"), bullet comparison from two crime scenes ("The Adventure of the Empty House"), analysis of small pieces of human remains to expose two murders (''The Adventure of the Cardboard Box'') and even an early use of fingerprints ("The Norwood Builder"). Holmes also demonstrates knowledge of psychology in "A Scandal in Bohemia", luring Irene Adler into betraying where she had hidden a photograph based on the "premise" that an unmarried woman will seek her most valuable possession in case of fire, whereas a married woman will grab her baby instead.

Despite the excitement of his life (or perhaps seeking to leave it behind), Holmes retired to the Sussex Downs to take up beekeeping ("The Second Stain") and wrote a book on the subject entitled "Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen". His search for relaxation can also be seen in his love for music, notably in "The Red-Headed League", wherein Holmes takes an evening off from a case to listen to Pablo de Sarasate play violin.

He also enjoys vocal music, particularly Wagner ("The Adventure of the Red Circle").

The film ''Young Sherlock Holmes'' (1985), which speculates about Holmes's youthful adventures, shows Holmes as a brilliant secondary school student, being mentored simultaneously by an eccentric professor/inventor and his dedicated fencing instructor.

Influence

Forensic science

Sherlock Holmes remains a great inspiration for forensic science, especially for the way his acute study of a crime scene yields small clues as to the precise sequence of events. He makes great use of trace evidence such as shoe and tire impressions, as well as fingerprints, ballistics and handwriting analysis, now known as questioned document examination. Such evidence is used to test theories conceived by the police, for example, or by the investigator himself. All of the techniques advocated by Holmes later became reality, but were generally in their infancy at the time Conan Doyle was writing. In many of his reported cases, Holmes frequently complains of the way the crime scene has been contaminated by others, especially by the police, emphasising the critical importance of maintaining its integrity, a now well-known feature of crime scene examination.

Owing to the small scale of the trace evidence (such as tobacco ash, hair or fingerprints), he often uses a magnifying glass at the scene, and an optical microscope back at his lodgings in Baker Street. He uses analytical chemistry for blood residue analysis as well as toxicology examination and determination for poisons. Holmes seems to have maintained a small chemistry laboratory in his lodgings, presumably using simple wet chemical methods for detection of specific toxins, for example. Ballistics is used when spent bullets can be recovered, and their calibre measured and matched with a suspect murder weapon.

Holmes was also very perceptive of the dress and attitude of his clients and suspects, noting style and state of wear of their clothes, any contamination (such as clay on boots), their state of mind and physical condition in order to infer their origin and recent history. Skin marks such as tattoos could reveal much about their past history. He applied the same method to personal items such as walking sticks (famously in ''The Hound of the Baskervilles'') or hats (in the case of The Blue Carbuncle), with small details such as medallions, wear and contamination yielding vital indicators of their absent owners.

An omission from the stories is the use of forensic photography. Even before Holmes' time, high quality photography was used to record accident scenes, as in the Tay Bridge disaster of 1879, murders in 1888.

In 2002, the Royal Society of Chemistry bestowed an honorary fellowship of their organisation upon Sherlock Holmes, for his use of forensic science and analytical chemistry in popular literature, making him the only (as of 2010) fictional character to be thus honoured.

Role in the history of the detective story

Although Sherlock Holmes is not the original fiction detective (he was influenced by Edgar Allan Poe's C. Auguste Dupin and Émile Gaboriau's Monsieur Lecoq), his name has become a byword for the part. His stories also include several detective story characters such as the loyal but less intelligent assistant, a role for which Dr Watson has become the archetype. The investigating detective became a popular genre with many authors such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers after the demise of Holmes, with characters such as Hercule Poirot and Lord Peter Wimsey. Forensic methods became less important than the psychology of the criminal, despite the strong growth in forensics in use by the police in the early 20th century.

Scientific literature

Sherlock Holmes has occasionally been used in the scientific literature. John Radford (1999) speculates on his intelligence. Using Conan Doyle’s stories as data, Radford applies three different methods to estimate Sherlock Holmes’s IQ, and concludes that his intelligence was very high indeed, estimated at approximately 190 points. Snyder (2004) examines Holmes’ methods in the light of the science and the criminology of the mid to late 19th century. Kempster (2006) compares neurologists’ skills with those displayed by Holmes. Finally, Didierjean and Gobet (2008) review the literature on the psychology of expertise by taking as model a fictional expert: Sherlock Holmes. They highlight aspects of Doyle’s books that are in line with what is currently known about expertise, aspects that are implausible, and aspects that suggest further research.

Legacy

Fan speculation

The fifty-six short stories and four novels written by Conan Doyle are termed the "canon" by Sherlock Holmes fans. Early scholars of the canon included Ronald Knox in Britain and Christopher Morley in New York, the latter having founded the Baker Street Irregulars, the first society devoted exclusively to the canon of Holmes, in 1934.

Writers have produced many pop culture references to Sherlock Holmes, Conan Doyle, or characters from the stories in homage, to a greater or lesser degree. Such allusions can form a plot development, raise the intellectual level of the piece, or act as Easter eggs for an observant audience.

Some have been overt, introducing Holmes as a character in a new setting, or a more subtle allusion, such as making a logical character live in an apartment at number 221B. One well-known example of this is the character Gregory House on the show ''House M.D'', whose name and apartment number are both references to Holmes. Often the simplest reference is to dress anybody who does some kind of detective work in a deerstalker and cape.

However, throughout the entire novel series, Holmes is never explicitly described as wearing a "deerstalker hat". Holmes dons "his ear-flapped travelling cap" in "The Adventure of Silver Blaze". Sidney Paget first drew Holmes wearing the deerstalker cap and Inverness cape in "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" and subsequently in several other stories.

"Elementary, my dear Watson"

A third major reference is the oft-quoted but non-canonical catchphrase: "Elementary, my dear Watson". This phrase is never actually uttered by Holmes in any of the sixty Holmes stories written by Conan Doyle. In the stories, Holmes often remarks that his logical conclusions are "elementary", in that he considers them to be simple and obvious. He also, on occasion, refers to Dr. Watson as "my dear Watson". The two fragments, however, never appear together. One of the closest examples to this phrase appears in "The Adventure of the Crooked Man", when Holmes explains a deduction:

The first known use of this phrase was in the 1915 novel, ''Psmith Journalist'', by P. G. Wodehouse. It also appears at the very end of the 1929 film, ''The Return of Sherlock Holmes'', the first Sherlock Holmes sound film. William Gillette, who played Holmes on stage and radio, had previously used the similar phrase, ''Oh, this is elementary, my dear fellow''. The phrase might owe its household familiarity to its use in Edith Meiser's scripts for ''The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'' radio series, broadcast from 1939 to 1947.

The Great Hiatus

Holmes aficionados refer to the period from 1891 to 1894—the time between Holmes's disappearance and presumed death in "The Adventure of the Final Problem" and his reappearance in "The Adventure of the Empty House"—as "the Great Hiatus". It is notable, though, that one later story ("The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge") is described as taking place in 1892.

Conan Doyle wrote the first set of stories over the course of a decade. Wanting to devote more time to his historical novels, he killed off Holmes in "The Final Problem," which appeared in print in 1893. After resisting public pressure for eight years, the author wrote ''The Hound of the Baskervilles'', which appeared in 1901, implicitly setting it before Holmes's "death" (some theorise that it actually took place after "The Return" but with Watson planting clues to an earlier date). The public, while pleased with the story, was not satisfied with a posthumous Holmes, and so Conan Doyle revived Holmes two years later. Many have speculated on his motives for bringing Holmes back to life, notably writer-director Nicholas Meyer, who wrote an essay on the subject in the 1970s entitled "The Great Man Takes a Walk". The actual reasons are not known, other than the obvious: publishers offered to pay generously. For whatever reason, Conan Doyle continued to write Holmes stories for a quarter-century longer.

Some writers have come up with other explanations for the hiatus. In Meyer's novel ''The Seven-Per-Cent Solution'', the hiatus is depicted as a secret sabbatical following Holmes's treatment for cocaine addiction at the hands of Sigmund Freud, and presents Holmes making the light-hearted suggestion that Watson write a fictitious account claiming he had been killed by Moriarty, saying of the public: "They'll never believe you in any case".

In his memoirs, Conan Doyle quotes a reader, who judged the later stories inferior to the earlier ones, to the effect that when Holmes went over the Reichenbach Falls, he may not have been killed, but was never quite the same man. The differences in the pre- and post-Hiatus Holmes have in fact created speculation among those who play "The Great Game" (making believe Sherlock Holmes was a historical person). Among the more fanciful theories, the story "The Case of the Detective's Smile" by Mark Bourne, published in the anthology ''Sherlock Holmes in Orbit'', posits that one of the places Holmes visited during his hiatus was Alice's Wonderland. While there, he solved the case of the stolen tarts, and his experiences there contributed to his kicking the cocaine addiction.

Societies

In 1934, the Sherlock Holmes Society, in London, and the Baker Street Irregulars, in New York were founded. Both are still active (though the Sherlock Holmes Society was dissolved in 1937 to be resuscitated only in 1951). The London-based society is one of many worldwide who arrange visits to the scenes of the Sherlock Holmes adventures, such as the Reichenbach Falls in the Swiss Alps.

The two initial societies founded in 1934 were followed by many more Holmesians circles, first of all in America (where they are called "scion societies"—offshoots—of the Baker Street Irregulars), then in England and Denmark. Nowadays, there are Sherlockian societies in many countries, such as India and Japan.

Museums

During the 1951 Festival of Britain, Sherlock Holmes's sitting-room was reconstructed as the masterpiece of a Sherlock Holmes Exhibition, displaying a unique collection of original material. After the 1951 exhibition closed, items were transferred to the Sherlock Holmes Pub, in London, and to the Conan Doyle Collection in Lucens (Switzerland). Both exhibitions, each including its own Baker Street Sitting-Room reconstruction, are still open to the public. In 1990, the Sherlock Holmes Museum opened in Baker Street London and the following year in Meiringen, Switzerland another museum opened; naturally, they include less historical material about Conan Doyle than about Sherlock Holmes himself. The Sherlock Holmes Museum in Baker Street, London was the first Museum in the world to be dedicated to a fictional character. A private collection of Conan Doyle is also housed in the Portsmouth City Museum which has a permanent exhibit, due to his importance in the city where he lived and worked for many years.

Adaptations and derived works

The enduring popularity of Sherlock Holmes has led to hundreds of works based on the character – both adaptations into other media and original stories. The copyright in all of Conan Doyle's works expired in the United Kingdom in 2000 (1980 in Canada and Australasia) and they are therefore in the public domain throughout most of the world (where the expiry term is 50 or 70 years following the year of death). All works published in the United States prior to 1923 are in the public domain; this includes all Sherlock Holmes stories with the exception of some of the stories contained within The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes. For works published after 1923 but before 1963, if the copyright was registered, its term lasts for 95 years. The Conan Doyle heirs registered the copyright to ''The Case Book'' (published in the USA after 1923) in 1981.

Stage and screen adaptations

The ''Guinness World Records'' has consistently listed Sherlock Holmes as the "most portrayed movie character" with 75 actors playing the part in over 211 films. Holmes' first screen appearance was in the Mutoscope film ''Sherlock Holmes Baffled'' in 1900, albeit in a barely-recognisable form.

William Gillette’s 1899 play ''Sherlock Holmes, or The Strange Case of Miss Faulkner'' was a synthesis of several stories by Doyle, mostly based on ''A Scandal in Bohemia'' adding love interest, with the Holmes-Moriarty exchange from ''The Final Problem'', as well as elements from ''The Copper Beeches'' and ''A Study in Scarlet''. By 1916, Harry Arthur Saintsbury had played Holmes on stage more than a thousand times. This play formed the basis for Gillette's 1916 motion picture, ''Sherlock Holmes''.

In a 1924 comedy film "Sherlock Jr." Buster Keaton's character longs to be a detective.

Basil Rathbone starred as Sherlock Holmes, alongside Nigel Bruce as Dr Watson, in fourteen US films (two for 20th Century Fox and a dozen for Universal Pictures) from 1939 to 1946, as well as a number of radio plays. It is these films that produced the iconic though noncanonical line, "Elementary, my dear Watson".

Ronald Howard starred in 39 episodes of the ''Sherlock Holmes'' 1954 American TV series with Howard Marion Crawford as Watson. The storylines deviated from the books of Conan Doyle, changing characters and other details.

Fritz Weaver appeared as Sherlock Holmes in the musical ''Baker Street'', which ran on Broadway between 16 February and 14 November 1965. Peter Sallis portrayed Dr. Watson, Inga Swenson appeared as The Woman, Irene Adler, and Martin Gabel played Moriarty. Virginia Vestoff, Tommy Tune, and Christopher Walken were also members of the original cast.

In ''The Return Of Sherlock Holmes'', a TV-Movie aired in 1987, Margaret Colin stars as Dr. Watson's great-granddaughter Jane Watson, a Boston private eye, who stumbles upon Sherlock Holmes' (played by Michael Pennington) body in frozen suspension and restores the Victorian sleuth to life in the 1980s. The film was intended as a pilot for a TV series which never materialised. A similar plot line was used in ''Sherlock Holmes Returns: 1994 Baker Street'' where Dr Amy Winslow (played by Debrah Farentino) discovers Sherlock Holmes frozen in the cellar of house in San Francisco owned by a descendant of Mrs Hudson. Holmes (played by Anthony Higgins) froze himself in the hopes that crimes in the future would be less dull. He discovers that consulting detectives have been replaced by the police department's forensic science lab and that the Moriarty family are still the Napoleon's of crime.

Two episodes of ''Star Trek: The Next Generation'' feature Sherlock Holmes. In episode No. 29 ("Elementary, Dear Data") the character of Data, played by Brent Spiner, pretends he is Sherlock to Geordi's Dr. Watson in a holodeck experience. In episode No. 138 ("Ship in a Bottle") archvillain Dr. Moriarty seems to escape from the holodeck into the Enterprise proper.

Jeremy Brett is generally considered the definitive Holmes, having played the role in four series of ''Sherlock Holmes'', created by John Hawkesworth for Britain's Granada Television, from 1984 through to 1994, as well as depicting Holmes on stage. Brett's Dr Watson was played by David Burke (pre-hiatus) and Edward Hardwicke (post-hiatus) in the series. Jeremy Brett wished to be the best Sherlock Holmes the world had ever seen and conducted extensive research into the character and the author that created him. He strove to bring passion and life to the role and in his obituary it was said, "Mr. Brett was regarded as the quintessential Holmes: breathtakingly analytical, given to outrageous disguises and the blackest moods and relentless in his enthusiasm for solving the most intricate crimes."

Nicol Williamson portrayed Holmes in ''The Seven-Per-Cent Solution'' with Robert Duvall playing Watson and featuring Alan Arkin as Sigmund Freud. The 1976 adaption was written by Nicholas Meyer from his 1974 book of the same name, and directed by Herbert Ross.

Between 1979 and 1986, Soviet television broadcast a series of five made-for-TV films in a total of eleven parts, ''The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson'', starring Vasily Livanov as Holmes and Vitaly Solomin as Watson. Livanov's portrayal of Holmes is widely considered canonical. Holmes museum in London, Baker St., 221B, has the portrait of Livanov depicting Holmes himself.

In 2002 made-for-television movie ''Sherlock: Case of Evil'', James D'Arcy starred as Holmes in his 20s. The story noticeably departs from the style and backstory of the canon and D'Arcy's portrayal of Holmes is slightly different from prior incarnations of the character, psychologically disturbed, an absinthe addicted, a heavy drinker and a ladies' man.

The Fox television series ''House'' contains numerous similarities and references to Holmes. Show creator David Shore has acknowledged this "subtle homage".

In the 2009 film ''Sherlock Holmes'', based on a story by Lionel Wigram and images by John Watkiss, directed by Guy Ritchie, the role of Holmes is performed by Robert Downey, Jr. with Jude Law portraying Watson. It is a reinterpretation which heavily focuses on Holmes's more anti-social personality traits as an unkempt eccentric with a brilliant analytical mind and formidable martial abilities, making this the most cynical incarnation of Holmes. However, with the exception of missing Holmes's 'catlike love of personal cleanliness', many critics have lauded the film as one of the most faithful to Doyle's canon. Robert Downey Jr. won the Golden Globe Award for his portrayal. Downey Jr. will return in the 2011 sequel ''Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows''.

Independent film company The Asylum released the direct-to-DVD film ''Sherlock Holmes'' in January 2010. In the film, Holmes and Watson battle a criminal mastermind dubbed "Spring-Heeled Jack", who controls several mechanical creatures to commit crimes across London. Holmes (Ben Syder) is portrayed as considerably younger than most actors who have played him, and his disapproval of Scotland Yard is undertoned, though things like his drug additction remain mostly unchanged. The film features a brother of Holmes's called Thorpe, who was invented by the producers of the film out of creative liberty. His companion Watson is played by ''Torchwood'' actor Gareth David-Lloyd.

In March 2010 Youtuber "Ross K" (Ross K Foad) created No Place Like Holmes, a web drama comedy show based on Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. It is considered to be the only ongoing Sherlock Holmes web show. It focuses on the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson following an encounter with a malicious demonic Sir Hugo Baskerville, who freezes them in a time spell only for them to eventually re-emerge in the present day. Unlike the BBC Sherlock, this Holmes does not embrace technology or modern-day devices and remains the Victorian gentleman he has always been, dressing the same and holding the same values he did over 100 years ago. There is also a spin-off which takes place in 1891–1894 covering the Great Hiatus years where Sherlock is still on the run from Moriarty's right-hand men following the events of the Final Problem.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays a modern-day version of the detective in the BBC One TV series ''Sherlock'', which premiered on 25 July 2010. The series changes the books' original Victorian setting to the shady and violent present-day London. The show was created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, best-known as writers for the BBC television series ''Doctor Who''. Says Moffat, "Conan Doyle's stories were never about frock coats and gas light; they're about brilliant detection, dreadful villains and blood-curdling crimes – and frankly, to hell with the crinoline. Other detectives have cases, Sherlock Holmes has adventures, and that's what matters."

Cumberbatch's Holmes was described by the BBC as

brilliant, aloof and almost entirely lacking in social graces. Sherlock is a unique young man with a mind like a 'racing engine'. Without problems to solve, it will tear itself to pieces. And the more bizarre and baffling the problems the better. He has set himself up as the world's only consulting detective, whom the police grudgingly accept as their superior.

He also uses modern technology, such as texting and internet blogging, to solve the crimes, and in a nod towards changing social attitudes and broadcasting regulations, he has replaced his pipe with multiple nicotine patches.

Related and derivative works

In addition to the Sherlock Holmes corpus, Conan Doyle's "The Lost Special" (1898) features an unnamed "amateur reasoner" clearly intended to be identified as Holmes by his readers. His explanation for a baffling disappearance, argued in Holmes's characteristic style, turns out to be quite wrong—evidently Conan Doyle was not above poking fun at his own hero. A short story by Conan Doyle using the same idea is "The Man with the Watches". Another example of Conan Doyle's humour is "How Watson Learned the Trick" (1924), a parody of the frequent Watson-Holmes breakfast table scenes. A further (and earlier) parody by Conan Doyle is "The Field Bazaar". He also wrote other material, especially plays, featuring Holmes. Many of these are collected in ''Sherlock Holmes: The Published Apocrypha'' edited by Jack Tracy, ''The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'' edited by Peter Haining and ''The Uncollected Sherlock Holmes'' compiled by Richard Lancelyn Green.

In 1907, Sherlock Holmes began featuring in a series of German booklets. Among the writers was Theo van Blankensee. Watson had been replaced by a 19 year old assistant from the street, among his ''Baker Street Irregulars'', with the name Harry Taxon, and Mrs. Hudson had been replaced by one Mrs. Bonnet. From number 10 the series changed its name to "Aus den Geheimakten des Welt-Detektivs". The French edition changed its name from "Les Dossiers Secrets de Sherlock Holmes" to "Les Dossiers du Roi des Detectives".

Sherlock Holmes's abilities as both a good fighter and as an excellent logician have been a boon to other authors who have lifted his name, or details of his exploits, for their plots. These range from Holmes as a cocaine addict, whose drug-fuelled fantasies lead him to cast an innocent Professor Moriarty as a super villain (''The Seven-Per-Cent Solution''), to science-fiction plots involving him being re-animated after death to fight crime in the future (''Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century'').

Some authors have supplied stories to fit the tantalising references in the canon to unpublished cases (e.g. "The giant rat of Sumatra, a story for which the world is not yet prepared" in "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire"), notably ''The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes'' by Conan Doyle's son Adrian Conan Doyle with John Dickson Carr, and ''The Lost Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'' by Ken Greenwald, based rather closely on episodes of the 1945 Sherlock Holmes radio show that starred Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce and for which scripts were written by Dennis Green and Anthony Boucher. Others have used different characters from the stories as their own detective, e.g. Mycroft Holmes in ''Enter the Lion'' by Michael P. Hodel and Sean M. Wright (1979) or Dr James Mortimer (from ''The Hound of the Baskervilles'') in books by Gerard Williams.

Laurie R. King recreates Sherlock Holmes in her Mary Russell series (starting with ''The Beekeeper's Apprentice''), set during the First World War and the 1920s. Her Holmes is (semi)retired in Sussex, where he is literally stumbled over by a teenage American girl. Recognising a kindred spirit, he gradually trains her as his apprentice. As of 2009 the series includes nine novels and a novella tie-in with a book from King's present-time Kate Martinelli series, ''The Art of Detection''.

Carole Nelson Douglas' series, the Irene Adler Adventures, is based on the character from Doyle's "A Scandal in Bohemia". The first book, ''Good Night, Mr. Holmes'', retells that tale from Irene's point of view. The series is narrated by Adler's companion, Penelope Huxleigh, in a role similar to that of Dr. Watson.

The film ''They Might Be Giants'' is a 1971 romantic comedy based on the 1961 play of the same name (both written by James Goldman) in which the character Justin Playfair, played by George C. Scott, is convinced he is Sherlock Holmes, and manages to convince many others of same, including the psychiatrist Dr. Watson, played by Joanne Woodward, who is assigned to evaluate him so he can be committed to a mental institution.

The film ''Young Sherlock Holmes'' (1985) explores adventures of Holmes and Watson as boarding school pupils.

The Japanese anime series "Detective Conan", also called "Case Closed" in English, is an homage to Doyle's work. The 2002 film ''The Case of the Whitechapel Vampire'' is loosely based on Doyle's story "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire".

In the 1980s Ben Kingsley played Dr. Watson in ''Without a Clue''. Dr. Watson hired an actor to be Sherlock Holmes (Michael Caine) because the cases he has been writing about are his own. Moriarty is said to know that Sherlock Holmes is an idiot.

The novel ''A Dog About Town'' by J. F. Englert makes reference to Sherlock Holmes, comparing the black Labrador retriever narrator, Randolph, to Doyle's detective as well as naming a fictitious spirit guide after him.

''The Final Solution'' is a 2004 novel by Michael Chabon. The story, set in 1944, revolves around an 89-year-old long-retired detective who may or may not be Sherlock Holmes but is always called just "the old man", now interested mostly in beekeeping, and his quest to find a missing parrot, the only friend of a mute Jewish boy. The title references both Doyle's story "The Final Problem" and the Final Solution, the Nazis' plan for the genocide of the Jewish people.

In 2006, a southern California "vaudeville-nouveau" group known as Sound & Fury began performing a theatre in the round parody show entitled "Sherlock Holmes & The Saline Solution" which depicts Holmes as a bumbling figure guided by a slightly less clueless Watson. The show ran in Los Angeles as well as the Edinburgh and Adelaide Fringe Festivals through 2009.

In a novella "The Prisoner of the Tower, or A Short But Beautiful Journey of Three Wise Men" by Boris Akunin published in 2008 in Russia as the conclusion of "Jade Rosary Beads" book, Sherlock Holmes and Erast Fandorin oppose Arsène Lupin on 31 December 1899.

In June 2010 it was announced that Franklin Watts books, a part of Hachette Children's Books are to release a series of four children's graphic novels by writer Tony Lee and artist Dan Boultwood in spring 2011 based around the Baker Street Irregulars during the three years that Sherlock Holmes was believed dead, between The Adventure of the Final Problem and The Adventure of the Empty House. Although not specifying whether Sherlock Holmes actually appears in the books, the early reports include appearances by Doctor Watson, Inspector Lestrade and Irene Adler.

On 17 January 2011, it was announced that the Conan Doyle estate had commissioned Anthony Horowitz, author of the Alex Rider novels, The Power of Five and TV's ''Foyle's War'', to write a brand new, authorised Sherlock Holmes novel to be published by Orion Books in September 2011. "The content of the new tale – and indeed the title – remain a closely guarded secret."

The original stories

The original Sherlock Holmes stories consist of fifty-six short stories and four novels written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

Novels

''A Study in Scarlet'' (published 1887, in ''Beeton's Christmas Annual'')

''The Sign of the Four'' (published 1890, ''Lippincott's Monthly Magazine'')

''The Hound of the Baskervilles'' (serialised 1901–1902 in ''The Strand'')

''The Valley of Fear'' (serialised 1914–1915 in ''The Strand'')

Short stories

''For more detail see List of Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes short stories''.

The short stories, originally published in periodicals, were later gathered into five anthologies:

''The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'' (contains stories published 1891–1892 in ''The Strand'')

''The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes'' (contains stories published 1892–1893 in ''The Strand'' as further episodes of the ''Adventures'')

''The Return of Sherlock Holmes'' (contains stories published 1903–1904 in ''The Strand'')

''The Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes (including His Last Bow) '' (contains stories published 1908–1913 and 1917)

''The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes'' (contains stories published 1921–1927)

See also

"Holmes-ian" Detection:

*Forensic chemistry

*Forensic engineering

*HOLMES2 (police computer system)

List of people who have played Sherlock Holmes

List of Holmesian studies

Other Arthur Conan Doyle characters:

*Professor Challenger

''Adaptations of Sherlock Holmes

*Games:

*''Sherlock'' (1984) (Philip Mitchell) (PC text adventure)

*''221B Baker Street'' (1987) (Datasoft) (PC and Mac)

*''Sherlock: The Riddle of the Crown Jewels'' (1988) (Infocom)

*''Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective'' (1991) (ICOM Simulations)

*''Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective Vol. II'' (1992) (ICOM Simulations)

*''Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective Vol. III'' (1993) (ICOM Simulations)

*''The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Serrated Scalpel'' (1992) (Electronic Arts) (PC)

*''The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Rose Tattoo'' (1996) (Electronic Arts) (PC)

*''Sherlock Holmes'' series: (Frogwares) (PC)

**''Sherlock Holmes: Mystery of the Mummy'' (2002) (Frogwares) (PC)

**''Sherlock Holmes: Secret of the Silver Earring'' (2004) (Frogwares) (PC)

**''Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened'' (2006) (Frogwares) (PC)

**''Sherlock Holmes versus Arsène Lupin'' (2007) (Frogwares) (PC)

**''Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery of the Persian Carpet'' (Frogwares) (PC)

**''Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper'' (2009) (Frogwares) (PC)(X360)

References

Further reading

Fenoli Marc, Qui a tué Sherlock Holmes ? [Who shot Sherlock Holmes ?], Review L’Alpe 45, Glénat-Musée Dauphinois, Grenoble-France, 2009. ISBN 978-2-7234-6902-9

Lieboe, Eli. ''Doctor Joe Bell: Model for Sherlock Holmes''. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1982; Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-87972-198-5

External links

The Ocular Helmsman A Vade Mecum Upon the Personal Effects & Environs of Mssrs. Sherlock Holmes & John H. Watson of 221B Baker Street for the Victorian Layman (sic)

For the Heirs to Holmes, a Tangled Web

The Sherlock Holmes Museum 221b Baker Street, London England.

The Sherlock Holmes Society of London London society founded 1951

Sherlockian Major Sherlock Holmes reference with Original Stories, Pictures, articles and links to other holmesian websites.

Baker Street Dozen Sherlock Holmes in Books, Film and Media

Bert Coules' website (BBC Radio 4 canonical and original stories, 1989–2004)

Discovering Sherlock Holmes at Stanford University

Sherlock Holmes Special Collections

The Sherlock Holmes Collections at the University of Minnesota Special Collections and Rare Books

Edward Winter, Chess and Sherlock Holmes

Mostly-Victorian.com original Sherlock Holmes tales from ''The Strand''

Wall Street Journal on Sherlock Holmes

Category:Fictional characters introduced in 1887 Category:1930s American radio programs Category:Fictional amateur detectives Category:Fictional boxers Category:Fictional criminologists Category:Fictional English people Category:Fictional martial artists Category:Fictional people from London Category:Fictional private investigators Category:Fictional sword fighters Category:Fictional violinists Category:Victorian era Category:Edwardian era

ar:شرلوك هولمز az:Şerlok Holms bn:শার্লক হোমস zh-min-nan:Sherlock Holmes be:Шэрлак Холмс be-x-old:Шэрлак Голмз bs:Sherlock Holmes bg:Шерлок Холмс ca:Sherlock Holmes ceb:Sherlock Holmes cs:Sherlock Holmes da:Sherlock Holmes de:Sherlock Holmes et:Sherlock Holmes el:Σέρλοκ Χολμς es:Sherlock Holmes eo:Sherlock Holmes eu:Sherlock Holmes fa:شرلوک هولمز fr:Sherlock Holmes fy:Sherlock Holmes gl:Sherlock Holmes ko:셜록 홈즈 hi:शर्लक होम्स, एस॑क्वायर hr:Sherlock Holmes id:Sherlock Holmes it:Sherlock Holmes he:שרלוק הולמס kn:ಷರ್ಲಾಕ್‌ ಹೋಮ್ಸ್‌ ka:შერლოკ ჰოლმსი kk:Шерлок Холмс la:Sherlock Holmes lv:Šerloks Holmss lb:Sherlock Holmes lt:Šerlokas Holmsas hu:Sherlock Holmes mk:Шерлок Холмс ml:ഷെർലക് ഹോംസ് mt:Sherlock Holmes mr:शेरलॉक होम्स ms:Sherlock Holmes my:ရှားလော့ခ်ဟုမ်း nah:Sherlock Holmes nl:Sherlock Holmes ja:シャーロック・ホームズ no:Sherlock Holmes nn:Sherlock Holmes oc:Sherlock Holmes pl:Sherlock Holmes pt:Sherlock Holmes ro:Sherlock Holmes ru:Шерлок Холмс sco:Sherlock Holmes scn:Sherlock Holmes simple:Sherlock Holmes sk:Sherlock Holmes sl:Sherlock Holmes sr:Šerlok Holms sh:Sherlock Holmes fi:Sherlock Holmes sv:Sherlock Holmes ta:செர்லக் ஓம்சு tt:Шерлок Холмс te:షెర్లాక్ హోమ్స్ th:เชอร์ล็อก โฮล์มส์ tr:Sherlock Holmes uk:Шерлок Холмс vi:Sherlock Holmes zh-yue:福爾摩斯 bat-smg:Šerluoks Huolmsos zh:歇洛克·福尔摩斯

Coordinates	34°03′″N118°15′″N
bgcolour	silver
name	Nigel Bruce
birth name	William Nigel Ernle Bruce
birth date	February 04, 1895
birth place	Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico
death date	October 08, 1953
death place	Santa Monica, California, U.S.
occupation	Actor
years active	1929–1952
spouse	Violet Pauline Shelton (1921-1953; his death; 2 daughters) }}

William Nigel Ernle Bruce (4 February 1895 – 8 October 1953), best known as Nigel Bruce, was a British character actor on stage and screen. He was best known for his portrayal of Doctor Watson in a series of films and in the radio series ''The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'' (starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes). Bruce is also remembered for his roles in the Alfred Hitchcock films ''Rebecca'' and ''Suspicion''.

Biography

Bruce was the second son of Sir William Waller Bruce, 10th Baronet (1856–1912) and his wife Angelica (died 1917), daughter of General George Selby, Royal Artillery. Bruce was born in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico while his parents were on holiday there. He was educated at the Grange, Stevenage and at Abingdon School, Oxfordshire. He served in France from 1914 as a lieutenant in the 10th Service Battalion - Somerset Light Infantry and the Honourable Artillery Company, but was severely wounded at Cambrai the following year, with eleven bullets in his left leg, and spent most of the remainder of the war in a wheelchair.

He made his first appearance on stage on 12 May 1920 at the Comedy Theatre as a footman in ''Why Marry?''. In October that year, he went to Canada as stage manager to Henry V. Esmond and Eva Moore and also playing "Montague Jordan" in ''Eliza Comes to Stay''; upon returning to England, he toured in the same part. He appeared constantly on stage thereafter, and eight years later, also started working in silent films. In 1934, he moved to Hollywood, later setting up home at 701 North Alpine Drive, Beverly Hills.

Nigel Bruce typically played buffoonish, fuzzy-minded gentlemen. During his film career, he worked in 78 films, including ''Treasure Island'' (1934), ''The Scarlet Pimpernel'' (1934), ''The Trail of the Lonesome Pine'' (1936), ''Rebecca'' (1940), ''Suspicion'' (1941), ''Lassie Come Home'' (1943), and ''The Corn Is Green'' (1945). Bruce participated in two landmark films: ''Becky Sharp'', the first feature film in full Technicolor, and ''Bwana Devil'', the first 3-D feature. He uncharacteristically played a detestable figure in 1939's ''The Rains Came'' which became the first film to win an Oscar for special effects.

Watson role

Bruce's signature role was that of Doctor Watson in the 1939-1946 Sherlock Holmes film series with his good friend Basil Rathbone as Holmes. Bruce starred as Watson in all 14 films of the series and over 200 radio programs of ''The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes''. Although Watson often appears to be the older of the two main characters, Bruce was actually three years younger than his co-star Rathbone.

Though for most viewers Nigel Bruce formed their vision of Dr. Watson, Holmes purists have long objected that the Watson of the books was intelligent and capable (although not an outstanding detective), and that Bruce's portrayal made Watson far dimmer and more bumbling than his literary original. (A nickname resulting from this portrayal was "Boobus Britannicus.") Loren D. Estleman wrote of Bruce: "If a mop bucket appeared in a scene, his foot would be inside it, and if by some sardonic twist of fate and the whim of director Roy William Neill he managed to stumble upon an important clue, he could be depended upon to blow his nose on it and throw it away."

Rathbone, however, spoke highly of Bruce's portrayal, saying that Watson was one of the screen's most lovable characters. The Rathbone-Bruce film series lapsed with the death of producer-director Roy William Neill in 1946. Since then, most major modern adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, especially since the 1970s, have consciously defied the popular stereotype to depict Watson faithfully as a capable man of action.

Later life and death

Bruce, known as "Willie" to his friends, was a leading member of the British film colony in Los Angeles, and was captain of the (mostly British) Hollywood Cricket Club. Unlike some of his contemporaries, and along with Basil Rathbone, he never renounced his British citizenship despite his long residence in the United States, and he retained his membership of London's Garrick Club and Buck's Club until his death. His final film, ''World for Ransom'', was released posthumously in 1954.

Family

Nigel Bruce was married from 1921 until his death to British actress Violet Campbell (née Violet Pauline Shelton; 1892–1970); they had two daughters, Jennifer and Pauline. In 1946 Pauline married the British flying ace Alan Geoffrey Page.

Death

Bruce died from a heart attack in Santa Monica, California in 1953, aged 58. He was cremated, and his ashes stored in the vault at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles.

He wrote an autobiography called ''Games, Gossip and Greasepaint'' which has never been published; however, excerpts have been printed in the ''Sherlock Holmes Journal'', and these have been posted online, with permission.

Filmography

{| class=wikitable width=62% ! width=2%|Year !! width=30%|Title !! width=30%|Role |- | 1929 || ''Red Aces'' || Kinsfeather, T.B. |- | rowspan=3|1930 || ''The Squeaker'' || Collie |- | ''Escape'' || Constable |- | ''Birds of Prey'' || Manager |- | 1931 || ''The Calendar'' || Lord Willie Panniford |- | rowspan=2|1932 || ''The Midshipmaid'' || Major Spink |- | ''Lord Camber's Ladies'' || Lord Camber |- | rowspan=2|1933 || ''I Was a Spy'' || Scottie |- | ''Channel Crossing'' || Nigel Guthrie |- | rowspan=7|1934 || ''Coming-Out Party'' || Troon, the Butler |- | ''Stand Up and Cheer!'' || Eustis Dinwiddle |- | ''Murder in Trinidad'' || Bertram Lynch |- | ''Treasure Island'' || Squire Trelawney |- | ''The Lady Is Willing'' || Welton |- | ''Springtime for Henry'' || Johnny Jewlliwell |- | ''The Scarlet Pimpernel'' || The Prince of Wales |- | rowspan=4|1935 || ''Becky Sharp'' || Joseph Sedley |- | ''She'' || Horace Holly |- | ''Jalna'' || Maurice Vaughn |- | ''The Man Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo'' || Ivan |- | rowspan=5|1936 || ''The Trail of the Lonesome Pine'' || Thurber |- | ''Under Two Flags'' || Capt. Menzies |- | ''The White Angel'' || Dr. West |- | ''Follow Your Heart'' || Henri Forrester |- | ''The Charge of the Light Brigade'' || Sir Benjamin Warrenton |- | 1936 || ''The Man I Marry'' || Robert Hartley |- | rowspan=2|1937 || ''Thunder in the City'' || Duke Of Glenavon |- | ''The Last of Mrs. Cheyney'' || Lord Willie Winton |- | rowspan=3|1938 || ''The Baroness and the Butler'' || Major Andros |- | ''Kidnapped'' || Neil MacDonald |- | ''Suez'' || Sir Malcolm Cameron |- | rowspan=3|1939 || bgcolor=#F5F5DC|''The Hound of the Baskervilles'' || bgcolor=#F5F5DC|Dr. John H. Watson |- bgcolor=#F5F5DC | ''The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'' || Dr. John H. Watson |- | ''The Rains Came'' || Lord Albert Esketh |- | rowspan=6|1940 || ''The Blue Bird'' || Mr. Luxury |- | ''Adventure in Diamonds'' || Col. J.W. Lansfield |- | ''Rebecca'' || Major Giles Lacy |- | ''Lillian Russell'' || William S. Gilbert |- | ''Susan and God'' || Hutchins Stubbs |- | ''A Dispatch from Reuter's'' || Sir Randolph Persham |- | rowspan=6|1941 || ''Hudson's Bay'' || Prince Rupert |- | ''Play Girl'' || William McDonald Vincent |- | ''Free and Easy'' || Florian Clemington |- | ''This Woman Is Mine'' || Duncan MacDougall |- | ''The Chocolate Soldier'' || Bernard Fischer, Critic |- | ''Suspicion'' || Beaky |- | rowspan=5|1942 || ''Roxie Hart'' || E. Clay Benham |- | ''This Above All'' || Ramsbottom |- | ''Eagle Squadron'' || McKinnon |- bgcolor=#F5F5DC | ''Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror'' || Dr. John H. Watson |- | ''Journey for Margaret'' || Herbert V. Allison |- | rowspan=6|1943 || bgcolor=#F5F5DC|''Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon'' || bgcolor=#F5F5DC|Dr. John H. Watson |- | ''Forever and a Day'' || Maj. Garrow |- bgcolor=#F5F5DC | ''Sherlock Holmes in Washington'' || Dr. John H. Watson |- bgcolor=#F5F5DC | ''Sherlock Holmes Faces Death'' || Dr. John H. Watson |- | ''Lassie Come Home'' || Duke of Rudling |- | ''Crazy House'' || Dr. John H. Watson (Cameo appearance) |- | rowspan=5|1944 || bgcolor=#F5F5DC|''The Spider Woman'' || bgcolor=#F5F5DC|Dr. John H. Watson |- bgcolor=#F5F5DC | ''The Scarlet Claw'' || Dr. John H. Watson |- bgcolor=#F5F5DC | ''The Pearl of Death'' || Dr. John H. Watson |- | ''Gypsy Wildcat'' || High Sheriff |- | ''Frenchman's Creek'' || Lord Godolphin |- | rowspan=5|1945 || bgcolor=#F5F5DC|''Sherlock Holmes and the House of Fear'' || bgcolor=#F5F5DC|Dr. John H. Watson |- | ''The Corn Is Green'' || The Squire |- | ''Son of Lassie'' || Duke of Radling |- bgcolor=#F5F5DC | ''The Woman in Green'' || Dr. John H. Watson |- bgcolor=#F5F5DC | ''Pursuit to Algiers'' || Dr. John H. Watson |- | rowspan=2|1946 || bgcolor=#F5F5DC|''Terror by Night'' || bgcolor=#F5F5DC|Dr. John H. Watson |- bgcolor=#F5F5DC | ''Dressed to Kill'' || Dr. John H. Watson |- | rowspan=2|1947 || ''The Two Mrs. Carrolls'' || Dr. Tuttle |- | ''The Exile'' || Sir Edward Hyde |- | 1948 || ''Julia Misbehaves'' || Col. Bruce "Bunny" Willowbrook |- | 1950 || ''Vendetta'' || Sir Thomas Nevil |- | rowspan=3|1952 || ''Hong Kong'' || Mr. Lighton |- | ''Limelight'' || Postant, an Impresario |- | ''Bwana Devil'' || Dr. Angus McLean |- | 1954 || ''World for Ransom'' || Governor Sir Charles Coutts |}

References

External links

Category:1895 births Category:1953 deaths Category:British Army personnel of World War I Category:British film actors Category:British stage actors Category:British television actors Category:Burials at Chapel of the Pines Crematory Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Honourable Artillery Company officers Category:Old Abingdonians Category:People from Ensenada Category:Somerset Light Infantry officers Category:Sherlock Holmes Category:Younger sons of baronets

an:Nigel Bruce de:Nigel Bruce es:Nigel Bruce fr:Nigel Bruce it:Nigel Bruce nl:Nigel Bruce pl:Nigel Bruce ru:Брюс, Найджел sl:Nigel Bruce fi:Nigel Bruce

Coordinates	34°03′″N118°15′″N
name	Vincent Price
birth date	May 27, 1911
birth place	St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
death date	October 25, 1993
death place	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
occupation	Actor
years active	1935–93
spouse	Edith Barrett (1938–48)Mary Grant Price (1949–73)Coral Browne (1974–91; her death) }}

Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. (May 27, 1911 – October 25, 1993) was an American actor, well known for his distinctive voice and serio-comic attitude in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.

Early life and career

Price was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Marguerite Cobb (née Wilcox) and Vincent Leonard Price, Sr., who was the president of the National Candy Company. His grandfather, Vincent Clarence Price, invented "Dr. Price's Baking Powder," the first cream of tartar baking powder, and secured the family's fortune.

Price attended St. Louis Country Day School. He was further educated at Yale in art history and fine art. He was a member of the Courtauld Institute, London. He became interested in the theatre during the 1930s, appearing professionally on stage for the first time in 1935.

Career

He made his film debut in 1938 with ''Service de Luxe'' and established himself in the film ''Laura'' (1944), opposite Gene Tierney, directed by Otto Preminger. He also played Joseph Smith, Jr. in the movie ''Brigham Young'' (1940) and William Gibbs McAdoo in ''Wilson'' (1944) as well as a pretentious priest in ''The Keys of the Kingdom'' (1944). Price's first venture into the horror genre was in the 1939 Boris Karloff film ''Tower of London''. The following year he portrayed the title character in the film ''The Invisible Man Returns'' (a role he reprised in a vocal cameo at the end of the 1948 horror-comedy spoof ''Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein'').

In 1946 Price reunited with Tierney in two notable films, ''Dragonwyck'' and ''Leave Her to Heaven''. There were also many villainous roles in film noir thrillers like ''The Web'' (1947), ''The Long Night'' (1947), ''Rogues' Regiment'' (1948) and ''The Bribe'' (1949) with Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner and Charles Laughton. His first starring role was as conman James Addison Reavis in the 1950 biopic ''The Baron of Arizona''. He also did a comedic turn as the tycoon Burnbridge Waters, co-starring with Ronald Colman in ''Champagne for Caesar''. He was active in radio, portraying the Robin Hood-inspired crime-fighter Simon Templar in ''The Saint'' that ran from 1943 to 1951.

In the 1950s, he moved into horror films, with a role in ''House of Wax'' (1953), the first 3-D film to land in the year's top ten at the North American box office, then ''The Mad Magician'' (1954), and then the monster movie ''The Fly'' (1958) and its sequel ''Return of the Fly'' (1959) . Price also starred in the original ''House on Haunted Hill'' (1959) as the eccentric millionaire Fredrick Loren. Price played Dr. Warren Chapin, in ''The Tingler'', a 1959 horror-thriller film by the American producer and director William Castle. In between these horror films, Price played Baka (the master builder) in ''The Ten Commandments''. In the 1955–1956 television season he appeared three times as Rabbi Gershom Seixos in the ABC anthology series, ''Crossroads'', a study of clergymen from different denominations. About this time, he also appeared on NBC's ''The Martha Raye Show''.

1960s

In the 1960s, Price had a number of low-budget successes with Roger Corman and American International Pictures (AIP) including the Edgar Allan Poe adaptations ''House of Usher'' (1960), ''The Pit and the Pendulum'' (1961), ''Tales of Terror'' (1962), ''The Comedy of Terrors'' (1963) ''The Raven'' (1963), ''The Masque of the Red Death'' (1964), and ''The Tomb of Ligeia'' (1965). He starred in ''The Last Man on Earth'' (1964), the first adaptation of the Richard Matheson novel ''I Am Legend''. In 1968 Price portrayed witchhunter Matthew Hopkins in ''Witchfinder General'' (released in the US as ''The Conqueror Worm''). He starred in comedy films, notably ''Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine'' (1965) and its sequel ''Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs'' (1966). In 1968 he played the part of an eccentric artist in the musical ''Darling of the Day'' opposite Patricia Routledge.

Price often spoke of his pleasure at playing Egghead in the ''Batman'' television series. One of his co-stars, Yvonne Craig (Batgirl), said Price was her favorite villain in the series. In an often-repeated anecdote from the set of ''Batman'', Price, after a take was printed, started throwing eggs at series stars Adam West and Burt Ward, and when asked to stop, replied, "With a full artillery? Not a chance!", causing an eggfight to erupt on the soundstage. This incident is reenacted in the behind-the-scenes telefilm ''Return to the Batcave: The Misadventures of Adam and Burt''. In the 1960s, he began his role as a guest on the game show ''Hollywood Squares'', even becoming a semi-regular in the 1970s, including being one of the guest panelists on the finale in 1980. He was known for usually making fun of Rose Marie's age, and using his famous voice to answer questions in a playfully menacing tone.

Later career

During the early 1970s, Price hosted and starred in BBC Radio's horror and mystery series ''The Price of Fear''. Price accepted a cameo part in the Canadian children's television program ''The Hilarious House of Frightenstein'' (1971) in Hamilton, Ontario, on the local television station CHCH. In addition to the opening and closing monologues, his role in the show was to recite poems about the show's various characters, sometimes wearing a cloak or other costumes. He appeared in ''The Abominable Dr. Phibes'' (1971), its sequel ''Dr. Phibes Rises Again'' (1972) and ''Theatre of Blood'' (1973), in which he portrayed a pair of campy serial killers. That same year Price appeared as himself in ''Mooch Goes to Hollywood'', a film written by Jim Backus. Price recorded dramatic readings of Edgar Allan Poe's short stories and poems, which were collected together with readings by Basil Rathbone.

Price greatly reduced his film work from around 1975, as horror itself suffered a slump, and increased his narrative and voice work, as well as advertising Milton Bradley's Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture. Price's voiceover is heard on Alice Cooper's first solo album, ''Welcome to My Nightmare'' from 1975, and he also appeared in the corresponding TV special ''Alice Cooper: The Nightmare''. He starred for a year in the early 1970s in a syndicated daily radio program, ''Tales of the Unexplained''. He made guest appearances in a 1970 episode of ''Here's Lucy'' showcasing his art expertise and in a 1972 episode of ABC's ''The Brady Bunch'', in which he played a deranged archaeologist. In October 1976, Price appeared as the featured guest in an episode of ''The Muppet Show''.

In the summer of 1977, Price began performing as Oscar Wilde in the one-man stage play ''Diversions and Delights''. Written by John Gay and directed by Joe Hardy, the play is set in a Parisian theatre on a night about one year before Wilde's death. In an attempt to earn some much-needed money, the Wilde character speaks to the audience about his life, his works and, in the second act, about his love for Lord Alfred Douglas, which led to his downfall. The original tour of the play was a success in every city that it played, except for New York City. In the summer of 1979, Price performed it at the Tabor Opera House in Leadville, Colorado on the same stage from which Wilde had spoken to miners about art some 96 years before. Price would eventually perform the play worldwide. In her biography of her father, Victoria Price stated that several members of Price's family and friends thought that this was the best acting that he ever performed. In the spring of 1979, Price starred with his wife Coral Browne in the short-lived CBS TV series ''Time Express''.

In 1982, Price provided the narrator's voice in ''Vincent'', Tim Burton's six-minute film about a young boy who flashes from reality into a fantasy where he is Vincent Price. That same year, he performed a sinister "rap" on the title track of Michael Jackson's ''Thriller'' album. A longer version of the rap, ''sans'' the music, along with some conversation can be heard on Jackson's 2001 remastered reissue of the ''Thriller'' album. Part of the extended version can be heard on the ''Thriller 25'' album, released in 2008. Price appeared as Sir Despard Murgatroyd in a 1982 television production of Gilbert & Sullivan's ''Ruddigore'' (with Keith Michell as Robin Oakapple). In 1983, Price played the Sinister Man in the British spoof horror film ''Bloodbath at the House of Death'' starring Kenny Everett, and he also appeared in the film ''House of the Long Shadows'', which teamed him with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and John Carradine. While Price had worked with each one of them at least once in the prior decade, this was the first teaming of all of them together. One of his last major roles, and one of his favorites, was as the voice of Professor Ratigan in Walt Disney Pictures' ''The Great Mouse Detective'' in 1986.

From 1981 to 1989, he hosted the PBS television series ''Mystery!'' In 1985, he provided voice talent on the Hanna-Barbera series ''The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo'' as the mysterious Vincent Van Ghoul, who aided Scooby-Doo, Scrappy-Doo and the gang in recapturing thirteen evil demons. During this time (1985–1989), he appeared in horror-themed commercials for Tilex bathroom cleanser. In 1984, Price appeared in Shelley Duvall's live-action series ''Faerie Tale Theatre'' as the Mirror in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", and the narrator for "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers." In 1987, he starred with Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, and Ann Sothern in ''The Whales of August'', a story of two sisters living in Maine, facing the end of their days. In 1989, Price was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame. His last significant film work was as the inventor in Tim Burton's ''Edward Scissorhands'' (1990).

A witty raconteur, Price was a frequent guest on ''The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'', where he once demonstrated how to poach a fish in a dishwasher. Price was a noted gourmet cook and art collector. He also authored several cookbooks and hosted a cookery TV show, ''Cooking Pricewise''.

From 1962 to 1971, Sears, Roebuck offered the "Vincent Price Collection of Fine Art", selling about 50,000 pieces of fine art to the general public. Price selected and commissioned works for the collection, including works by Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, and Nate Dunn.

Personal life

Price was married three times and fathered a son, named Vincent Barrett Price, with his first wife, former actress Edith Barrett. Price and his second wife Mary Grant Price donated hundreds of works of art and a large amount of money to East Los Angeles College in the early 1960s in order to endow the Vincent and Mary Price Gallery there. Their daughter, Mary Victoria Price, was born in 1962. Price's last marriage was to the Australian actress Coral Browne, who appeared with him (as one of his victims) in ''Theatre of Blood'' (1973). He converted to Catholicism to marry her, and she became a U.S. citizen for him.

One example of his outspoken political action came when he concluded an episode of ''The Saint'' titled "Author of Murder", which aired on NBC Radio on July 30, 1950. While concluding the episode, Price denounced racial and religious prejudice as a form of poison and stated that Americans must actively fight against it because racial and religious prejudice within the United States fuels support for the nation's enemies.

Death

Price was a lifelong smoker. He suffered from emphysema and Parkinson's disease, which had caused his role in ''Edward Scissorhands'' to be much shorter than expected.

His illness also contributed to his retirement from ''Mystery!'', as his condition was becoming noticeable on-screen. He died of lung cancer on October 25, 1993 at the age of 82. He was cremated and his ashes scattered off Point Dume in Malibu, California.

Legacy

In 1951, impressed by the spirit of the students and the community's need for the opportunity to experience original art works first hand, Price donated some 90 pieces from his own collection to East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, California, thus establishing the first "teaching art collection" owned by a community college in the U.S. Today, the Vincent Price Art Museum continues to present world-class exhibitions, and remains one of the actor's most enduring legacies. The collection contains over 9,000 pieces and has been valued in excess of five million dollars.

The A&E; Network aired an episode of ''Biography'' highlighting Price's horror career the night following his death, but because of its failure to clear copyrights, the show was never aired again. Four years later, A&E; produced its updated episode, a show titled ''Vincent Price: The Versatile Villain'', which aired on October 12, 1997. The script was by Lucy Chase Williams, author of ''The Complete Films of Vincent Price'' (Citadel Press, 1995). In early 1991, Tim Burton was developing a personal documentary with the working title ''Conversations with Vincent'', in which interviews with Price were shot at the Vincent Price Gallery, but the project was never completed and was eventually shelved.

Price was an Honorary Board Member and strong supporter of the Witch's Dungeon Classic Movie Museum located in Bristol, Connecticut until his death. The museum features detailed life-size wax replicas of characters from some of Price's films, including ''The Fly'', ''The Abominable Dr. Phibes'' and ''The Masque of the Red Death''. A black box theater at Price's alma mater, Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School, is named after him.

Director Tim Burton directed a short stop-motion film as a tribute to Vincent Price called ''Vincent'', about a young boy named Vincent Malloy who was obsessed with the grim and macabre. It is narrated by Price. "Vincent Twice, Vincent Twice" was a parody on ''Sesame Street''. He was parodied in an episode of ''The Simpsons'' ("Sunday, Cruddy Sunday"). Price even had his own ''Spitting Image'' puppet, who was always trying to be "sinister" and lure people into his ghoulish traps, only for his victims to point out all the obvious flaws. The October 2005 episode of the Channel 101 series ''Yacht Rock'' featured comedian James Adomian as Vincent Price during the recording of Michael Jackson's "Thriller". Starting in November 2005, featured cast member Bill Hader of the NBC sketch comedy/variety show ''Saturday Night Live'' has played Price in a recurring sketch where Vincent Price hosts botched holiday specials filled with celebrities of the 1950s and '60s. Other cast members who have played Price on ''SNL'' include Dan Aykroyd and Michael McKean (who played Price when he hosted a season 10 episode and again when he was hired as a cast member for the 1994–95 season).

In 1999, a frank and detailed biography written by his daughter, Victoria Price, about her father was published by St. Martin's Press. In late May 2011, an event was held by the organization Cinema St. Louis to celebrate what would have been Price's 100th Birthday. It included a public event with Victoria at the Missouri History Museum and a showcase of ephemeral and historic items at the gallery inside the Sheldon Concert Hall.

Filmography

References

Further reading

Price, Vincent, ''I Like What I Know – A Visual Autobiography'', Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York, copyright 1959.

External links

Vincent Price Gallery

St. Louis Walk of Fame

Profile @ Turner Classic Movies

Vincent Price Papers catalog

''The Saint'' radio program

Category:Actors from Missouri Category:Alumni of the Courtauld Institute of Art Category:American film actors Category:American Roman Catholics Category:American television actors Category:American voice actors Category:Cancer deaths in California Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism Category:Deaths from emphysema Category:Deaths from lung cancer Category:People from St. Louis, Missouri Category:People with Parkinson's disease Category:Yale University alumni Category:Gilbert and Sullivan performers Category:1911 births Category:1993 deaths Category:The Yale Record alumni

an:Vincent Price bs:Vincent Price ca:Vincent Leonard Price cy:Vincent Price da:Vincent Price de:Vincent Price et:Vincent Price es:Vincent Price eu:Vincent Price fa:وینسنت پرایس fr:Vincent Price gl:Vincent Price io:Vincent Price id:Vincent Price it:Vincent Price he:וינסנט פרייס la:Vincentius Price lmo:Vincent Price nl:Vincent Price ja:ヴィンセント・プライス oc:Vincent Price pl:Vincent Price pt:Vincent Price ro:Vincent Price ru:Прайс, Винсент simple:Vincent Price sh:Vincent Price fi:Vincent Price sv:Vincent Price tr:Vincent Price uk:Вінсент Прайс

Coordinates	34°03′″N118°15′″N
name	Milton Berle
birth name	Milton Berlinger
birth date	July 12, 1908
birth place	Manhattan, New York, U.S.
death date	March 27, 2002
death place	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
other names	Mr. Television, Uncle Miltie
occupation	Actor/Comedian
years active	1914–2000
spouse	Joyce Mathews (1941–1947;1949–1950) Ruth Cosgrove (1953–1989) Lorna Adams (1991–2002)
influences	Charlie Chaplin, Groucho Marx
influenced	Don Rickles, Johnny Carson, Larry the Cable Guy, Nipsey Russell }}

Milton Berlinger (July 12, 1908 – March 27, 2002), better known by as Milton Berle, was an American comedian and actor. As the manic host of NBC's ''Texaco Star Theater'' (1948–55), in 1948 he was the first major star of US television and as such became known as Uncle Miltie and Mr. Television to millions during TV's golden age.

Early life

Milton Berlinger was born to a Jewish family in a five-story walkup at 68 West 118th Street in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, he chose Milton Berle as his professional name when he was 16. His father, Moses Berlinger (1873–1938), was a paint and varnish salesman. His mother, Sarah (Sadie) Glantz Berlinger (1877–1954), eventually became stagestruck and changed her name to Sandra Berle when Milton became famous.

Berle entered show business at the age of five when he won an amateur talent contest. He appeared as a child actor in silent films, beginning with ''The Perils of Pauline'', filmed in Fort Lee, New Jersey. The director told Berle that he would portray a little boy who would be thrown from a moving train. In ''Milton Berle: An Autobiography'', he explained, "I was scared shitless, even when he went on to tell me that Pauline would save my life. Which is exactly what happened, except that at the crucial moment they threw a bundle of rags instead of me from the train. I bet there are a lot of comedians around today who are sorry about that."

By Berle's account, he continued to play child roles in other films: ''Bunny's Little Brother'', ''Tess of the Storm Country'', ''Birthright'', ''Love's Penalty'', ''Divorce Coupons'' and ''Ruth of the Range''. Berle recalled, "There were even trips out to Hollywood—the studios paid—where I got parts in ''Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm'', with Mary Pickford; ''The Mark of Zorro'', with Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and ''Tillie's Punctured Romance'', with Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand and Marie Dressler."

However, Berle's claims to have appeared in many of these films, particularly the 1914 Chaplin Keystone comedy ''Tillie's Punctured Romance'', are hotly disputed by some, who cite the lack of supporting evidence that Berle even visited the West Coast until much later. The newsboy role often claimed by Berle in ''Tillie'' was unquestionably played by resident Keystone child actor Gordon Griffith.

In 1916, Berle enrolled in the Professional Children's School, and at age 12 he made his stage debut in ''Florodora''. After four weeks in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the show moved to Broadway. It catapulted him into a comedic career that spanned eight decades in nightclubs, Broadway shows, vaudeville, Las Vegas, films, television, and radio.

Career

Rising star

Berle's 1949 television appearance was only experimental, but by the early 1930s he had become a successful stand-up comedian. In 1933, he was hired by producer Jack White to star in the theatrical featurette ''Poppin' the Cork'', a topical musical comedy concerning the repealing of Prohibition. Berle also co-wrote the score for this film, which was released by Educational Pictures.

Berle continued to dabble in songwriting. With Ben Oakland and Milton Drake, Berle wrote the title song for the RKO Radio Pictures release ''Li'l Abner'' (1940), an adaptation of Al Capp's comic strip, featuring Buster Keaton as Lonesome Polecat. Berle wrote a Spike Jones B-side, "Leave the Dishes in the Sink, Ma."

Radio

In 1934–36, Berle was heard regularly on ''The Rudy Vallee Hour'', and he got much publicity as a regular on ''The Gillette Original Community Sing'', a Sunday night comedy-variety program broadcast on CBS from September 6, 1936 to August 29, 1937. In 1939, he was the host of ''Stop Me If You've Heard This One'' with panelists spontaneously finishing jokes sent in by listeners.

''Three Ring Time'', a comedy-variety show sponsored by Ballantine Ale, was followed by a 1943 program sponsored by Campbell's Soups. The audience participation show ''Let Yourself Go'' (1944–1945) could best be described as slapstick radio with studio audience members acting out long suppressed urges (often directed at host Berle). ''Kiss and Make Up'', on CBS in 1946, featured the problems of contestants decided by a jury from the studio audience with Berle as the judge. He also made guest appearances on many comedy-variety radio programs during the 1930s and 1940s.

Scripted by Hal Block and Martin Ragaway, ''The Milton Berle Show'' brought Berle together with Arnold Stang, later a familiar face as Berle's TV sidekick. Others in the cast were Pert Kelton, Mary Schipp, Jack Albertson, Arthur Q. Bryan, Ed Begley and announcer Frank Gallop. Sponsored by Philip Morris, it aired on NBC from March 11, 1947 until April 13, 1948. Berle's desire to succeed on radio was strong enough to cause him to cancel well-paying nightclub appearances in favor of doing the radio program.

His last radio series was ''The Texaco Star Theater'', which began September 22, 1948 on ABC and continued until June 15, 1949, with Berle heading the cast of Stang, Kelton and Gallop, along with Charles Irving, Kay Armen, and double-talk specialist Al Kelly. It employed top comedy writers (Nat Hiken, brothers Danny and Neil Simon, Leo Fuld, Aaron Ruben), and Berle later recalled this series as "the best radio show I ever did... a hell of a funny variety show". It served as a springboard for Berle's rise as television's first major star.

Mr. Television

In 1948, NBC decided to bring ''Texaco Star Theater'' from radio to television, with Berle as one of the show's four rotating hosts. For the fall season, NBC named Berle the permanent host. His highly visual, sometimes outrageous vaudeville style proved ideal for the burgeoning new medium. Berle and Texaco owned Tuesday nights for the next several years, reaching the number one slot in the Nielsen ratings and keeping it, with as much as an 80% share of the recorded viewing audience. Berle and the show each won Emmy Awards after the first season. Fewer movie tickets were sold on Tuesdays. Some theaters, restaurants and other businesses shut down for the hour or closed for the evening so their customers would not miss Berle's antics. Berle's autobiography notes that in Detroit, "an investigation took place when the water levels took a drastic drop in the reservoirs on Tuesday nights between 9 and 9:05. It turned out that everyone waited until the end of the ''Texaco Star Theater'' before going to the bathroom".

Berle is credited for the huge spike in the sale of TV sets. (Other comedians turned this into a punchline: "I sold mine, my uncle sold his...") After Berle's show began, set sales more than doubled, reaching two million in 1949. His stature as the medium's first superstar earned Berle the sobriquet "Mr. Television". He also earned a slightly more familiar nickname after ending a 1949 broadcast with a brief ad-libbed remark to children watching the show: "Listen to your Uncle Miltie and go to bed."

Berle asked NBC to switch from live broadcasts to filmed shows, to make possible future reruns and residuals, and he was not happy when NBC showed little interest. NBC did consent to make a kinescope of each show — a reference copy filmed directly off a TV screen.

He also risked his newfound TV stardom at its zenith to challenge Texaco when the sponsor tried to prevent black performers from appearing. In his autobiography, Berle recalled the incident:

Berle's mother Sadie was often in the audience for his broadcasts; she had long served as a "plant" to encourage audiences for his stage shows to laugh. Her unique, "piercing, roof-shaking laugh" would stand out, especially when he would walk onstage in an outrageous costume. He would feign being startled by her laugh, and would pretend she was a stranger or a heckler, then come up with a response. Example: "Lady, you've got all night to make a fool of yourself. I've only got an hour!"

Berle was offered the use of a new device, the teleprompter, and 25% of the company by its inventor, Irving Kahn, if he would simply begin using the new gadget. He turned the offer down.

Francis Craig and Kermit Goell's ''Near You'' became the theme song that closed Berle's TV comedy shows.

Berle's TV decline

NBC signed him to an exclusive, unprecedented 30-year television contract in 1951. The problem with Berle's 30-year deal was that NBC could not have realized the relatively short lifespan of a comedian on television, compared to radio, where some careers had thrived for two decades. In part, this was due to the more ephemeral nature of visual comedy (those who do not adapt quickly do not survive), and a single television appearance could equal years of exposure on the nightclub circuit. It has also been said that Berle had less appeal with audiences outside the Borscht Belt as television expanded from big East Coast markets to smaller cities. It is also possible that the positioning of the television set itself was a factor. When Berle's program first hit the airwaves, so few people owned the apparatus that many audiences watched it in public places such as bars, clubs and even in appliance store windows; these were perfect venues for Berle's out-sized personality. However, as more and more people acquired their own televisions, they may have adjusted their tastes to suit the privacy of home.

Texaco pulled out of sponsorship of the show in 1953. Buick picked it up, prompting a renaming to ''The Buick-Berle Show'', and the program's format was changed to show the backstage preparations to put on a variety show. Critics generally approved of the changes, but Berle's ratings continued to fall and Buick pulled out after two seasons. By the time the again-renamed ''Milton Berle Show'' finished its only full season, Berle was already becoming history — though his final season was host to two of Elvis Presley's earliest television appearances, April 3 and June 5, 1956. The final straw during that last season may have come from CBS scheduling ''The Phil Silvers Show'' (aka ''You'll Never Get Rich'' and ''Sergeant Bilko'') opposite Berle. Ironically, Silvers was one of Berle's best friends in show business and had come to CBS' attention in an appearance on Berle's program. ''Bilko's'' creator-producer, Nat Hiken, had been one of Berle's radio writers.

Berle knew that NBC had already decided to cancel his show before Presley appeared. Berle later appeared in the ''Kraft Music Hall'' series from 1958 to 1959, but NBC was finding increasingly fewer showcases for its one-time superstar. By 1960, he was reduced to hosting a bowling program, ''Jackpot Bowling'', delivering his quips between the efforts of bowling contestants.

Life after ''The Milton Berle Show''

In Las Vegas, Berle played to packed showrooms at Caesars Palace, the Sands, the Desert Inn and other casino hotels. Berle had appeared at the El Rancho, one of the first Vegas hotels, in the late 1940s. In addition to constant club appearances, Berle performed on Broadway in Herb Gardner's ''The Goodbye People'' in 1968. He also became a commercial spokesman for the thriving Lums restaurant chain. He appeared in numerous films, including ''Always Leave Them Laughing'' with Virginia Mayo and Bert Lahr, ''Let's Make Love'' with Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand, ''It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World'', ''The Loved One'', ''The Oscar'', ''Who's Minding the Mint?'', ''Lepke'', Woody Allen's ''Broadway Danny Rose'' and ''Driving Me Crazy''.

Freed in part from the obligations of his NBC contract, Berle was signed in 1966 to a new, weekly variety series on ABC. The show failed to capture a large audience and was cancelled after one season. He later appeared as guest villain Louie the Lilac on ABC's ''Batman'' series. Other memorable guest appearances included stints on ''The Barbara Stanwyck Show'', ''The Lucy Show'', ''The Jackie Gleason Show'', ''Get Smart'', ''Laugh-In'', ''The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour'', ''The Hollywood Palace'', ''Ironside'', ''F Troop'', ''Fantasy Island'', and ''The Jack Benny Show''.

Like his contemporary Jackie Gleason, Berle proved a solid dramatic actor and was acclaimed for several such performances, most notably his lead role in "Doyle Against The House" on ''The Dick Powell Show'' in 1961, a role for which he later received an Emmy nomination. He also played the part of a blind survivor of an airplane crash in ''Seven in Darkness'', the first in ABC's popular ''Movie of the Week'' series. (He also played it straight as an agent in ''The Oscar'' (1966), and was one of the few actors in that infamous flop to get good notices from critics.)

During this period, Berle was named to the Guinness Book of World Records for the greatest number of charity performances made by a show-business performer. Unlike the high-profile shows done by Bob Hope to entertain the troops, Berle did more shows, over a period of 50 years, on a lower-profile basis. Berle received an award for entertaining at stateside military bases in World War I as a child performer, in addition to traveling to foreign bases in World War II and Vietnam. The first charity telethon (for the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation) was hosted by Berle in 1949. A permanent fixture at charity benefits in the Hollywood area, he was instrumental in raising millions for charitable causes.

Late career

On April 14, 1979, Berle guest-hosted NBC's ''Saturday Night Live''. Perhaps the comedian saw this as a chance to revisit his live-TV glories of three decades before. Whatever his intention, he seemed to spend as much time trying to upstage the show's youthful cast members as he did trying to work with or complement them. Berle's long reputation for taking control of an entire television production—whether invited to do so or not—was a cause of stress on the set. One of the show's writers, Rosie Shuster, described the rehearsals for the Berle ''SNL'' show and the telecast as "watching a comedy train accident in slow motion on a loop." Upstaging, camera mugging, inserting old comedy bits, and climaxing the show with a maudlin performance of "September Song" complete with pre-arranged standing ovation (something producer Lorne Michaels had never sanctioned), resulted in Berle being banned from the show.

Milton Berle was a guest star on ''The Muppet Show'', where he was memorably upstaged by the heckling theatre box critics Statler and Waldorf. The Statler and Waldorf characters were based on comedian Sidney Spritzer, who routinely did a similar heckling act on Berle's 1960s ABC series.

Another well-known incident of upstaging occurred during the 1982 Emmy Awards, when Berle and Martha Raye were the presenters of the Emmy for Outstanding Writing. Berle was reluctant to give up the microphone to the award's recipients, from ''Second City Television'', and interrupted actor Joe Flaherty's acceptance speech several times. After Flaherty would make a joke, Berle would reply sarcastically "Oh, that's funny". However, the kindly, smiling Flaherty's response of "Go to sleep, Uncle Miltie" flustered Berle, who could only reply with a stunned "What...?" SCTV later created a parody sketch of the incident, in which Flaherty beats up a Berle look-alike, shouting, "You'll never ruin another acceptance speech, Uncle Miltie!"

One of his most popular performances in his later years was guest starring in 1992 in ''The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air'' as womanizing, wise-cracking patient Max Jakey. Most of his dialogue was improvised and he shocked the studio audience by mistakenly blurting out a curse word. He also appeared in an acclaimed and Emmy-nominated turn on ''Beverly Hills, 90210'' as an aging comedian befriended by Steve Sanders, who idolizes him but is troubled by his bouts of senility due to Alzheimer's Disease. He also appeared in 1995 as a guest star in an episode of ''The Nanny'' in the part of her lawyer and great uncle.

Berle appeared in drag in the video for "Round and Round" by the 1980s metal band Ratt (his nephew Marshall Berle was then their manager).

Berle was again on the receiving end of an onstage jibe at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards where RuPaul responded to Berle's reference of having once worn dresses himself (during his old television days) with the quip that Berle now wore diapers. A surprised Berle replied, "Oh, we're going to ad lib? I'll check my brain and we'll start even".

Uncle Miltie offstage

In 1947, Milton Berle founded the Friars Club of Beverly Hills at the old Savoy Hotel on Sunset Boulevard. Other founding members included Jimmy Durante, George Jessel, Robert Taylor, and Bing Crosby. In 1961, the club moved to Beverly Hills. The club is a private show business club famous for its celebrity members and roasts, where a member is mocked by his club friends in good fun.

Unlike many of his peers, Berle's off-stage lifestyle did not include drugs or drinking, but did include cigars, a "who's who" list of beautiful women, and a lifelong addiction to gambling, primarily horse racing. Some felt his obsession with "the ponies" was responsible for Berle never amassing the wealth or business success of others in his position.

Berle was also famous within show business for the rumored size of his penis. Phil Silvers once told a story about standing next to Berle at a urinal, glancing down, and quipping, "You'd better feed that thing, or it's liable to turn on you!" In the short story 'A Beautiful Child', Truman Capote wrote Marilyn Monroe as saying: "Christ! Everybody says Milton Berle has the biggest schlong in Hollywood." ''Saturday Night Live'' writer Alan Zweibel, who had written many Friars Club jokes about Berle's penis for other comedians, described being treated to a private showing: "He just takes out this— this anaconda. He lays it on the table and I'm looking into this thing, right? I'm looking into the head of Milton Berle's dick. It was enormous. It was like a pepperoni. And he goes, 'What do you think of the boy?' And I'm looking right at it and I go, 'Oh, it's really, really nice.'" At a memorial service for Berle at the New York Friars' Club, Freddie Roman solemnly announced, "On May 1st and May 2nd, his penis will be buried." Radio shock jock Howard Stern also barraged Berle with an endless array of penis questions when the comedian appeared on Stern's morning talk show on Aug 5, 1988 (Berle was also a guest on the Stern show on Oct 30, 1996). In Berle's 1988 appearance, when fielding phone calls, Stern purposely asked his producer to only air callers whose questions dealt with Berle's penis.

Berle was known to have a colorful vocabulary and few limits on when it was used. Surprisingly, however, he "worked clean" for his entire onstage career, except for the infamous Friars Club all-male, private celebrity roasts. Berle often criticized younger comedians like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin about their X-rated humor, and challenged them to be just as funny without the four-letter words.

Hundreds of younger comics, including several comedy superstars, were encouraged and guided by Berle. Despite some less than flattering stories told about Berle being difficult to work with, his son, Bill, maintains that Berle was a source of encouragement and technical assistance for many new comics. Uncle Miltie's son Bob backs up his brother's statement. He was present many times during Berle's Las Vegas shows and television guest appearances. Milton aided Fred Travelena, Ruth Buzzi, John Ritter, Marla Gibbs, Lily Tomlin, Dick Shawn and Will Smith. At a taping of a ''Donny & Marie,'' for example, Donny and Marie Osmond recited a scripted joke routine to a studio audience, to little response. The director asked for a retake, and the Osmonds repeated the act, word for word, to even less response. A third attempt, with no variation, proved dismal — until Milton Berle, off-camera, went into the audience, pantomiming funny faces and gestures. Ever the professional, Berle timed each gesture to coincide with an Osmond punchline, so the dialogue seemed to be getting the maximum laughs.

Personal life

As "Mr. Television," Berle was one of the first seven people to be inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1984. The following year, he appeared on NBC's ''Amazing Stories'' (created by Steven Spielberg) in an episode called "Fine Tuning". In this episode, friendly aliens from space receive TV signals from the Earth of the 1950s and travel to Hollywood in search of their idols, Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason, The Three Stooges, Burns and Allen—and Milton Berle. (When he realizes the aliens are doing his old material, Uncle Miltie is thunderstruck: "Stealing from Berle? Is that even possible?") Speaking gibberish, Berle is the only person able to communicate directly with the aliens.

After twice marrying and divorcing Joyce Mathews, a showgirl, Berle married Ruth Cosgrove, a onetime publicist on December 9, 1953; she died in 1989. In 1989, Berle stated that his mother was behind the breakup of his marriage to Mathews. He also said that she managed to damage his previous relationships: "My mother never resented me going out with a girl, but if I had more than three dates with one girl, Mama found some way to break it up." He was married for a fourth time in 1992 to Lorna Adams, a fashion designer 30 years younger than he was, whom he credited for 'keeping him young'. He had two children, Victoria (adopted by Berle and Mathews) and William (adopted by Berle and Cosgrove). Berle also had two stepdaughters from his marriage to Lorna Adams—Leslie and Susan Brown, who is married to actor Richard Moll. He also had three grandsons, James and Mathew, the sons of his daughter, Vicki, and Sgt. Tyler Roe (USARMY Iraq/Afghanistan War's), the son of his son, William.

In later life, Berle found solace in Christian Science and called himself a Jew and a Christian Scientist. Oscar Levant, commenting to Jack Paar about Berle's conversion, quipped, "Our loss is their loss."

Controversies

Accusations of plagiarism and conflicts

Berle once made fun of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis while they were on stage, calling them "headhunters". Davis said that he confronted Berle later on in life and that Berle apologized.

Berle was well known among his peers to have one of the largest joke collections in the world, which Berle estimated to be between five and six million jokes. Berle had a reputation for stealing material from other comedians, which eventually became known to the public. Bob Hope quipped onstage with Berle, that he "never heard a joke he didn't steal". "Uncle Miltie" would then mug for the cameras with an exaggerated innocent face. On more than one occasion, Berle commended a co-star for a punchline, saying, "I wish I'd said that," to which the co-star invariably replied, "Oh, you will". Columnist Walter Winchell famously labeled Berle, "The Thief of Bad Gags." On being accused of stealing jokes from Berle, Jack Benny once quipped, "When you take a joke away from Milton Berle, it's not stealing, it's repossessing."

Aspiring comedy writer Irving Brecher famously placed an ad in ''Variety'' looking for work, saying he could write "jokes so bad, even Berle wouldn't steal them." He was quickly hired...by Milton Berle.

Occasional claims by Berle and others that these jokes were transferred to computer media are suspect, as a member of Berle's family verified that the majority of them were on sheets and scraps of paper and index cards in a vast, disorganized collection amassed over decades, well before personal computers. The books ''Milton Berle's Private Joke File'' and ''The Rest of the Best of Milton Berle's Private Joke File'' each contained 10,000 of these jokes.

Berle was confident his jokes were funny, regardless of the audience response he received. When the laugh track gained popularity in the 1950s, Berle used it to his advantage. While witnessing a post-production editing session, Berle once said, "as long as we are here, this joke didn't get all that we wanted." After sound engineer/laugh track pioneer Charles Douglass inserted a chuckle after the failed joke, Berle reportedly commented, "See? I told you it was funny".

''Texaco Star Theater'' in the news

In 1988, a series of syndicated TV specials with the umbrella title "Milton Berle: The Second Time Around," recycled footage from representative ''Texaco Star Theater'' kinescopes. These shows, unseen for decades, helped to introduce Berle's brand of comedy to a new audience.

In 2000, Berle made national headlines when he sued NBC for $30,000,000. Berle had retained co-ownership of his NBC programs and specials, but when he approached NBC about making the episodes available on home video, he was told that NBC no longer had the programs on file. Berle sued, claiming the network's negligence in deliberately or accidentally losing or destroying the shows. Berle itemized the loss of 84 Texaco hours, 32 Buick shows, and 12 prime-time specials. NBC scoured the shelves for the missing films, which turned up two months later in the network's Burbank, California facility. All but four of the films were recovered.

Death

In April 2001, Berle announced that he was suffering from a cancerous tumor in his colon, but would not undergo surgery. At the time of the announcement, Berle's wife said the tumor was growing so slowly that it would take ten to twelve years to affect him in any significant or life-threatening way. Less than one year after the announcement, Berle died on March 27, 2002 in Los Angeles, California from colon cancer.

Berle left detailed arrangements to be buried with his second wife, Ruth, at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Burbank. However, his last wife, Lorna Adams, altered the plan so that he was cremated and interred at Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery in Culver City, California. In addition to his wife, Berle was survived by a daughter, Victoria, born in 1945; son, William, born in 1961; and Bob Williams, a son, born in 1951.

Other awards

On December 5, 2007, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and First Lady Maria Shriver inducted Berle into the California Hall of Fame, located at The California Museum for History, Women and the Arts.

Broadway

''Earl Carroll's Vanities of 1932'' (1932) - revue — in the roles of "Mortimer" in the sketch "Mourning Becomes Impossible", "Joe Miller, Jr." in "What Price Jokes", "Frank" in "Two Sailors", "Paul" in "The Cabinet of Doctor X", the "Announcer" in "Studio W.M.C.A." the "Defendant" in "Trial by Jury" and "Milton" in "The Bar Relief"

''Saluta'' (1934) — musical, co-lyricist and performer cast in the role of "'Windy' Walker"

''See My Lawyer'' (1939) — play — performer cast in the role of "Arthur Lee"

''Ziegfeld Follies of 1943'' (1943) — revue — performer in the role of "Cecil" in ''Counter Attack'', "J. Pierswift Armour" in ''The Merchant of Venison'', "Perry Johnson" in ''Loves-A-Poppin'', "Escamillio" in ''Carmen in Zoot'', "Charlie Grant" ''Mr Grant Goes To Washington'', "'The Micromaniac' Singer" and "'Hold That Smile' Dancer"

''I'll Take the High Road'' (1943) — play — co-producer

''Seventeen'' (1951) — musical — co-producer

''The Goodbye People'' (1968) — performer cast in the role of "Max Silverman"

In popular culture

In the episode titled "The One with the 'Cuffs" of the sitcom ''Friends'', Rachel promises Chandler that she will make him "This generation's Milton Berle", hinting that he had a large penis but "not compared to (Chandler)".

In the ''Family Guy'' episode "Fifteen Minutes of Shame", Lois describes her perfect man as having (among other male celebrities' features) "Milton Berle's legendary genitals".

In the episode "Nanny From Hell" of the sitcom ''Curb Your Enthusiasm'', Larry refers to an acquaintance's child, whom he knows to have a very large penis, as "Uncle Miltie".

In an episode of Animaniacs, Milton Berle is mentioned not to like the Warner Brothers and their sister Dot, but namely Yakko.

In the episode "Training Day" of the sitcom ''Archer'', Archer says "Oh, He just gets a pass like Milton Berle?!?!"

For the initial production of Robert Sherwood's ''Idiot's Delight'' starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in 1936, Lunt went to see Berle perform many times and took lessons from him in joke delivery and soft shoe for his characterization of tenth rate vaudeville performer Harry Van. After Lunt had seen Berle perform numerous times and went backstage to meet him, before any introductions could be made, Berle snapped, "Now look here, nobody steals from me. That's my line of work!" After finding out that his fan was none other than the American stage's most gifted and prestigious actor, Berle was flattered and showed Lunt everything he knew. - From ''Design for Living'', Margot Peters' biography of the Lunts.

Filmography

1914: ''The Perils of Pauline''

1917: ''Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm''

1920: ''The Mark of Zorro'' (uncredited), ''Birthright''

1921: ''Little Lord Fauntleroy'' (uncredited)

1922: ''Tess of the Storm Country'' (uncredited)

1923: ''Ruth of the Range'' (uncredited)

1933: ''Poppin' the Cork''

1937: ''New Faces of 1937''

1938: ''Radio City Revels''

1940: ''Li'l Abner'' (title song with Ben Oakland and Milton Drake)

1941: ''Tall, Dark and Handsome'', ''The Great American Broadcast'', ''Sun Valley Serenade'', ''Rise and Shine''

1942: ''A Gentleman at Heart'', ''Whispering Ghosts'', ''Over My Dead Body''

1943: ''Margin for Error''

1949: ''Always Leave Them Laughing''

1960: ''The Bellboy''

1960: ''Let's Make Love''

1963: ''It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World''

1965: ''The Loved One''

1966: ''The Oscar'', ''Don't Worry, We'll Think of a Title''

1967: ''The Happening'', ''Who's Minding the Mint?''

1968: ''Silent Treatment'', ''Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows'', ''For Singles Only''

1969: ''Can Hieronymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?'', ''Seven in Darkness''

1972: ''Evil Roy Slade''

1974: ''Journey Back to Oz'' (voice)

1975: ''Lepke''

1976: ''Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood''

1976: ''Let's Make a Deal'' (playing for a home viewer)

1979: ''The Muppet Movie''

1985: ''Pee-wee's Big Adventure''

1983: ''Cracking Up''

1984: ''Broadway Danny Rose''

1988: ''Side by Side''

1989: ''Going Overboard''

1991: ''Driving Me Crazy''

1992: ''Fresh Prince of Bel Air''

1995: ''Sister, Sister''

1995: "The Nanny"

1995: "Beverly Hills, 90210"

1995: ''Storybook''

2000: ''Two Heads Are Better Than None''

References

Further reading

Berle, Milton with Haskel Frankel. ''Milton Berle, an Autobiography''. New York: Dell, 1975. ISBN 0-440-15626-2

Dunning, John. ''On The Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio'', Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-19-507678-8

McNeil, Alex. ''Total Television''. New York: Penguin Books, 1996. ISBN 0-14-004911-8

Shales, Tom and James Andrew Miller. ''Live From New York: An Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live''. New York: Little, Brown, 2002. ISBN 0-316-78146-0

Berle, William and Lewis, Brad. "''My Father, Uncle Miltie''". New York: Barricade Books, 1999. ISBN 1-56980-149-5

External links

Milton Berle Interview at Archive of American Television

Milton Berle ''Internet archive'' Several entries for free stream or download including Texaco Star Theater and Buick Berle Show.

Museum of Broadcast Communications: Milton Berle

Museum of Broadcast Communications: ''The Milton Berle Show''

Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation

Milton 'Berlinger' Berle's birth certificate

Lum's TV Commercial with Milton Berle

Literature on Milton Berle

Listen to

Free OTR: ''Milton Berle Show'' (two episodes)

Episodes of the 'Milton Berle Show' on Radio at Internet Archive

Category:Actors from New York City Category:American film actors Category:American Jews Category:American television actors Category:American stand-up comedians Category:Bowling broadcasters Category:Burlesque performers Category:Cancer deaths in California Category:Deaths from colorectal cancer Category:Jewish actors Category:Jewish comedians Category:RCA Victor artists Category:Texaco Category:Vaudeville performers Category:American Christian Scientists Category:People from Manhattan Category:1908 births Category:2002 deaths

de:Milton Berle es:Milton Berle fr:Milton Berle it:Milton Berle pt:Milton Berle ro:Milton Berle sh:Milton Berle fi:Milton Berle sv:Milton Berle