johnwaynepeel OMG, do I love this classic movie.At long last, the great William Gillette is more than a footnote and a photo, but the man who MADE Sherlock Holmes alive for so many before us! The curved Meerschaum pipe is at last remembered for what it was... A stage relived item so as not to maim the voice of the REAL Sherlock Holmes. And the famous Sherlock robe we have seen in Sidney Paget illustrations in the Canon that was created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his 56 treasures.For over 1400 performances on stage, this Connecticut Yankee brought the British detective as actor William Gillette... not to mention, the radio play he once did, and many actors had wonderful careers bringing Sherlock onto the stage for at least 100 years. It's hard to conceive after watching this recording of historic magnitude, that Gillette got boos from London audiences but Gillette stood through this before speaking to them. This amazing moment was brought to the British public by an English reviewer who said that this same British public owed Gillette an apology, and he said it all n his review. Imagine! A Brit praised this Connecticut Yankee this way. Good for him.The DVD brings to marvelous excellence William Gillette's astounding performance. I had expected the usual almost cartoonish physicality, but I was so wrong. Gillette makes me understand why he was as revered actor and performer. One reviewer brought up that he was almost doing the later performance of Jeremy Brett, and having seen it now, I cannot disagree.The astonishing work of this movie has marveled me into a luxurious gift into the long past that never ages. I feel blessed to having seen this incredible actor's most celebrated performance to know that the true Sherlock Holmes is alive forever!To the guide of Gillette Castle in Connecticut gave me terribly wrong information that THE William Gillette never performed this movie even with an enlarged photo of the man in this performance I now own with all of my Sherlock performances on video, and for that I feel I am blessed forever.Please watch this fabulous film and see for yourselves all that I have said is true. Basil, Arthur Wontner, Eille Norwood and Jeremy Brett owe everything to William Gillette as well as they and the Conan Doyle Canon. It's all here on this gift to all of you Sherlock Holmes fans.

MissSimonetta After being so let down by the 1922 John Barrymore Sherlock Holmes, which boasted a lackluster leading lady and way too many intertitles, I was not expecting too much from the long-lost 1916 version, in spite of the presence of William Gillette. Thankfully, I was wrong: this is a well-paced, atmospheric, and well-acted picture. Thank God it was found.For someone who never acted in front of a camera before, Gillette is phenomenal. Like Sessue Hayakawa and Mary Pickford, here was another actor who understood the camera came with its own rules, a need for a greater subtlety which comes with the intimacy of the projected image. Self-assured, intelligent, and understated, Gillette is a great Holmes; no wonder he was so influential in our modern conceptions of the character.The plot itself (based off the popular 1890s stage play and later used for the bland 1922 film) is a mess, a mish mash of images, characters, and story elements from an assortment of the original Holmes stories. Some of the developments are silly and there are some plot holes, but what keeps the film from sinking are the mysterious atmosphere and the charisma of the performers. The pacing is slow, but never boring. I can only describe the picture as having a hypnotic quality.Many are put off by the addition of a love interest for Holmes, but I don't mind too much. At least he and Alice have some chemistry. It makes me think a lot of the 1970 film The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, where director Billy Wilder examines the emotions behind the famous detective's rational reserve.Film buffs and Holmes devotees will be interested. Give it a watch.

robertguttman This film, up until recently thought to have been lost, is of interest chiefly as a record of the earliest, and among the most famous, portrayals of the immortal Sherlock Holmes. William Gillette, who portrays Holmes in this movie, first played Holmes on stage in 1899, and continued to do so for over 1,300 performances during the next 35 years. To audiences before 1939, when Basil Rathbone made the role his own, William Gillette WAS Sherlock Holmes. This is a somewhat stagy version. That is partly due to having been made in 1919. However, it is also due in large measure to the fact that the movie actually is, for all intents and purposes, a filmed version of the stage play, which Gillette not only starred in, but also wrote. Nevertheless, this is a fascinating film to view, as well as a valuable record of one of the most famous portrayals of one of the most famous characters in literature.

John Wayne Peel This is the one and only film ever done by actor William Gillette and he was 60 years old at the time, a fact which shows particularly in photos of the photoplay. Also strange is the fact that those who conduct tours at the Gillette Castle in East Haddam, Connecticut don't even seem to know the film was ever made even though they display photos on the walls taken directly from the film.William Gillette has an astounding record in terms of the role of Sherlock Holmes not only because he played the role over 1400 times in three mediums total, but also because he got permission from Conan Doyle himself to do things with the character that were never in print mainly because Doyle was so sickened of the stories that people did not seem to care about any of his other novels and publications. Gillette had no such problem since he relished playing the part particularly since it made him a rather wealthy man as well as a famous one.Gillete also add bits of business that became so associated with the fictional detective that they exist to this day. Things such as the curved Meerchaum pipe and the dressing gown he so often wears in his digs at 221 B Baker Street. And in the last few serialized Sherlock Holmes stories in the American magazine Colliers, the illustrator intentionally made the detective hero look just like William Gillette.Samuel French still prints the play and it was performed by no less than the Royal Shakespeare Company on Broadway as well as on the Wezt Coast. Still, when it was performed at the Williamsburg festival, there were changes made in the stage play making one wonder if there was more than one version of the play. Still these two things - the printed play and the videotaped production are all we have to go on in what this film may have been like since no print seems to exist.Then there is the 1922 Sanuel Goldwyn film starring John Barrymore which tantalizes us further. While many here on this site have lambasted that version, it appears by all accounts to have been wildly successful.SPOILER ALERT: Gillette in his version marries off Holmes to the character of Alice Faulkner who seems to have been based on the literary character known as "THE Woman" by Sherlock Holmes himself in a story in the Canon. Her name was Irene Adler.Reportedly, when Gillette asked the creator Conan Doyle if he could marry him off, he was known to have said "You may damn well kill him off if you wish" As I have said in my summary title, I do hope that one day this film will resurface and be seen at all. One can only dream.