The Model Sherlockian

by

Lauren Roberts

                     

Anyone who has read the Sherlock Holmes stories—and if you haven’t, why not?—has an image of the fictional detective firmly planted in her or his mind. That Sherlock Holmes that each reader conjures up is THE Sherlock Holmes. So when drawn or portrayed images turn up that run contradictory to the man we “know” surprise and often disappointment almost inevitably leave behind some tarnish on our own beloved image.

My first run in with this phenomenon happened a long time ago when I first glimpsed a rerun of an old movie starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. What??? These idiots could not possibly be my beloved Holmes and Watson! Rathbone’s Holmes was smarmy and possessed no controlled elegance at all. Bruce’s Watson was so dim-witted it was a wonder he could dress himself. I was appalled, and despite the many years that have passed since I saw those awful scenes the contamination they left on my brain remained.

It didn’t help either when a few years after that I ran across a reprint of one of the original SH stories that ran in The Strand magazine in 1891. Illustrated by Sidney Paget, Holmes and Watson were both tall, slender, almost “beautiful” men. I was horrified. (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle also believed Paget made Holmes too handsome.)

Ever since then I have tried not to think about them. It’s been enough to pull my copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes (all print, no images) off the shelf once in a while to enjoy a story or two with “my” Sherlock Holmes back in my mind. And it stayed that way until PBS Mystery Theatre began broadcasting Granada’s Theatre’s “Adventures of Sherlock Holmes,” and I discovered for the first time a portrayed Holmes was exactly the Holmes I saw in my mind. I was completely taken by this Holmes and by the man who played him, the late British actor Jeremy Brett.

It’s not surprising that Brett’s interpretation became for many if not most SH fans the ultimate one. “There is a tremendous delicacy in preserving Holmes in other people’s imaginations,” he once said, “because there are a million different ways of seeing him. You try not to interfere with anybody’s image.”

Brett was born Peter Jeremy William Huggins on November 3, 1933 in Berkswell, Warwickshire, England, the youngest of four sons of Lt. Colonel Henry William Huggins and Elizabeth Edith Cadbury Butler (of the Cadbury chocolate family). He was educated at Eton College where he excelled in fencing and singing. He also suffered from rheumatic fever which left his heart damaged, and had a speech impediment that left him with a weak “r” pronunciation. After surgery to correct it at age 17, he entered the Central School of Speech and Drama in 1951 and, as he said, “learned to speak again.” It was here, while he was training as an actor, that he made his film debut, albeit an uncredited role, in Svengali.

Brett had developed an interest in acting at a young age, but his father, a Lt. Colonel in the army, was opposed. “My father thought any respectable  middle-class boy shouldn't do a thing like that,” Brett said. “He thought it was all  drinking champagne out of slippers.” His father’s antagonism to the idea led Brett to change his last name, borrowing it from the label in his first suit (a green tweed made by Brett and Co.) When in 1961, he father saw him as Hamlet, he changed his mind about letting his son use the family name but by then it was too late. Jeremy Huggins was Jeremy Brett in the public’s eye.

From the Central School, he made his professional debut at the Library Theatre in Manchester in 1954. Two years later, he opened on the London stage with the Old Vic company. He spent six months in the Italian Alps filming War and Peace with Audrey Hepburn, then returned to the British stage. The company toured several cities in the U.S., and Brett had the opportunity to appear on NBC television as Paris in Romeo and Juliet.

He continued to work regularly, his roles ranging from classical to avant-garde. One of his most important was that of Hamlet in 1961 at the Oxford Playhouse. Overall, he was a critical success. As Frank Dibb wrote in Plays and Players, Brett’s Hamlet was “youthful, princely, embittered, passionate in his vengeance-seeking, mordantly witty in his encounters with Polonius and in the play scene yet, albeit, a man of whom Ophelia could very conceivably have referred to as 'the expectancy and rose of the fair state—a man who in voice and mien suggested a royal personage.”

After Hamlet, Brett went on to work at the Chichester Festival Theatre on two plays, and it was here that he met a man who would have a powerful influence—Sir Lawrence Olivier. The year was 1963, and Olivier was overseeing the Chichester Festival Theatre as well as mounting the first season of the eagerly anticipated National Theatre. Brett had been offered the role of Eliza Doolittle’s smitten suitor for the film, My Fair Lady, that was being filmed in Hollywood. Olivier did not want to lose him, but he could do little more than require that Warner Bros. “buy” him. However, Hollywood was not the door to other acting roles as Brett had hoped it would be.  

He was always busy, but in late 1978 he took on the role of Dracula in a touring role. It was tough—he threw a 35-pound cape around majestically if not easily—and as he told the Chicago Tribune: “When he's onstage, Dracula makes a thunderous amount of noise, especially in the second act. I thought Hamlet was rough, but this is, too. It's so violent when it actually explodes, it drains me. I stagger off . . . All that roaring—I roar all the time through the show—is bad on the throat.”

In late 1980 he had the opportunity to play Dr. Watson in The Crucifer of Blood. “It [playing Watson] was tremendous fun,” he said, “and it taught me a lot about how to approach Holmes when the Granada series got under way. I learned a great deal about the inter-relation between the two men.” He also liked the character a great deal more than Holmes, describing him as “a warm, loving, sunny person who's very enthusiastic—and hurt and slightly upset when his friend is rude to people or him. This is much more like me."

Next up, in 1982, was a stint as Prospero in The Tempest. Not only did he act, but he produced and directed the play. It was while doing this that he was offered the part of Holmes. However, he was more interested in trying to raise money to film the play. He didn’t have much luck, so after reading the entire Holmes canon he accepted the part.

The role for which he is most remembered began as a Granada Television series in 1984 and ran through 1994. (WGBH, the Boston PBS station, picked it up and broadcast it in America. In 1991, Brett returned to America to help PBS stations raise funds, and these signed bookmarks were issued in return for donations.) In an interview, June Wyndham-Davies, who was deeply involved, told how it came about:

I had done a very successful series called “Cribb”, and it made a lot of money, and as a result of that, Granada was able to take on Sherlock Holmes. Now, The Adventures . . . the first 13 hours, was done by Michael Cox. He had a great love for Conan Doyle. One of the most interesting things is, and I like to be credited with this, was the suggestion of Jeremy Brett to play Sherlock Holmes. Peter Eckersley, who was the head of drama, died, and we went to his funeral. I was with a quite well known director at that time, and they were asking him whether he would like to direct Sherlock Holmes. He said that it depends on who plays Sherlock Holmes. I said, “I've had a brilliant idea. I think it should be Jeremy Brett”. We can date it absolutely from that time of the funeral. They said it was a rather surprising thought, because he was considered to be a matinee idol at that time; very good looking, not the sort of man you would imagine Sherlock Holmes to be. Several months later, I suddenly heard on the grapevine that it was going to be Jeremy Brett, so I was very pleased about that.

Like I've worked out where Holmes was born; I've decided what his nanny was like; he didn't see his mother until he was 8 years old, probably held the rustle of her skirt. The Victorian nanny didn’t do anything except rub him and scrub him, tuck him up in bed and dump him. Didn’t meet his father until he was 20, and he was a prided, frightened little man, as indeed was his brother, Mycroft. There may have been this beautiful girl, that he fell flat for, but she didn't look at him. So that broke his heart and he thought, “Well, I'm not going to be rejected again,” so that's why he’s the way he is . . .

He’s an upholder of the law. He’s also a law unto himself. In other  words, he releases people and Scotland Yard says “How could you do that?” He also loves children because I’ve wondered where his love is channeled. Because no one can be that [unemotional]. But I think  there is an intimation from the Baker Street Irregulars, the street  urchins, and I think he pays them . . . Holmes has  been endowed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle with the antennae of a child.  Also, something else--feminine intuition, which I didn’t realize  until I played him for awhile. He makes these little leaps. You know  how a woman can get an answer that a man has to work his way towards, get all the facts?

Upon his release, he returned to the series. If you know it, you also know the two actors who have played Dr.  John Watson: David Burke and Edward Hardwicke. The latter was a particularly close friend, and in an interview Brett described the bond that united them as friends and as the characters they portrayed. “[The Sherlock Holmes stories] are a great essay in male friendship, which has gone now. Mens’ friendship has been debased. One of the lovely things about Holmes and Watson is that they do have this great platonic relationship.” As did Brett and Hardwicke as shown in this tender memory:

When I came out of the asylum, the person who collected me was Edward Hardwicke. He took me to an Italian restaurant. I had a pasta and a glass of red wine. He then drove me back to my home where we sat and had a cup of tea. He is one of the loveliest people, and I suppose he is the best friend that any man has ever had . . . Which is after all how Doyle describes Watson.