William Gillette, America’s First Sherlock Holmes
By George Wallace

The release, this month, of a sequel to the popular Sherlock Holmes movie, starring Robert Downey Jr., is a reminder for local history buffs of the man who, before Basil Rathbone and Hollywood got hold of the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, originated the theater persona of the great British detective.

That would be a fellow named William Gillette (1853-1937).

Though born in Nook Farm, the “Hamptons” of Hartford Connecticut (and a retreat to such figures in literary arts as Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe), Gillette has strong associations with the Greenport, LI area, having lived there for a decade or so.
William Gillette was known nationwide as the man who played Sherlock Holmes on the stage for 35 years, and is credited with having created such elements of Holmesiana as the pipe, the distinctive deerstalker cap, the cape, and the phrase which became ‘Elementary, My Dear Watson.’

Certainly he was wealthy and moved in elite circles — he performed on the stage with such greats as Ethel Barrymore and is said to have earned as much as $300,000 a year. He entertained Calvin Coolidge and Albert Einstein at a castle he had built outside Hartford.

And in fact, he became friends with Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the famed Sherlock Holmes character. According to biographers, in 1899 Gillette traveled to England to present a script he had written to Conan Doyle, disguised as Sherlock Holmes, even acting out the part of the great sleuth when he met the author.
According to theater historian Wayne Turney, Gillette was known as “the aristocrat of the stage.” “As a playwright and director, he pioneered the “realism of action,” eschewing unnecessary dialogue for telling physical action, in an important precursor of film,” he notes. “As a theorist, he contributed “The Illusion of the First Time in Acting.”

Visitors to Hartford can see his fanciful castle, but here on Long Island, Greenport’s the place to go. While the castle was being built, Gillette lived in the village — Gillette Avenue is named for him — and in all, spent about ten years in the village, summering off and on,
including a number of visits in which he stayed on a boat the Aunt Polly in the Pipes Cove area.

His years in residence commenced in 1914, when he purchased some 25 acres of farmland from Alexander Chauncey, on Peconic Bay in East Marion.

Here, according to biographer Henry Zecher (“William Gillette, America’s Sherlock Holmes”), he enjoyed a number of years in friendly company. “Southold town historian Antonia Booth tells us ‘village residents recall seeing his Japanese houseboy (Yukotaki Osaki) wheeling Gillette’s cat through the streets in a baby carriage.’”
Today, there is little mention of William Gillette in the area. But a visit to the quiet salt marshes and lapping waters of the inlet known as Pipes Cove is a small way to commune with the man who was America’s first Sherlock Holmes.