Holmes lives again

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33804, 29 March 1975, Page 12

Holmes lives again

(but has he ever been dead?)

/Bi/

PAUL WALLACE)

The other day, a suitably deerstalkered Sherlock Holmes, a graduation gown draped over his late Victorian tweeds, gravely accepted an honorary degree from Colorado State University for contributions to the “art and science of sleuthing.”

Well, not Holmes in person exactly. Pressure of business had kept the greatest detective from attending. A duly solemn Cameron Hollyer, curator of the Toronto Sherlock Holmes Collection, stood in, wearing the appropriate gear.

A glowing citation speaking of Holmes’s “pioneer work in crime prevention and his accomplishments as violinist and marksman" was ceremoniously intoned. The honour followed hard on the heels of another ceremony which took place in Switzerland, making Hoimes freeman of the village of Meiringen. As all Sherlock students know, Meiringen is near the Reichenbach Falls, where Holmes disposed of his deadly enemy. Professor Moriarty.

After decades of neglect, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s celebrated sleuth is suddenly enjoying an enormous revival of interest, including a smash-hit Royal Shakespeare Company version on Broadway of ‘‘Sherlock Holmes,” originally cowritten with the actor ..nd Holmes impersonator) William Gillette in 1899. The success at Broadway’s Broadhurst Theatre of “Sherlock Holmes” — ticket touts have been asking up to £5O a seat — has sent a new generation of writers scurrying to their typewriters, confident of producing surefire best-

sellers in an amazingly expanded market.

Currently topping the book lists is a novel called “The Seven Per Cent Solution,” which (says the jacket) has been "edited” from the memoirs of a certain Dr John H. Watson.

A Holmes enthusiast, a 28-year-old American, Nicholas Mayer, pits Sherlock Holmes in a fresh adventure with the unspeakable Moriarty — and puts his hero at risk with psychiatric treatment in Vienna by no less a person than a certain Sigmund Freud!

In fact, to Holmes fans all over the world, the saga of 221 b Baker Street has never been dead. One man in Britain with a collection of Holmesiana to rival Cameron Hollyer (js an industrial packaging consultant, Michael Pointer, who in more than 30 years has built up one of the world’s finest Sherlock Holmes collections.

The author of the recently-published "The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes,” detailing the detective's appearances over the last 80 years in films, radio plays and on television. Mr Pointer told me: “Tapes of famous Holmes dramatisations — pirate copies of radio broadcasts — are currently fetching enormous prices in New York and there is brisk demand in Europe:” Top of the best-seller list are tapes of a 36-year-old “Mercury Theatre of the Air” radio production called simply “Sherlock Holmes,” with Orson Welles in the role of the great detective. And Holmes enthusiasts are eagerly scouring the record catalogues in the hope of coming across longdeleted discs of “Dr Watson Meets Sherlock Holmes” and “The Final Problem,” issued in 1954, with John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson as

Holmes and Watson respec lively. Never slow to latch on to a good thing when they spot it, New York’s television networks have rushed in to revive as a late night spot a whole series of Sherlock Holmes films starring Basil Rathbone, which were made in the 30s and 40s.

Some are a little out of the Conan Doyle genre — including one called “Spider Woman,” with Holmes on the track of a mysterious succession, of apparent suicides brought about by a woman who secures insurance on her victims’ lives and then dispatches them with a huge spider! Although the Sherlock Holmes public house in London’s Northumberland Avenue attracts its pilgrims. it is Holmes’s old ■ address in Baker Street which exercises an almost mystic, fascination. Hardly a week passes without requests for help going to 221 b Baker Street, addressed personally to Holmes. Many correspondents are content merely with an autograph, but there are heartfelt pleas as well.

After diligent research, the Post Office discovered that the Abbey National Building Society had built their offices on” the site of Holmes’s house and send all letters - there, where they are answered in deadly seriousness.

A spokesman for Abbey National told me: “We never say that Holmes no longer lives at 221 b, only that it’s impossible for him to take on any more cases.” One letter received recently said: “I was in Charlie’s Bar in Cairo and a Professor Moriarty was there.

“1 did not recognise him from Watson’s description but am wondering if he has a brother and whether this could be the same family. Please send me a fuller description of Moriarty.”