WILLIAM GILLETTE DEAD

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 June 1937, Page 8

WILLIAM GILLETTE DEAD

FAMOUS AS ‘SHERLOCK” HOLMES’ LONDON, May 2. Tho late Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories of Sherlock Holmes were at the height of theii* popularity when, in 1890, Mr. William Gillette, a very fine American actor, introduced the famous character to the stage. His success was extraordinary, and he repeated it two years later when he brought the play to London. He was Sherlock Holmes to the life, and the part earned for him in the years that followed a fortune of about £300,000. Yesterday Mr. Gillette died at Hartford, Connecticut, aged 81. Son of a former United States Senator, and educated at Yale and Harvard, he first appeared on the stage when he was a student at Yale. He wrote or adapted a large number of the plays in which he appeared, and his skill as an actor was particularly pronounced in “Clarice,” “Secret Service,” and “Too Much Johnson.”

But whenever he was short of a fresh idea he always revived “Sherlock Holmes,” and its appeal never failed. He had retired three times from the stage when, a year ago, at the age of 80, he came back once more to tour the United States in a revival of “Three Wise Fools.”

Of late his health had been poor. He lied of pulmonary haemorrhage.