Again, Sherlock

On the stage of Manhattan's New Amsterdam Theatre which a few weeks ago held pop-eyed Eddie Cantor and the spangled chorus girls of Whoopee, stood portly President Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia University. A play was about to begin; he asked the audience to remain seated after the performance. When the curtain rose, a slender, honev-haired girl was discovered at the mercy of international swindlers who coveted a package of letters in her possession. But the swindlers were not to prevail, for soon an amazingly lean, dignified, taciturn gentleman appeared to help the girl. He was Sherlock Holmes, detective. A fantastic seer, he had but to scan the unevenlv shaven cheeks of his friend Dr. Watson to tell him that he had altered the position of his dressing table. Scarcely had he known one lady for five minutes when he announced in his croaking voice that she was obviously fond of Chopin. What criminal could have hoped to elude such a prodigy of penetration, such an immaculate and urbane nemesis?

When the case led him into conflict with Professor Moriarty, beetling-browed ruler of London's underworld who held his councils in a fearsome catacomb, Sherlock blandly donned his double-peaked cap and walked into the Professor's ambush--a lethal chamber. He smashed the single lamp, deluded his captors by leaving his glowing cigar on a window ledge, escaped with the frightened maiden. When he had later trapped the diabolical Professor with more such nonchalant magic, it appeared that Sherlock would marry the girli, albeit he was a poor insurance risk, sustained in the approved fin de siecle manner by tobacco and the hypodermic needle.

Thus, after 30 years, did William Gillette act again his own adaptation of Conan Doyle's classic thrillers. To oldtime theatregoers it was a nostalgic, moving event--the last acting of another great gentleman of the theatrical old guard. No one would have guessed that the actor was 74 when he informed the growling Moriarty that he could read him, not like a book, but "like a primer." After the shattering applause had died, Yale's genial William Lyon Phelps (see p. 60) presented Actor Gillette with a sheaf of letters from such friends as Calvin Coolidge, Edwin Arlington Robinson, John Philip Sousa, Poultney Bigelow, Hiram Bingham, Gamaliel Bradford, Samuel Parkes Cadman, John Erskine, Daniel Chester French, Charles Dana Gibson, Arthur Twining Hadley, John Grier Hibben, William Thomas Manning, Ruth Hanna McCormick, Lorado Taft, Henry Van Dyke, Stephen Samuel Wise. Wrote Booth Tarkington: "I would rather see you play Sherlock Holmes than be a child again on Christmas morning." Said Professor Phelps: "By virtue of the authority vested in me, Will Gillette, I now confer upon you the degree of M.A., standing in this case 'for Master of Acting." Replied Master Gillette: ". . . it must be a case of mistaken identity; this was an honor for another Gillette--perhaps for the Senator from Massachusetts or the maker of razor blades." Captain S. G. S. MacNeill of the S. S. Mauretania promised to relay an eyewitness account of the proceedings to his British next-door-neighbor, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Actor Gillette will play his celebrated role for three weeks in Manhattan, will then tour principal U. S. cities before he quits the stage forever. He was born in Hartford, Conn., son of the late U. S. Senator Francis G. Gillette. He attended both Yale and Harvard, made his first stage appearance while still a Yale student/ in Across the Continent at New Orleans, 1875. He later wrote 13 plays, adapted five, collaborated on two. Great Gillette acting successes were his own Held by the Enemy and Secret Service; Barrie's The Admirable Crichton, Dear Brutus. When he played Sherlock Holmes in London in 1901 the part of a page boy was taken by Charles Spencer Chaplin. Mr. Gillette is the only actor who belongs to the American Academy of Arts & Letters. He owns a country estate in Hadlyne, Conn., operates with boyish glee a miniature railroad which runs around it.

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