I’m going to tell you a secret: there’s no such thing as the “best” Sherlock Holmes when it comes to screen portrayals. There’s no ranking, either by quality, canonicity (whatever that is), or hotness, that is based on anything but the ranker’s own conscious and unconscious biases. Indeed, the fact we’ve got hundreds to choose from at this point is proof of this concept--no one will ever embody the platonic Holmesian ideal… because that ideal is different for every viewer, and every era.

Like many long-lived characters, Holmes has gone through phases in how he’s presented. And, like Jesus, or Dracula, or Batman, these phases are not random. Every version is a response to something: to the text, sure, but also to history and culture and current events and what the last ten people did with Sherlock Holmes. So the question of “who wore it best” is irrelevant. The real interesting question, to me, is why each Holmes is needed in their time, and what they bring to our understanding of Sherlock Holmes and ourselves.

It’s been observed many times that there’s something timeless and magical about the great detective, in the sense that he embodies qualities that 1) are always going to be of interest and value to us and 2) is a malleable enough figure that he can be fit into a lot of different molds without becoming unrecognizable. A hero who, without any superpowers or inhuman abilities, relies on fact and logic alone to solve the world’s mysteries is a powerful hero indeed. At almost any point in human history, it’s reassuring to think that things make sense, that someone smart enough could explain that which we can’t. He also provides a fascinating set of dichotomies, existing on several knife-edges of society and culture, which makes him useful when exploring class, the urban/rural divide, emotion vs thinking, substance abuse, mental health and neurotypicality, law and order vs crime, and anti-sociability within one of the greatest bromances of all time. Holmes can take on a multitude of human attributes, depending on what you choose to focus on, and that he originally existed in a serialized, nonlinear format means no one is terribly fussed about continuity when creating new adventures--except, of course, for those whose entire Sherlockian careers has been given over to fussing over minutiae of continuity.

By cohesively and consistently embodying contradictory elements, then, Sherlock Holmes has, for over 100 years, been a persistent figure in popular culture. And the image that comes to mind when you read those words may be different from the next person to read this, and you may both believe that you are correct in your assessment that yours is the “right” Holmes. 

You’re both correct.

I’m going to outline a brief history of Holmes which is biased towards my own “unifying theory” of Holmes representation. There is not enough space here to mention every version, nor am I unaware that there will be items that do not fit this thesis. Culture, and its production, are not logical nor linear. I can merely detect patterns, amplified by various cultural moods and needs, but there will always be that writer or filmmaker who has a wild notion they get to play out. Nor do the following rough categories encapsulate every aspect of any one version, or represent any qualitative judgement. My entire point is that there really isn’t any “bad” Sherlock Holmes, because each iteration was what was considered necessary at that time and under that specific set of circumstances. You might not like them--and I myself dislike plenty. But they all have a reason to exist no matter how far off the mark they might feel to you--or to later audiences.

The first set of representations are exactly that: an attempt to put the canon on screen. The most notable of these is the series of 47 silent films starring Eille Norwood. Today those I’ve had access to look stodgy and still even by silent film standards, but at the time they were praised for their faithfulness, by no less than Arthur Conan Doyle himself. We also have, thanks to diligent film seekers and restorers, a film version of the celebrated William Gillette play, which while not really based on a single story does portray Holmes as a very heroic, stoic, upright figure. There is an attempt, however you might judge the interpretation, to recreate the feeling of the stories on film, with a scrupulous honor given the material.

Of course no time in human history is without its attempts at satire and humor, so there are several amusing takes on Holmes not meant to be taken seriously. Famously, the first known portrayal of Holmes on film is 1901’s Sherlock Holmes Baffled, which is simply a camera trick played too long, but my favorite is 1914’s The Leaping Fish which features Douglas Fairbanks as Coke Enneday. (Say the name out loud and you’ll get the gist of the film.)

Some attempts at Holmes were made in the 30s, mostly very static in the way of much early sound film, but the big push that more or less reintroduced Holmes to the US public were the Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce films of Fox and Universal in the late 30s/early 40s. Given their quality and the fact there were 14 of them, these films maintain a lasting impact on the cultural perception of Sherlock Holmes--and of Dr. Watson as a bit bumbling and stupid. But beyond that, these films served a useful cultural purpose. Rathbone’s upstanding, patrician, and beautifully heroic Holmes offered up a British hero we could not only put our faith in but see as a worthy ally, and it’s no accident that most of these films are updated to a current timeline where Holmes can take on modern problems. (Like Nazis.) This is not simply an attempt to make Holmes “relevant,” but to invite American audiences into the war effort, as Hollywood cranked up a wartime propaganda machine not limited to overtly racist newsreels about the threat from Germany and Japan.

While Holmes was assayed a few times in the 50s, (most notably for me in the television series starring Ronald Howard and H. Marion Crawford,) there was a largely dormant period as the UK and US got back to business as usual. This all changed after the cultural and political upheavals of the 1960s, giving rise to a series of films which questioned the very nature of Sherlock Holmes in various ways. The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), They Might Be Giants (1971), and The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976) were all in some sense deconstructions of the myth. I do not think they are a diminishment of the heroic nature of the character, but they all do call into question what we know about him, either by prying into his personal affairs, his psychology, or by displacing his nature onto the potentially mentally unbalanced mind of a modern-day man who merely thinks he’s Sherlock Holmes. All of this reflects the unbalanced social scene of the 1970s, as long-held cultural beliefs were challenged and people sought new modes of understanding--or coping.

With the return to at least superficial socioeconomic steadiness represented by the 80s, we see some of the most prestigiously ‘faithful’ adaptations yet. Both the Soviet series starring Vasily Livanov and the British Granada series starring Jeremy Brett were beholden to the original stories in a way few had attempted in decades. Well-funded, well acted, and generally very serious works, these series served to introduce the characters of Holmes and Watson to new generations on multiple continents, with a love for the source material that, in a sense, speaks to a desire to “get back to” something lost to time. There is a nostalgia in these series, in some sense for a time that never was, that does not question the cultural assumptions contained therein. This reflects the way the 1980s represented, for many, a yearning for stability and safety. This isn’t to say that there were no risks taken in terms of production, but the thrust of these shows away from deconstruction and towards accuracy (whatever that means) implies a search for stability. And both of these versions were very popular. The 80s also saw “safe” entries into the humor and children’s movie categories with Without a Clue and Young Sherlock Holmes, both of which seemingly diverted far from canon but in relatively unthreatening and/or joking directions accessible to a wide movie-going audience.

Given their solid “completeness,” it makes sense that these icons stood for some time as the platonic ideal of Sherlock Holmes, untouched until one of the biggest proliferations of Holmes material began in 2009 with Guy Ritchie’s action movie Sherlock Holmes, starring Robert Downey, Jr, and continued with the fandom-revitalizing modern day BBC version with Benedict Cumberbatch and CBS’s Elementary starring Jonny Lee Miller. We even had a prestige entry with Ian McKellan’s 2015 film, Mr. Holmes. On the surface, these might have little in common apart from, in the first three, a very modern sensibility. But I would argue that all four of these titles explore Holmes’ presence on the neurology spectrum. Without (in most cases) overtly diagnosing Holmes with, say, having autism or otherwise being on the spectrum of neuroatypicality, all of these Holmes present a form of wrestling with their place in the larger world of “normal” people. With drug addiction, learning disorders, and emotional health far more acceptable topics of public discourse, it makes sense, and fans have long speculated about Holmes’ behavior in regards to their own diagnoses. What makes these Holmes portrayals different is that all are presented as both heroic and worthy of our regard and also having overt difficulty functioning with everyday life. One never got the sense that Basil Rathbone had bad days, and even Jeremy Brett’s sometimes jerky and eccentric Holmes (powered in part by his own undiagnosed emotional issues) went unremarked upon in the context of mental health. But for these more recent Holmes’, their brilliance cannot be separated from their struggle with chemical dependency, difficulty relating to others, or inability to relate to the world as others do. With Mr. Holmes, while his mental deterioration is not because of his special gifts, it does present unique issues given his habitual brilliance. These Sherlocks present a narrative about living in the world with a brain that is differently suited to its tasks and foibles. And this, I think, is largely because we live in a world where it is far more acceptable to discuss such things as difference, not disorder.

Recent Sherlock Holmes offerings have yet to offer up a pattern to my mind, but I will say that we are seeing a recent spate of reimaginings which focus on diversity to varying degrees. Millie Bobbie Brown plays Sherlock’s sister in Enola Holmes. Miss Sherlock offers a modern-day Japanese Holmes and Watson--who are both women. The Irregulars has a diverse cast of younger investigators and a Watson who is mixed-race--and not straight. This could imply a cultural interest in race, ethnicity, and sexual/gender identity which I think is a welcome discussion and which Holmes is perfectly capable of enfolding within his narrative umbrella.

Whatever comes next, what I think the past 120 years has shown is that Sherlock Holmes can take it. He--or she, or they--can be used to fight Nazis, to address concerns about mental health, to explore issues of race and class, or any number of things I’m sure I haven’t thought of yet. The point is that he will always stand for truth, and truth is something we, as a society, are always seeking. We will probably never have final answers for any of the larger questions we ask, and thus, Holmes will always be needed to stand for those questions as he asks them himself.

In 1925, newspapers printed anecdotal reports of women fainting in movie theater seats, unable to process the horror of the face revealed before them. Nearly a hundred years later, viewers squirmed in their seats for wholly different reasons, watching the very same figure and yearning that he would reveal himself to them, instead.

The figure? The Phantom of the Opera, portrayed dozens of times on stage, screen, and novel page. A tragic invention of journalist-turned-detective-fiction-writer Gaston Leroux, the Phantom has lived many lives, and while the basic plot elements remain largely the same, the context within which he exists--and our response to him--has performed a bizarre 180 that would have Leroux’s head spinning. Though he would not, to be sure, mind the compensation. 

Is the hideous figure of Lon Chaney recognizable in the suave, svelte form of Gerard Butler, or even in his monstrously popular stage incarnation in the musical written by Andrew Lloyd Webber, the longest-running show on Broadway? Is the murderous living skeleton depicted in the novel the same character as the romantic figure who lures young and old alike into posting redemptionist, heart-wrenching fanfiction online? I would argue that, yes, of course he is: but that the transformations he’s undergone since 1911’s English translation of the novel are an echo of transformations in our own society, its anxieties, and the way we process those in our fantasies.

The monster-as-metaphor theme is a common one, seen in parables, fables, and fairy tales as well as modern horror and science fiction. The basic idea is that society takes issues that are, if not taboo, at least difficult to talk about and displaces them onto The Other; thus, Dracula stands in for fears of sex and immigrants from the east, and pod people stand in for either communism or consumerism depending on your political bent. In his origins, Erik the phantom recalled several different cultural anxieties for an early 20th century French audience: the foreigner, the sexual danger posed to women working outside the home, and a Frankenstein-like self-criticism of society’s tendency to dismiss those who are imperfect and, thus, risk their retribution.

But the thing about displacing anxieties onto the Other is that, first, cultural anxieties shift over time, and second, these metaphors are never so explicit that they represent a one to one relationship. We’ve seen this in many of our literary and cinematic horrors over the years; to go back to Dracula, are we afraid of death and dying and blood? Are we afraid of sexual predators entering our boudoirs? Or, are we afraid of the desire we have for that same being? The answer is, most likely: “yes.”

 

In the original tale, Erik is hideously ugly in a way that is unexplained but specific: he essentially looks like a corpse, with sunken eyes, no nose, yellow skin stretched over bone and a lanky frame that “smells of death.” We learn that he was born this way, rejected by his parents and thus sentenced to a life on the fringes despite his great gifts in music, architecture, and, as it turns out, murder. Finally retreating to a solo existence under the Paris Opera House, extorting the management for his needs by allowing tales of an “Opera Ghost” to proliferate, Erik is seemingly content until he hears a young soprano by the name of Christine Daae. Christine, kept sheltered by her now-deceased violinist father and fed on tales of an Angel of Music, readily takes both to Erik’s tutelage and his story that he is the Angel sent by her father. Of course, her childhood sweetheart Raoul shows up and wants to take her away. Before that can happen, Erik kidnaps Christine, reveals himself to her, and in the end forces her into a choice: marry Erik, or Raoul dies. She not only chooses to save Raoul, but takes pity on Erik, crying with him and kissing his forehead in an act of benevolence he has never before experienced and, afterward, cannot shake. He lets the lovers go, dying broken-hearted. The novel begs us not exactly to excuse or forgive the Phantom, but to understand that he had been driven mad by society’s mistreatment. He’s hardly a heroic figure, but neither is this the sort of one-dimensional gothic villain he might have been in other hands.

Lon Chaney

In retrospect, it seems almost inevitable that Hollywood would get to this tale. It was far more popular in America than in France, and Lon Chaney, the Man of 1,000 Faces, had recently assayed another sad French “monster,” Quasimodo from Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Chaney’s Erik is, however, a bit less sympathetic than the book’s; he does not let Christine go, but rather is in turn a victim of an angry mob seeking retribution for his murders. While circumstances like the return of injured veterans from the first world war and the actually sensitive portrayal by Lon Chaney might make audiences empathize, the studio did not want his villainy to be ambiguous or to make the audience work too hard, and, thus, robbed the story of its redemptive element.

Claude Rains and Susanna Foster

In a strange attempt to reintroduce sympathy, Universal’s next attempt in 1943 with Claude Rains as the Phantom changes the story quite a bit. They wanted to focus on the lush opera setting, not the horror, so they toned down the facial scarring and had Erique (no Germanic tinge here! Not during WWII!) injured while mistakenly believing his music was being stolen. He hides under the opera, but secretly mentors Christine, who in this version may or may not be his daughter. The script is so unclear on this point his motives are really difficult to pin down, and Erique becomes both oddly unthreatening and less rational in his revenge fantasies, given that his story is mostly that of a frustrated artist who can’t get a break, not a social outcast who has been tortured for his entire life. That said, the addition of “frustrated artist” is important here, as it gives another angle for the Phantom story to manipulate: that of individual effort and creation vs corporate control.

Paul Williams and William Finley in Phantom of the Paradise

This element gets heightened over the next few versions: there’s a 1962 Hammer Horror film with Herbert Lom, where the Phantom is not only entirely the victim but not even the main bad guy. The Opera’s owner is the real villain, stealing the Phantom’s music to put his name on and threatening Christine. In Brian de Palma’s 1974 Phantom of the Paradise the redemption/romance plotline is almost completely eschewed in favor of a revenge tragedy in which the hapless indie musician is repeatedly used and abused by a powerful mogul (cast in the mold of Faust by way of Dorian Gray) until he sacrifices himself to stop him. Even then, the music plays on and the crowd simply sees it as part of the show. When you think about the context of the 60s and 70s, and the questions of social upheaval and corporate authority, you can see that these ideas fit within the zeitgeist of their respective moments despite the departure from the original stories. There was plenty of horror going on in the world without making the musician a monster, after all.

Ali Ewoldt and Ben Crawford

Up until now, Phantom has elements of horror and romance, with some half-baked social commentary thrown in. But it’s in 1986 that things really heat up--when the Phantom hits Broadway. Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical retooled the original tale--with some elements from the adaptations--into a lush pop pseudo-opera that is all about feeling. Because it leaves out a lot of plot and character elements, focusing instead on emotional storytelling, the arc is entirely about how Christine and the Phantom, and to a lesser extent Raoul, feel about each other. The redemptive element fully back in play, what went on to become arguably the most popular musical of all time grabbed audiences in part because it told such a simple, relatable story: boy meets girl, girl likes other boy, boy kidnaps girl, but girl has enough love in her heart to touch boy’s soul and give him the peace he needs to do the right thing. While his ugliness is not in doubt, the fact we get his own side told in lushly orchestrated tones makes it almost inevitable that we will feel differently about this man than, say, the towering figure of Lon Chaney. The musical itself is on his side, unambiguously romantic even though Christine does eventually leave with Raoul. Even the kiss from the end of the novel has been transformed from a Pietà-like vignette to a passionate lip lock.

So what does this mean, to the overall thrust of the tale and its cultural significance? 

Well, for one thing, like many other formerly verboten figures like Dracula and the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Erik is now an acceptable “fantasy” object of desire. This is not to say monsters were never considered sexually attractive prior to the late 1980s, but it was certainly an outlier when it came to how they were portrayed or how (publicly) people expressed their opinions. With the proliferation of monster boyfriends in media, it’s out in the open that one might desire the mysterious and tragic figure as opposed to the “boy next door.” Again, this “bad boy” trope goes back much further than this particular story, but there has been a shift in our media and the conversation around it. I think this can be explained by two complementary thrusts in society: the increasing notion through psychology and social justice that Othering is dehumanizing, and the various sexual revolutions which have created a more varied space for human desire to manifest itself, at least publicly. 

While one-dimensional, demonic villains still persist in our narratives, there’s been an increasing desire to understand or even relate to these figures. Or, to put it another way, an increasing willingness to admit that when we Otherize certain issues, we are really talking about ourselves. As more research went into the origins of human behavior and emotion, dismissing certain types of villainy as “inhuman” became increasingly more complicated. On the other hand, the voices of those who related not to the dashing young hero but the benighted “monster” became more audible. I’m vastly oversimplifying here, of course, but there’s a very large difference between Leroux’s exhortation at the end of the novel that we must needs pity the Opera Ghost and an admittance by many fans that their viewpoint character is the Opera Ghost. And where at one point subterranean desires were exactly that, it is now far more socially acceptable to watch Michael Crawford croon his way through “Music of the Night” and say, “I’ll take that one, please.” If the Phantom is, after all, just a man, then he is both relatable and accessible. 

I would argue that the Lloyd Webber musical (and its fandom) elevated the Phantom to far more than that, until he is actually the equivalent of the handsome hunk on a romance novel cover. There’s no little resonance there to the notion of the “bodice ripper,” the idea that it would be nice if someone just came along and took care of all those niggling, nasty desires for you--in fantasy land, of course. But along with Lloyd Webber’s erotic angel of the night came some interesting responses, both intensifying the effect--and providing backlash.

Robert Englund

After the musical’s premiere, there were a spate of horror movies of varying quality which used the Phantom as a grotesque figure as if to put paid to the idea he was a fluffy romance hero with a fashionably goth veneer. Dwight Little and Dario Argento both made horror versions in the 80s and 90s, starring Robert Englund and Julian Sands respectively. Interestingly, while both portray the Phantom as wantonly murderous (and, in the latter case, prone to sexual assault), they include doses of overt sexuality missing from earlier versions. Once those floodgates had been opened, it seemed, Erik was fair game for all fantasies. He no longer stood simply for misunderstood musician or hounded victim-turned-villain, but for all sorts of dark desires you might play out with an R rating. You also had obvious cash-grabs like Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge which recasts Eric as a young weightlifter whose house gets demolished to make way for a shopping mall, which I suppose was meant to appeal to the direct-to-video youth market.

Teri Polo and Charles Dance

But alongside this “no, he’s actually super gross” backlash, the romantic tide continued to rise. The early 90s gave us the musical and miniseries written by Arthur Kopit and Maury Yeston, starring Charles Dance in the movie as the swooniest, most likeable Erik yet. A man rejected by family, longing only for acceptance, who kills people mostly by accident and is actually pretty charitable to his Christine in the sense that he does not lie and essentially does whatever she asks him to. Throughout all of this, fandom plugged away in zines and online, mostly in the vein of the Lloyd Webber musical, weaving its own revisionist fantasies about an eventual Erik and Christine endgame. The narrative had shifted entirely away from weird mystery about a shadowy figure under the opera who kidnaps naive ingenues and towards a “take me, please, you misunderstood genius” mode.

Gerard Butler

To this point in history, this mode has seen its apogee in the 2004 film of the musical, directed by Joel Schumacher and produced and funded by Andrew Lloyd Webber himself. Wildly divisive within fandom (if not in the actual world), this movie waters down the Phantom’s villainy even more, while amping up his attractiveness to the point where it remains unexplained why he’s even hiding away. Gerard Butler’s muscular form and gruff, rock-singer style woo a teenage Emmy Rossum with very little hint of menace or outrage as far as the movie’s concerned. The whole thing plays out like a girl torn between two older lovers: the rich but bland “good boy” Raoul and the sexy but troubled “bad boy” Phantom. (Erik doesn’t even get a name in the musical version, that’s how much he’s actually reduced to an object of desire.) To this day, and I’m only simplifying a tiny bit, forums devoted to The Phantom of the Opera teem with arguments about how the movie is good because Gerard Butler is so sexy. Countless posts and fanfiction attest to the idea that viewers not only want Christine to stay, but think it is only good and right that she do so, and offer themselves in her place.

As I’ve noted before, the trajectory of tragic ‘monster’ to ‘misunderstood romantic hero’ is not isolated to Phantom, and I’m not convinced it’s entirely a bad thing. In some sense, it feels like a step in a more enlightened direction, at least as far as attempting to understand what is different and applying human qualities to actual humans is concerned. That we can uncover some of our repressed longings and admit to shared fantasies means that we can begin to parse out what in those longings is actually healthy and what is probably best left to our solo moments. At the same time, in the Gerard Butler incarnation Erik’s problematic elements have been washed away to the point where he is only a misunderstood hero; and, conversely, his remaining problematic choices (stalking, kidnapping, ultimatum-seeking) are still treated as romantic.

It is unclear where the next iteration will take us. I actually prefer the perversely more nuanced if melodramatic Erik of the Leroux novel, but it’s plain that multiple generations (including mine) have now been trained to see this figure as fantasy fodder. In the wake of greater social justice movements, it will be interesting to see if the old-fashioned notions of male attraction survive, or if Erik will go back to being some form of ‘monster,’ simply recast in a mold familiar to those who see this behavior as reeking of patriarchal entitlement. What I do know is that every generation seems to get the Phantom it needs, and that we will always require figures on which to project our fears--and desires.

I'm worried about the new Star Trek show, Strange New Worlds. And before I get into why, I want to be clear about something: it's not that I dislike Anson Mount's Captain Pike, or that I am immune to the delight in the premise. I've been yearning for Star Trek to get back to what I believe are its roots and its values, values I've found missing from Discovery thus far except inasmuch as Pike came into represent the optimism and compassion of the Federation in season 2.

I get why people are excited, on multiple levels. I even share some of that excitement--with trepidation born of my disappointment in other Goldsman and Kurtzman projects. Because Pike does represent the best of the Federation, he does embody what I think has been missing from the grimdark self-seriousness of Discovery, and I totally get the desire to return to that.

But something is bothering me, has been bothering me, since Pike (and Spock) first showed up. And that's this: that what originally felt like a bone thrown to the segment of fandom that wants to see old characters turn up overlaps with a virulent strain of bigotry I see every day online. Headline after headline crows that "fan demand" has brought Pike, Spock, and Number One to the screen on their own show. Fan after fan has posted about how great it is that we're finally getting back to what Star Trek is about. Post after post mentions how the viewer "couldn't get into Discovery until Pike."

Now, that's all well and good--we relate to what we relate to, and it's very true that Pike is a different side of Trek than we've seen lately. So that sentiment isn't off base. What I think is off base is the fact that the Powers that Be chose to represent What's Good About Star Trek by first bringing in a trio of white characters to embody true Starfleet values and then giving them their own show. There's an excusable version of this where you justify it via the original characters all being (or passing as) white, and Pike as an established captain of the Enterprise is going to have a certain standing and philosophy, so none of this is inherently rooted in bigotry, just as appreciating the characters or the new show is not.

However, and it's a big but in my opinion, it's an unfortunate move in a franchise that, of late, has done a much better job than previously about creating and casting characters of color and other minority groups. The move to give the three white guys their own show is not, in my opinion, inherently racist. But it does dovetail unfortunately with a vociferous group in fandom that hates Discovery and cannot give any name to their disgust other than "SJW propaganda" and "forced diversity," whatever that means. Speaking as someone who also dislikes Discovery, the only thing I do appreciate about it is the casting and characters. But when an opinion I see spouted literally every day on internet groups, that Star Trek has gotten "too diverse," or that the ONLY thing DISCO is here for is to cram minorities down our throats, the announcement that a trio of white throwback characters is getting a new show getting greeted with applause and acclaim feels like a vindication for that ugly segment of the population.

I don't know what exactly the solution is, not that I have any say in this. I don't think there's anything wrong with Strange New Worlds as a show, and I actually look forward to seeing what they do because again, I'm here for the optimism, not the teenage diary platitudes about how dark the world is. But I wish I could see this development as something other than a bowing down to the backlash against the noble but behind-the-times efforts Trek has been making of late. It feels, in a way, like going backwards.

I'm still waiting to go where no one has gone before, and that doesn't seem like what they're going for, here.

When I learned that there was a new Sherlock Holmes convention within spitting distance of Seattle, I was delighted. I was part of the late lamented Sherlock Seattle con committee, which sort of got me back into Sherlock Holmes fandom after a long absence. I joined because I thought there should be more representation of the older iterations in the BBC-focused con; now, I tend to be the voice for the new and the weird in our local scion meetings. So I was even more excited to be chosen as a speaker for LCSS, on the topic of acting and Sherlock Holmes. This was based on my debatable expertise as someone who's taught about Holmes on film and played him on stage a few times. But this entry is about my overall thoughts about the con, so I'll try to find a balance between meaningfully specific and concise.

Overall (for those who want the birds-eye view) I have to say that I am incredibly happy and impressed by the work done by the organizing team and I'm grateful for the fabulous attendees. The weekend went amazingly smoothly, the panels were a fabulous cross-section of the charmingly pedantic, obscure, socially conscious, and poetic sides of the fandom. The crowd was an admirable mix of what I'd term "old school" and internet-raised fans. And the general attitude was one of acceptance, of "big tent" Sherlockianism (in Tim Johnson's words), of joyous celebration. I usually come off of conventions feeling better about fandom than I did before, because it turns out that when you put a bunch of people who love the same thing in different ways into a room, the love usually wins out. I also want to say that I am flattered at being included; I've never given a solo talk at a convention like this, and I was in illustrious company I do not at all feel I am at the level of.

I drove down to Portland with my flatmate, Strangelock, which was emotionally significant for me because we met doing Sherlock Seattle and I feel that our partnership is very Holmes-and-Watson-ish. It's not that we break exactly on those lines, but there are more similarities than not, and so we celebrated that by dressing as the Lenfilm (Soviet) versions of the characters on Saturday.



Brad Keefauver has blogged way more articulately as I can about the specific panels, partly because he was basically live-blogging the whole way, but some thoughts.

Robert Perret's talk about the questionably scholarly nature of Sherlockian writings was a wonderfully nerdy meta-view of the fandom, which I love because it is an example of the thing it is studying, and I enjoy that kind of thing. Basically I would go to a thing about a thing every time, skipping the thing itself. Next, Sonia Fetherston & Julie McKuras presented a history of the women who have tried to break the glass ceiling of "official" Holmes society in the US which made me basically want to dig up all the past BSI dudes so I could punch them in the skull. Then, we had Chuck Kovacic's charming presentation on his recreation of the Baker Street sitting room. He has VERY strong opinions on how to do it right, and was a very entertaining speaker. Colebaltblue and  Sanguinity's talk on Holmestice was mostly stuff I already knew, but here's the thing: I thought it was an incredibly valuable addition to the program. So many people long in the fandom are entirely unaware of a lot of the more recent innovations in fanworks and sharing, and these two managed to bridge that gap beautifully, in an unthreatening and inclusive manner. I think this morning really encapsulated so much that was great about this weekend: the fact that all ways of exploring Holmes are valid, and we can all contribute in our own style.

Speaking of which, next up after lunch were the fine gentlemen from BWAHAHAHA, demonstrating the style of pugilism that might have been described in Watson's writings. (Or rather, mostly by Holmes' description of his own prowess.) If you know me, you know I've dabbed in fencing and aerials and roller skating and all kind of things and I'm definitely going to hit up one of these practices to see how I like it. See again: doing a thing about a thing instead of the thing. If I'm practicing this HISTORY of a thing I'm more interested, for some reason. Next was Nancy Holder up with her presentation about Holmes in science fiction and horror, which was a great overview of the genre fiction our hero has taken part in. It's always made me slightly uncomfortable to combine Holmes with the supernatural, mostly because I like the LOGIC of the world that he represents, and a lot of the supernatural/horror stuff sort of throws all of that into question. But that's a post for another day, maybe. Our last stop of the day was with Dr. Bruce R. Parker on the use of medicine in the canon, which was really fascinating from the perspective of a doctor. I restrained myself and did NOT ask my question about BRAIN FEVER which is one of my favorite ailments of all time, mostly because when you look it up online it's basically only... references to ACD stories.

All in all, a very satisfying day. We had some time before the banquet, and strangelock wasn't going, so we walked downtown to Powell's books and got dinner and got back in time for me to put my mustache back on and mosey on down to the banquet. Having already eaten, I caught up with some of my fellow SOBs and took in the magic show. True to my nature, I enjoyed it more than I expected because it wasn't just a magic show; it was a treatise on centuries-old conjurer gossip. The history of conjuring was just as interesting as the effects themselves.

Day two was the big day, the day of my own presentation. I dressed in a slightly more modern dapper mode, sans facial hair, and placed myself next to Brad at what we deemed the speakers' table, though it was really just half the speakers. Side note: I was so excited to finally meet Brad Keefauver. I first encountered him in 1994 in the message boards of *Prodigy, which was the home of the Wigmore Street Post Office. I still have numerous copies of that zine, where I appear alongside Brad and Lee Shackleford and other greats of the fandom. I brought one with me, for him to sign, which he graciously did, but I cannot even express how gratifying it was to meet in person one of those who accepted a weird 14 year old into one of the oldest fandoms in the world.



First came the raffle, in which I won nothing, and then it was Lyndsay Faye's turn to speak about pastiche and fanfiction and the use of Sherlock in various works. I loved the idea that all novels are sequels, that we're all just riffing off what came before, because I truly believe it. The theme of the day, I think, was "All Holmes is Good Holmes," Lyndsay set us up well with her examination of how we all write the book we want to read, and it's all okay. Nothing erases what you love about the character, and there is room for all of it.

Here's the part where it gets bleak, for me, but transcendent. Tim Johnson of the U of Minnesota delivered a prose poem that covered not just his relationship to Sherlock Holmes and his fandom over the years, but beautifully evoked the way that fandom needs to encompass all visions. I cannot come close to doing it justice, but to hear a man so steeped in the history of this character and fandom make a plea for understanding and inclusion literally made me cry. The standing ovation was the only one of the weekend, and it could not have been more deserved. He was an inspiration.

I was next, and I was devastated to go after Tim, but I spoke a bit about the history of Sherlock on film and about the ways he can be portrayed. I was trying to do something that 1) I hadn't seen done before and 2) combined my dual tracks of studying Holmes on film and playing him on stage. So I basically tried to get people thinking beyond terms of "this is my favorite" into the question of what are they doing? that works (or doesn't) for various people. It seemed well-received! And I enjoyed the comments immensely.

Last but certainly not least (and as I joked in my talk, I was glad he was after me so everyone had stuck around), was Brad Keefauver with his multiverse theory of Sherlock Holmes. It's an attempt to make all versions "true," the idea being that each discrepancy is actually a branched universe. I love this, and it dovetails neatly with the big tent plea of Tim Johnson and the all stories are sequels statement from Lyndsay Faye. I like to think my points fall in there, too, in the sense that I was talking about the multiple "right" ways of being Holmes, and the way those techniques will work on some and not all but it's not objective.

With that, the symposium was over, and after a late lunch at my favorite restaurant in Portland (Nicholas Restaurant, best pita and hummus anywhere) strangelock and I drove home. I don't know where my next fandom adventure lies, but I know I want it to be alongside these people, and I hope if they're reading this they'll stay in touch. All Holmes is Good Holmes, and getting to share him with a room full of like-minded but utterly different fans was a reminder of how rich this fictional life is.

Man years ago, while exploring a warren of a used bookstore in Kutztown, PA, I came across two volumes of Hollywood RPF. Two flaking, bound volumes from 1942-43:

Ginger Rogers and the Riddle of the Scarlet Cloak by Lela E. Rogers, and
Betty Grable and the House with the Iron Shutters by Kathryn Heisenfelt.

What is RPF, you may well ask?

RPF stands for "real person fanfiction," a subset of fanfic which, instead of fictional characters, takes as its subjects actual people, usually celebrities. In the past few decades there's been a lot of angst in fan communities about the ethics of this sort of activity, and the degree to which it violates an actor or musician's right to privacy. What's fascinating about this find is the reminder that, well, it's been around a lot longer than fanfiction.net.

So what are these books like? The full text of title page for the Ginger Rogers one continues:


An original story featuring
GINGER ROGERS
famous motion-picture star
as the heroine

By LELA E. ROGERS

Illustrated by Henry E. Vallely

Authorized Edition

WHITMAN PUBLISHING COMPANY
RACINE, WISCONSIN

The verso includes: Except the authorized use of the name of Ginger Rogers, all names, events, places, and characters in this book are entirely fictitious.

I was, understandably, fascinated, so I bought them both, put them on my shelf, and promptly forget about them. Until now. Looking at them, they're that very lightweight, cheap sort of thing that I doubt would have held up in a library setting for long. I do wonder where these copies came from. (Betty Grable shows 38 copies on www.abe.com, from $3.00 to $78.97; Ginger Rogers shows 63 copies from $2.15 to $110.12, if you're curious.) The back pages list charming titles from the same publisher, segregated for girls and boys, though the page of interest reads thus:

WHITMAN AUTHORIZED EDITIONS

NEW STORIES OF ADVENTURE AND MYSTERY

Up-to-the-minute novels for boys and girls about Favorite Characters, all popular and well-known, including--

Ginger Rogers and the Riddle of the Scarlet Cloak
Deanna Durbin and the Adventure of Blue Valley
Deanne Durbin and the Feather of Flame
Ann Rutherford and the Key to Nightmare Hall
Blondie and Dagwood's Secret Service
Polly the Powers Model: The Puzzle of th Haunted Camera
Jane Withers and the Hidden Room
Bonita Granville and the Mystery of Star Island
Joyce and the Secret Squadron: A Captain Midnight Adventure
Nina and Skeezix (of "Gasoline Alley"): The Problem of the Lost Ring
Red Ryder and the Mystery of the Whispering Walls
Red Ryder and the Secret of Wolf Canyon
Smilin' Jack and the Daredevil Girl Pilot
April Kane and the Dragon Lady: A "Terry and the Pirates" Adventure

(It also mentions that "The books listed above may be purchased in the same store where you bought this book." Oh, if only that were true! Note, by the way, the fact that actresses, not the roles they play, share "Favorite Character" status with comic strip figures. In the case of most of these stars, that's probably fairly accurate.)

This website has a complete listing of the actress titles, which also include Judy Garland, Shirley Temple, Gene Tierney, and Dorothy Lamour. It also reveals that Lela E. Rogers was Ginger's mother, and lots of other stuff I don't have access to, like general information about the writing and the way in which the "real person" angle is handled. According to the site, Heisenfelt wrote half the books, all of which "read like parodies of series books":

Heisenfelt's characters nearly always encounter one or more people who are stricken by fear that is superstitious. The heroine is usually fearful as well, with the difference being that the heroine is able to control her fear enough not to make a complete fool out of herself. Every event in the story has a mysterious importance, and normal, everyday sounds, such as a shutting door or a cat's meow, are often taken to be extremely scary. The mystery usually turns out to be a fairly insignificant mystery, and in some cases would not have been a mystery had everyone communicated with each other. In short, Heisenfelt's books tend to be overly-dramatic. The entire plot of each Heisenfelt book usually occurs in a very short period of time, often in fewer than 24 hours. 

It also explains that there are two groups of stories in this loosely-defined "series": books in which the main character is in fact the actress named, and "while the heroine is identified as a famous actress, the stories are entirely fictitious and center around a mystery that convenient appears while the heroine is briefly visiting a dear friend. In some of these stories, many of the other characters fail to recognize the actress in spite of her openness about her identity!" The others are adventures where the character has the same name and looks as the actress but is, in fact, just a regular girl. Since I have one of each here, I'll see what I can see without actually reading them cover to cover.

Betty Grable and the House With the Iron Shutters

The story opens:

An April sun which had made several ineffectual attempts to appear from behind a bank of sullen clouds met suddenly with a measure of success. Long streamers of light penetrated the mended laces of a tall window, twining in a caressing halo on the golden head bent industriously over a much-scarred walnut desk. Light played over the paper, too--three sheets, closely written--and over a squat ink bottle tilted on a silver compact so that the faded black yield might be sufficient to moisten the blunt tip of a pen which many fingers had grasped.

The fingers which held it now were lovely, tapering to tips of pearl. Only one smudge marred their gentle perfection as the writer penned, "All my love, Betty."

Betty and her friend Loys Lester are sharing a hotel room, and much is made of the contrast between the blonde, glamorous Betty and dark, less rumple-proof Loys. And then there are inadvertently slashy lines like, "Considering Loys in her serviceable slip and her woolly brown cardigan, Betty grinned impishly--but swiftly, with an effort, she subdued herself and approached the bed." Or is that just me? Anyway, Betty is spotless and perfect, hard-working and even-tempered. She and Loys, a Hollywood reporter, are on vacation, during which Betty keeps getting recognized. She deals with this by denying she is Betty Grable, quite effectively it seems. But something seems amiss, and the vacation has lost some of its spontaneous luster. 

It's all rather boring, really. The writing, I mean. Clothes are invariably described, characters are referred to by hair color, and Betty stops to think about scary cat noises and looming thunderclouds before dismissing her anxieties with a (usually) figurative toss of her head. She and Loys somehow get stranded with some mysterious strangers at a mansion, where they are accused of theft and locked in a bedroom, until the whole thing is solved because someone was pretending the house was haunted. It's all very Nancy Drew/Scooby-Doo. Then I skipped to the end, where they discuss their next destination (they've been folding up a map and pointing blindly to the next stop) and one of them points out the quilt on the neatly turned-down bed and says, "There's something about a patchwork quilt... Let's do our poking right there!"


Ginger Rogers and the Riddle of the Scarlet Cloak

Ginger Rogers is not Ginger Rogers. She looks like her, talks like her, but is in fact a switchboard operator at a fancy hotel. All the men who call up love that honeyed voice! Naturally, she has an unfortunate friend who... Look, I'm just going to transcribe the whole mess because it's the clearest expression of this I've seen in a long time. Her friend Patsy wants to know why she won't go out with guests:

Ginger smiled. "I notice you never go out when you're asked, either."

"What do you mean, when I'm asked?" Patsy wanted to know. "Nobody ever asks me and you know it. I'm too wide and too short. They forgot to give ma nose and my second chin's got more character than my first one. I'm pigeon-toed and my underskirt's always hanging and there's nothing I can do about it."

As Ginger's merry laugh rang out through the little room, Patsy added, "And the name's Patsy Potts! Remember?"

Dear, comical Patsy. You laughed with her not at her. She didn't really look as bad as she painted herself. That was why it was always funny when she picked herself to pieces for the entertainment of her friends. Patsy wasn't really "too wide and too short." She was just plump, in spots. "Yeah, all the wrong spots," Patsy would say. Her underskirt didn't always hang down, just at times, and usually when Patsy was trying to make a good impression. Patsy was pretty when she "fixed herself up." But best of all to Ginger, Patsy was a true-blue friend. She was devoted to Ginger--all her dreams of romance hovered about the head of her friend, rather than about her own.

SERIOUSLY, 1942. Anyone else feeling a little sorry for the real Ginger? Her mom raised her right, I guess. Anyway, chapter two starts with a bang, literally:

Something happened the very next day that changed the whole life of Ginger Rogers. It was also destined to change the lives of all Americans, of Englishmen, of Australians, of South Americans--and of all of the inhabitants of the civilized world!

Japan treacherously attacked Pearl Harbor while her envoys were talking peace in Washington!

1942, remember? Italics are so not mine. The French-born hotel owner calls her staff together to explain that they're sending all the guests away to open up instead for the use of aircraft workers so they can be comfy while they start churning out secret weapons. Madame DuLhut, after all, doesn't want the US to roll over and give up like France did. Happily, the entire staff--even the German pastry chef, Rogers hastens to assure us--approves of this plan. The Americans who were born here "were no more enthusiastic than those others who were America's adopted children." (I guess the Japanese don't count.)

Ginger and Mme. DuLhut discuss Ginger's mom's edict that she not date rich boys (who aren't interested in marrying working girls), Ginger receives the eponymous scarlet cloak anonymously, and mother worries about her accepting such a gift. Great pains are taken to express both that girls do grow up someday, and that Mary (not Lela) Rogers did a Herculean job of raising her daughter alone.

Ginger seems to have her pick of the men, despite her lowly status. And it seems one rich aircraft manufacturing man has got round her mother's prohibition, though she really wants Ginger to marry the boy down the street. But Miles takes her to a Hollywood premiere, insisting she wear the cloak, where a strange man "with the face of Satan" keeps staring at her and mysteriously exchanges a packet of cigarettes with Miles. None of which, of course, Miles admits. At a fancy restaurant, Miles leaves her alone to take care of something, and another resident of the hotel, playboy Gregg Phillips, takes her out on the dance floor. It was, apparently, love at first phone call, despite warnings from others (her mother most especially) that Gregg is not the type of man she should know.

Of course, Miles is found injured and passed out and Ginger is soon in over her head in some sort of espionage mystery. And love story. Only Mary Rogers is harboring a SECRET reason Ginger shouldn't see Gregg:

Again Mary Rogers experienced that appalling sense of inadequacy. She was not equal to such a problem. It was all so easy when Ginger was young and needed only foo and clothing and kindness. Now she needed a guiding hand, wise and patient, and Mary felt herself deficient in both qualities.

Not Shakespeare, sure, but interesting that her fictionalized spy story about her own daughter has so much of her mother in it--and how it veers between the perfection of their relationship and its (fictional) problems. Including hiding from Ginger the truth about her father--according to wikipedia, her parents separated shortly after her birth, and her father even kidnapped her twice. And it was her mother's influence that pushed her towards the stage and Hollywood. Wiki also reports that mother and daughter were close as long as Lela lived, and that Lela was a huge influence throughout Ginger's career. How much was Lela Rogers exorcising in this little novel? How did Ginger feel about it? What on earth is going on when a mother writes RPF about her daughter, including parental conflict, a love affair, and the mother's own marital issues?

Now that is the story I want to write.

Anyway, things continue apace, with Gregg and Ginger deciding to get married after one eventful evening, Mary tossing Gregg out of the house, and the nice-guy boyfriend Patsy thought not good enough for Ginger luckily turning out to be good enough for her. Ginger trusts whom she trusts (read: likes) and suspects those she doesn't. Good rule, when you're drawn into service of your country! There is talk of a "Fifth Columnist" and some lovely writing, such as the doozy: "Indeed, there was so much to tell and yet there was nothing really definite and tangible. Everything was indefinite and intangible--that is, simply 'sort of suspicious.'"

The real-life weirdness continues when Gregg reveals that he's known Ginger's dad, Josh, his whole life. Josh Rogers is with the FBI, lives clean, and was like a second father to Gregg--which is interesting, since he doesn't seem to have been a first father to Ginger. But he's a great man, honest! Especially exciting is the fact that in real life, "Rogers" was Ginger's step-father's name, though she was never technically adopted. In fantasy-land, Gregg thinks Mary's down on rich boys because Josh used to be rich and she suspects it spoiled him and ruined their relationship--though Gregg assures Ginger that Josh never stopped loving her mother. So. Ginger's fatherless state is due to a misunderstanding, and Rogers is her real dad.

In the end, Ginger catches the real spy through her switchboard know-how, and then totally inexplicably goes off alone with him before anyone else knows what she does. She's marginally clever throughout, but relies mostly on intuition and being saved by men. At least she is a "working girl," I guess. Happily, she's rescued, Mary and Josh have an off-screen reunion, and everything's cleared up pretty much on the last page.

In short: these books are not very good. Nor did they really need to be, if you think about it. And the fascination lies not in their quality, but their existence. How did people respond to the idea of RPF back then? Was this a common practice in movie mags of the time? Who authorized the use of these personae? I haven't found a link by studio or anything like that. And what else are we missing from the history of RPF, before it got a clever name? Does it even count as such, when no effort is made to make it "real" beyond the names and likenesses?