William Hooker Gillette (July 24, 1853 – April 29, 1937) was an American actor-manager, playwright, and stage manager in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He is best remembered for portraying Sherlock Holmes on stage and in a 1916 silent film.
Gillette's most significant contributions to the theater were in devising realistic stage settings and special sound and lighting effects, and as an actor in putting forth what he called the "Illusion of the First Time." His portrayal of Holmes helped create the modern image of the detective. His use of the deerstalker cap (which first appeared in some Strand illustrations by Sidney Paget) and the curved pipe became enduring symbols of the character. He assumed the role on stage more than 1,300 times over thirty years, starred in the silent motion picture based on his Holmes play, and voiced the character twice on radio.; Zecher website, ibid.
His first Civil War drama Held by the Enemy (1886) was a major step toward modern theater, in that it abandoned many of the crude devices of 19th-century melodrama and introduced realism into the sets, costumes, props, and sound effects. It was produced at a time when the British had a very low opinion of American art in any form, and it was the first wholly American play with a wholly American theme to be a critical and commercial success on British stages.Hartford Courant, "Mr. Gillette's Play In London", April 4, 1887, p. 1; The Times, "Princess's Theatre", April 4, 1887, p. 5; Price, E. D., FGS, Editor, Hazell;s Annual Cyclopedia (Hazell, Watson, and Viney, 1888), pg. 191; Deshler, Welch, Editor, The Theatre, Vol. III, No. 6, April 25, 1887, Whole No. 58, in The Theatre (Theatre Publishing Company, 1888), p. 107; New York Times, "Old World News by Cable", May 15, 1887, pg. 1; New York Morning Journal, "'Held by the Enemy', the Story of Its Phenomenal Success", September 11, 1887, p. 9; Zecher, Henry, William Gillette, America's Sherlock Holmes, pp. 161–163. In November 1915 he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Early life Gillette was born in Nook Farm, Hartford, Connecticut, a literary and intellectual center with residents such as Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Charles Dudley Warner.See Andrews, Kenneth R., Nook farm, Mark Twain's Hartford Circle (Harvard University Press, 1950) and Van Why, Joseph S., Nook Farm (Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Hartford, CT, 1975).
Gillette's father, Francis, had been a United States Senator and a crusader for public education, temperance, the abolition of slavery, and women's suffrage.Andrews, Kenneth R., Nook Farm, Mark Twain's Hartford Circle (Harvard University Press, 1950). His mother, Elisabeth Daggett Hooker, was a descendant of the Reverend Thomas Hooker, the English-born Puritan leader who founded the town of Hartford and either wrote or inspired the first written constitution in history to form a government.Hooker, Edward W., The Descendants of Rev. Thomas Hooker: Hartford, Connecticut, 1586–1908 (Edited by Margaret Huntington Hooker and printed for her at Rochester, N.Y., 1909; Legacy Reprint Series, Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 2007). Gillette had three brothers and a sister. Another sister named Mary died as a small child.Zecher, Henry, William Gillette, America's Sherlock Holmes, p. 51.
His eldest brother, Frank Ashbell Gillette, went to California and died there in 1859 from consumption (tuberculosis).Sacramento Daily Union, August 8, 1859, notice, compiled by David Murray, Superintendent of the City Cemetery, reads: Mortality of the City. In the 1860 Mortality Schedule Index at the California State Library in Sacramento is an entry under Gillett, Frank A.; age 23; male; CT listed for state of birth; died Aug; listed as Farmer for occupation; died Sacramento County; enumeration district 2; township Sacramento City. The third oldest brother, Robert, joined the Union Army and served in the Antietam campaign, was invalided home sick, recovered, and joined the Navy.Burton, Nathaniel J., A Discourse Delivered January 29, 1865, in Memory of Robert H. Gillette (Press of Wiley, Waterman & Eaton), 1865. Robert Gillette was assigned to the U.S.S. Gettysburg and took part in both assaults on Fort Fisher. He was killed the morning after the surrender of the fort when the powder magazine exploded.Robinson, Charles M., III, Hurricane of Fire, the Union Assault on Fort Fisher (Naval Institute Press, 1998), p. 184; Gragg, Rod, Confederate Goliath, the Battle of Fort Fisher (Harper Collins, 1991), p. 235; Hartford Courant, "Death of Paymaster Gillette", January 21, 1865, p. 2; Burton, Nathaniel J., A Discourse Delivered January 29, 1865, in Memory of Robert H. Gillette; Zecher, Henry, William Gillette, America's Sherlock Holmes, pp. 55-56. His brother Edward moved to Iowa and his sister Elizabeth married George Henry Warner, both in 1863, after which William was the only child in the household.
At the age of 20, he left Hartford to begin his apprenticeship as an actor. He briefly worked for a stock company in New Orleans and then returned to New England where, on Mark Twain's own recommendation, he debuted at the Globe Theater of Boston with Twain's stage-play The Gilded Age in 1875. Afterward, he was a stock actor for six years through Boston, New York, and the Midwest. He irregularly attended classes at a few institutions, although he never completed their programs. His father Francis had held the strongest objections to the theater in general, but he offered the least resistance and drove him to the train station, telling his son that he had driven two other sons to this same station and they had never returned; William was to make sure that he was the exception.Zecher, Henry, William Gillette, America's Sherlock Holmes, p. 77; Duffy, Richard, "Gillette, Actor and Playwright", Ainslee's Magazine, Vol. VI, No. 1, August 1900, pg. 54. Francis supplied him with an allowance on which to subsist (his apprenticeship was without pay).Zecher, Henry, William Gillette, America's Sherlock Holmes, p. 77; Letter to George Warner, Gillette Correspondence, Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Hartford, Connecticut.
His father's health began to fail in 1878, and William forsook the stage for more than a year to care for him in his final illness. Upon his father's death, he and George Henry Warner were named executors of Francis' estate, and they, Elisabeth, and Edward shared in the inheritance.Last Will of Francis Gillette, Signed October 12, 1877, City of Hartford Probate Records, 1876–1880, Microfilm #LDS1314362, CSL #986, continued on LDS #987, pp. 435–436, 539–541.
Theatrical career Playwright, director, and actor
Gillette was hired as playwright, director, and actor for $50 per week in 1881, while performing at Cincinnati, by two of the Frohman brothers, Gustave and Daniel. The first play that he wrote and produced was The Professor. It debuted in the Madison Square Theatre, lasting 151 performances, with a subsequent tour through many states (as far west as St. Louis, Missouri). That same year, he produced Esmeralda, written together with Frances Hodgson Burnett.Frohman, Daniel, Daniel Frohman Presents An Autobiography (Claude Kendall & Willoughby Sharp, 1935), pg. 51; Gerzina, Gretchen, Frances Hodgson Burnett (Chatto & Windus, 2004), pp. 89, 93–95, 99; Gillette, William, Esmeralda in The Century Magazine, Vol. XXIII, New Series VOL I, November 1881 to April 1882 (The Century Co., 1882), pp. 513–531; Hartford Courant, "Amusements, 'Esmeralda'", November 6, 1882, pg. 3; New York Times, "Mrs. Burnett's New Play", October 30, 1881, p. 8
Early in his career, Gillette realized that it would be in the triple role of playwright, director, and actor that he could make the most money. He was among the premier matinee idols of his day, and was described by actress/drama critic Amy Leslie as "one of Gibson's notables materialized".Leslie, Amy, Some Players (Hebert S. Stone & Company, 1899), p. 302 Lewis Clinton Strang observed that "he rarely gesticulates, and his bodily movements often seem purposely slow and deliberate. His composure is absolute and his mental grasp of a situation is complete."Strang, Lewis C., Famous Actors of the Day in America (L.C. Page and Company, 1900), p. 178.
"Occasionally", Georg Schuttler pointed out, "when it was least expected, he gestured or moved his body so quickly that the speed of the action was compared to the swift opening and closing of a camera's shutter."Schuttler, George William, William Gillette, Actor and Director (An unpublished thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Speech Communication in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, 1975), pg. 97; Schuttler, Georg William, (1983) "William Gillette: Marathon Actor and Playwright," The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 17, Issue 3, Winter 1983, pp. 115–29. , pp. 124–125.
S. E. Dahlinger, leading expert on the play Sherlock Holmes, summed him up: "Without seeming to raise his voice or ever to force an emotion, he could be thrilling without bombast or infinitely touching without descending to sentimentality. One of his greatest strengths as an actor was the ability to say nothing at all on the stage, relying instead on an involved, inner contemplation of an emotional or comic crisis to hold the audience silent, waiting for the moment when he would speak again."Dahlinger, S. E., "The Sherlock Holmes We Never Knew," The Baker Street Journal, Vol. 49, No. 3, September 1999, p. 10.
He was an unemotional actor, unable to emote, even in love scenes, about which Montrose Moses commented, "he made appeal through the sentiment of situation, through the exquisite sensitiveness of outward detail, rather than through romantic attitude and heart fervor."Moses, Montrose J., The American Dramatist (Little, Brown, and Company, 1925), pg. 369
Ward Morehouse described Gillette's style as "dry, crisp, metallic, almost shrill."Morehouse, Ward, Matinee Tomorrow (Whittlesey House, 1949), pg. 23 Gretchen Finletter recalled that it was "a dry, almost monotonous voice admirably suited to the great Holmes".Finletter, Gretchen, From the Top of the Stairs (Little, Brown, 1946), p. 44 The New York Times noted in 1937 that "it would be hard to convince that portion of the American public that knew and followed him that any better actor had ever trod the American stage ... It would be conservative to say that Mr. Gillette was the most successful of all American actors."New York Times, "William Gillette, Actor, Dead at 81", April 30, 1937, p. 21
He had a heightened sense of the dramatic, and his two most riveting scenes are still considered to be among the most dramatic scenes in the history of the American theater: the hospital scene in Held by the Enemy and the Telegraph Office scene in Secret Service.Murphy, Brenda, American Realism and American Drama, 1880–1940 (Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 162; Dithmar, Edward, "Secret Service", Harper's Weekly, October 10, 1896, p. 215
Gillette treated both sides of the American Civil War equally, bestowing integrity, loyalty, and honor on both North and South, even as he made a spy each play's sympathetic hero. Yet, what set Gillette apart from all the rest was not simply his reliance on realism, his imperturbable naturalistic acting, or his superior sense of the dramatic. He "was also a pioneer in making American drama 'American', rejecting what had been up until that time a pervasive European influence on American theater" at a time when American art of all kinds was held in very low esteem by the British.Films for the Humanities & Sciences. Accessed November 19, 2022.
Inventor