{"id":5722,"date":"2014-11-04T18:23:56","date_gmt":"2014-11-04T23:23:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/calverosdepot.com\/blog\/?p=5722"},"modified":"2014-11-04T18:23:56","modified_gmt":"2014-11-04T23:23:56","slug":"sherlock-holmes-charlie-chaplin-connections-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calverosdepot.com\/blog\/2014\/11\/04\/sherlock-holmes-charlie-chaplin-connections-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Sherlock Holmes – Charlie Chaplin connections"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the third article celebrating Chaplin’s 125th birthday and 100th anniversary of his films. Read my others here (Doctor Who and Chaplin comic book review<\/a>) and here (matching music to his unreleased “How to Make Movies”<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Chaplin

Chaplin as Billy, age 14 (though he looks 12 to me.<\/p><\/div>\n

When I became a Charlie Chaplin fan in 1991, one of the *very first things* I learned about him was his role in the 1901 Sherlock Holmes play written by William Gillette and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I had been a Sherlockian for 5 years by then and was thrilled that my new \u201cobsession\u201d had a connection, one of many (and growing!) I would later discover.<\/p>\n

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William Gillette, in his Holmes garb<\/p><\/div>\n

Chaplin was born on April 16,1889, in Lambeth, London, England, at the beginning of the Sherlock Holmes publishing era. the year before the publishing of the second Holmes story, \u201cThe Sign of Four\u201d. After living for some time in poverty, he gradually got work as a child actor (both his parents were stage performers). He wrote in his My Autobiography (1964) how he lied about his age to get a part in a H A Saintsbury play, A Romance of Cocknaye, saying he was 14, when he was actually 12 1\/2. The manager of the production and cast liked him so much they offered him the Billy the Pageboy role. So from July 1903 to February 1906 he traveled the country performing the part. (Holmes trivia: The pageboy in the original stories did not have a name until after the play was made. It would have been interesting if Doyle named him Charlie!)<\/p>\n

\"HA<\/p>\n

The argument over \u201cWho\u2019s the best Sherlock Holmes?\u201d is nothing new, though the names change over time. Back in his day, Chaplin worked under two of the starring Holmes\u2019: William Gillette and H A Saintsbury. He wrote in his \u201cMy Autobiography\u201d that while he liked both, he felt Saintsbury was closer to the “real” Holmes.<\/p>\n

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\"List

List of the cast (including Chaplin as Billy), as they performed at Duke of York’s Theatre, circa 1905<\/p><\/div>\n

Want to see the play? Here it is, performed in 1981 for HBO.<\/a> Frank Langella plays Holmes (very well, I must say!) My favorite scene (Act 3, pt 2), which includes some great interactions with Billy, is embedded below:<\/p>\n