Come to think of it, back almost 50 years ago I remember getting half-price tickets to a Broadway musical called Baker Street. I don't remember much about the production. Fritz Weaver played Holmes. Whether he sang and danced escapes me, I have to assume he did, and somehow the idea of Sherlock Holmes the song-and-dance man is as strange as that of the superhero Holmes. Yet the show ran long enough to start selling half-price tickets (311 performances according to Wikipedia), so there must have been an audience that didn't find it offensive. Myself, I can't remember anything about it. Wikipedia says that the show was "loosely based" on Conan Doyle's story, "A Scandal in Bohemia," and that it interestingly takes a liberty in creating a romance for Holmes with Irene Adler, a liberty which it turns out Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes also takes.
If there is a lesson in all this, it is that when you create an iconic figure, it isn't always easy to control what future generations will do with it. Think of Count Chocula. Think of Frankenberry cereal and Young Frankenstein. Think of all the incarnations of Robin Hood, from Errol Flynn to Russell Crowe by way of Kevin Costner. Think of what's happing to our friend Spiderman on the Great White Way, as we speak. If they can do it with Sherlock Holmes, is anyone safe?
Back when I was 13, the first book I ever bought with my own money was the Modern Library edition of two collections of Holmes stories, The Adventures and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. I still have it. I think I'll go get it and read a few of those stories once again. Robert Downey, Jr., Benedict Cumberbatch, Fritz Weaver, and even my beloved Basil Rathbone may be well enough as they go, but in the end, I guess there's no substitute for the real thing.
Article comments
1 - John Lake
Bravo for defending Holmes, who indeed had the knack of 'reasoning backwards'. Watson of course was a military man in Afghanistan; he was a dresser of wounds at the battle of Barts (correct me if I'm wrong).
As you recount, Irene Adler was “always the woman.”
2 - Natalie Wood
Basil Rathbone be-doodled! The only actor who ever truly recreated Holmes from page to stage was the magestically saturnine and aloof Jeremy Brett. What's more, I believe that "becoming" Holmes killed the poor guy off. But "Holmes the Musical" come on - how about a rock of version of Bach's "St Matthew's Passion"? By the way: Does Jack the Lad know that the local council at Wavertree, U.K. where Conan Doyal lived is attempting to sell his house there instead of having it converted into a proper museum? Tch, tch!
3 - Natalie Wood
Apologies for the poor typing above - I was going to write "magisterial" and got carried away. The line should read "majestically saturnine and aloof ...". As we all know, there are some actors who so "become" a particular character that it fairly takes them over and makes it hard for us mere mortals to imagine anyone else in the role. Christian McKay as Orson Welles is another case in point.