回复：The Jeremy Brett Archive

关于Gary Bond:
Gary James Bond was born in Hampshire on 7 February 1940, to parents originally from Cardiff.   His father was a soldier and opposed his son's wish to be an actor, but his death when Gary was 16 freed him to follow his ambitions. Quickly developing a dramatic and musical interest he trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London before taking on his first television appearance in 1963 in Granada Television's 'War and Peace', in which he played Nicolai Rostov.   His first film appearance was in the company of war epic 'Zulu' (1964) as Private Cole - he is the young soldier who asks 'why us?' at Rorke's Drift, to receive the reply 'because there's no one else, lad'.
His film and television appearances were few, and in many ways he was a very underused actor despite being marketed at one point as 'the new Peter O'Toole'.   Although his episodes of Z Cars, Blackmail (the intriguingly named 'I Love Ivor Diver ... Why The Devil Doesn't He Love Me?') and No Hiding Place are now lost, the 1967 BBC production of 'Great Expectations', where he played Pip opposite Francesca Annis as Estella, survives, as well as the Armchair Theatre play 'The Education of Corporal Halliday', the Indian army series 'Frontier' (1968, for Thames Television), and his appearance as the sinister invisible whistling man in 'The Avengers: Stay Tuned' (1969).   Two major film appearances were as ill-fated minstrel Mark Smeaton in 'Anne of the Thousand Days' (1969), and perhaps his best work as John Grant, the arrogant schoolteacher experiencing a dark night of the soul in the Australian outback in 'Wake in Fright' (1971) - this film was recently restored and re-released on Region 4 DVD after being lost for over thirty years.
For television Gary was effective opposite Eileen Atkins in an adaptation of 'The Duchess of Malfi' in 1972, and rather sweet as Robert Merton (Merton Denscher) in an episode of 'Affairs of the Heart' called 'Milly' which interpreted Henry James' 'The Wings of a Dove' (1975).   After turning forty he played more jobbing roles in 'Tales of the Unexpected: The Last Bottle in the World' (1981, as French wine critic Max de Marechal, complete with dodgy accent), 'Hammer House of Horror: Growing Pains' (1980, as scientist Terence Morton who has a devil child a la Omen), 'Lytton's Diary: What a Wonderful World' (1986, as Dan 'Mr Wonderful' Hinton who actually turns out to be cheating the charity he represents), 'Hannay: The Hazards of the Die' (1988, in a tiny role as Ned Jollifant whose party piece is splitting a bullet by firing at an axe embedded in a piece of wood), 'After the War: Partners' (1989, where he plays an egotistical singer-songwriter called Aubrey Jellinek) and his final role in 'Bergerac: All The Sad Songs' (1990, as Tony Hubbard, an alcoholic singer who finds his best days are behind him - the best thing about this episode is that he gets to sing again, with Diane Langton).
His stage debut was at the Connaught Theatre in 1962, in 'Not in the Book' and then as Dr Simon Sparrow in 'Doctor in the House'.   The year after he took over as young officer Pip Thompson ('the one with the smart alec eyes and the posh voice') in Arnold Wesker's 'Chips for Everything' first at the Royal Court, London then Broadway - happily, extracts from this production were filmed for American television's 'Camera Three' which was broadcast in February 1964.   The company for 'Chips' also included Corin Redgrave, Derek Fowlds, Barry Evans, and John Noakes.  


Always happy in light comedies and romantic leads, Gary was especially effective in the works of Noel Coward and Oscar Wilde - amongst the roles he played on stage were John Worthing in 'The Importance of Being Earnest' (1981, with Wendy Hiller and Jeremy Clyde - again, happily filmed for television and available on Y0uTube), Otto in Coward's 'Design for Living' and an appearance in 'Family Album' and 'Red Peppers'; alongside Millicent Martin.   In 1969 he was one of over 100 artists who performed in the Coward 70th birthday celebration in London called 'A Talent To Amuse' (others appearing included Anna Neagle, Joyce Grenfell, Cleo Laine, and Jeremy Brett). He also appeared as Max de Winter in a highly regarded version of Daphne Du Maurier's 'Rebecca' in 1980.
Gary also made his mark in Shakespeare, notably for the Prospect Theatre as Sebastian in 'Twelfth Night', and as Benedick in 'Much Ado About Nothing'.   His cultured speaking voice was also heard to good effect on the radio, where he played Lord Peter Wimsey in two adaptations in 1986.
In musicals he first appeared as a singer and dancer in 'On the Level' for Brian Epstein in 1966, then achieved a hit role in the West End as Joseph in Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat'.   A shortened version of this was filmed for Christmas television in 1972, while the cast recording album from a year later still stands as one of the best versions of the production.   Cast members for Joseph also included Peter Reeves, Gordon Waller, Ian Charleson, Riggs O'Hara and Paul Brooke.   Gary also recorded a single written by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice in 1973 called 'Disillusion Me', but this appears to have been a failure - it can be found on the CD set 'Now and Forever'.
Other opportunities for Andrew Lloyd Webber included taking over from David Essex as Che in the original production of 'Evita' in 1980, the 'Cats' workshop at the Sydmonton Festival with Paul Nicholas and Gemma Craven (also 1980), 'Byron' at the Sydmonton Festival, and his final stage role as George Dillingham in the second touring production of 'Aspects of Love' in 1993/4.
Away from the stage and screen Gary had two enduring romantic relationships, first living with fellow actor Jeremy Brett in Notting Hill through much of the 1970s, and then sharing his life in Ealing from 1979 with American artist E(lliot) J Taylor. (Brett's work needs little introduction ; Taylor wrote and illustrated a number of children's books in the 1980s and his beautifully intricate handmade dolls are showcased on his website here).
When he died on 12 October 1995 from complications with AIDS newspaper obituaries described Gary Bond as 'one of the most handsome actors of his generation', popular with everyone because of his mischevious sense of humour.   They were right.  


During the course of filming the Sherlock Holmes TV series Brett changed the character’s hairstyle, from the traditional swept back look to a more radical, shorter, brushed forward cut. I asked him why the style had been changed.
“It’s so trivial it’s hardly worth mentioning… But, the thing is when you wear your hair as I was, and am wearing it again now, I have to gel my hair. Now gel is a very nasty thing to wear on a daily basis especialy when it’s as severe as it has to be. And sometimes when I have been filming I’ve had to gel twice in one day. And you really feel like a… It sets like cement, and it’s very uncomfortable. And I thought if I could get the same effect with short hair – and, I think, to a large degree I did – then I wouldn’t have to gel… gung my hair. So that’s why I did it and I think it worked. I think it made a nice change.”
Brett told me he had drawn inspiration for the style from one of Sydney Paget’s original ‘Strand Magazine’ illustrations of Holmes, “the one where [he] is drawing up his knees up under his chin. He is smoking the small clay pipe he uses when in one of his meditative moods.” The portrait, from ‘The Red-Headed League,’ shows the great detective in profile, and does resemble the hairstyle Brett had in later episodes of TV’s ‘The Return of Sherlock Holmes.’
“I have gone back to the old one, because the terribly dangerous thing about the short one was that it could also look modern. I remember when I first had it done, I walked down the street and saw someone walking toward me with almost exactly the same haircut, and I thought, oh god!
“The one I have now is also wrong, for me anyway, for it looks too much like Noel Coward. Nancy Banks Smith, who I call the Bag Lady of Fleet Street, was very unkind about ‘Scandal in Bohemia,’ she wrote that when I took my makeup off, as the disguise of the groom, there was Noel Coward underneath. And these little things get under your skin you know, and it really upset me that. So I thought I’d try something else… And anyway f..k her, if you’ll excuse the expression. Now I have gone back to this.”
Nancy Banks Smith, at the time the ‘Guardian’ newspaper’s TV critic, actually praised ‘Scandal in Bohemia.’ She described it as “luxurious, even luscious, way of passing the time.” Her remarks about Brett’s Holmes resembling Noel Coward were obviously light hearted. Brett’s reaction to the review seems to have been uncalled for in the extreme.
Brett told Holmes expert David Stuart Davies that he changed his hair so that, “I can play with [it], run my fingers through it, ruffle it… it’s something else to help me play the character.” His second Watson, Edward Hardwicke, believed he cut his hair because he had begun to hate the character of Holmes. It may have been a combination of the three different reasons Brett gave for the change (and Hardwicke’s conjecture) – the problem with gel, it added to the characterisation and as a reaction to criticism. However, I think the latter had the most weight, as he told me (after first blaming the gel) that his real upset at the criticism was why he thought he’d “try something else.” During the course of the interview he would often return to the subject of his reaction to Bank’s Smith remark. For instance, he quite plainly told me, “It is true that little remarks can get under your skin. I mean little things like that… and that’s why I changed my hairstyle…” His then five year held resentment says less about Bank’s Smith’s review and more about his insecurities and emotional fragility. When I asked him how he reacted to negative criticism of his portrayal of Holmes – particularly from some sections of the American Sherlockian fan community – he changed suddenly from being friendly and open to being tetchy and defensive.


‘Before we did Jeremy Paul’s stage play The Secret Of Sherlock Holmes, almost before Jeremy Paul had written it, Jeremy B announced positively : “Edward, we are going to do this preformance!” And so we did - at Wyndham Theatre where it ran for a year. His positive thinking and optimism helped carry him through the later series, when his health began to deteriorate and the strain on him was immense.
‘The Sherlock Holmes team became a family and Jeremy led splendidly. I remember he used to carry a little Instamatic Camera in the pocket of his costume. Unnoticed he would snap away at actors and crew. Then, a few days later, nothing said, a photograpth would appear pinned up around the back of the set. Done with humour and affection, it was a great way of bringing everyone together. Very simple, and very clever. The crew and casts loved him and would do anything for him.
‘Jeremy often said that there were few larger-than-life personalities around these days. Jeremy gave the lie to that. He was certainly larger than life, and could be a true eccentric.
'He developed a Jeremy uniform - white cotton trousers and navy or dark green sweaters - always cashmere - and a scarf. Whether entertaining cast and crew, which he frequently did, to dinner at Coco’s, a wonderful Italian restaurant in Manchester, or champagne for everyone in the cocktail lounge of Britannia Hotel or the Midland, he was in the same outfit. It took me a long time to work out why anyone so flamboyant as he seemed to be so restricted in his dress. Then suddenly dawned on me. A needless complication had been removed from his life. Whatever the occasion, no one ever expected to see Jeremy in any other cloths - brilliant.
‘This did have it’s funny side, however.
‘One morning, as I approached the entrance to the Granada studios, Jeremy arrived in a cab. As he leant forward on the pavement to pay the driver, the waistband of his well-worn, much-laundered white trousers parted company with the legs which fell in a heap on the kerb. Giggling, Jeremy pulled them back up and struggled to the safety of the wardrode, where his laughter could be heard as far away as Liverpool. His laugh was always infectious. When I think of Jeremy, I think of his laughing… that will always be my lasting memory of him. I cannot pay him a greater compliment.
‘Among the many, many letters of tribute that have arrived from all over the world, one in particular from America appealed to me. It starts with a wonderful tribute to Jeremy’s performance as Holmes and then says : “Do you believe in an afterlife? I do and I’ll bet that wherever Jeremy is right now he is buying everyone champagne.”
‘I don’t know the exact quote, but someone once said : “No one is truly gone as long as they are remembered.”
My dear late friend will be remembered and greatly missed.
Here’s to you, Jeremy!’


David Stuart Davies Interviews Jeremy Brett（1995）
"When Granada claimed that it was to make no further Sherlock Holmes programmes and Jeremy Brett stated that he was done with the detective, we all hoped that they both would reconsider these decisions. Sadly, this is not to be, because Jeremy's health problems have ruled out the possibility of him taking on any more major roles.
"I had a long conversation with him in February when I visited his London home. He had just learned of the extent to which his heart has been damaged by the wear and tear placed on it, particularly in the last ten years, mainly due to the wrong prescription of drugs. [The drug is lithium, frequently prescribed to control manic depression. Determining the proper dosage can be difficult because the amount needed for treatment is very close to the toxic amount. The drug can build up to toxic levels in the body if the amount of lithium in a patient's bloodstream isn't diligently monitored. Lithium poisoning may lead to serious organ damage.--llo]
"He was, at this time, understandably distraught. For any actor of his power, charisma and talent to be told it would endanger your health to take on any leading role either in a film, on television or on the stage again must be absolutely devastating. 'It's called cardiomyopathy--the slow disintegration of the heart--and it's inoperable. The only cure is a heart transplant, and that's far too dramatic, even for me!' At this point the glorious Brett grin which I'd seen so often since I began interviewing him in 1988 split his face and for a moment the sadness left his eyes. 'I'll not be able to jump the sofa again like I did in The Red-Headed League. All that is behind me now.'
"Certainly for the moment, Jeremy is unable to get full insurance for his work and the only options left to him are what June Wyndham Davies has called 'the little golden nuggets', guest shots where he can come on briefly and 'steal the show'. Jeremy was trying to be positive on that grey day in February, but I glimpsed behind his gentle bravado the shattered actor who was desperately trying to come to terms with a future of limited and limiting performances. When I left his home I felt depressed and empty. It was as though Prospero had had his magic wrenched from him.
"It was a certainly more cheerful JB who spoke to me in late April. Basically, the situation is the same but his spirits were high. 'I've been thinking, if I'm not going to star again, what a way to go out, with Sherlock. I don't think I could have topped Sherlock.
"I agreed and suggested that to this generation he was THE Sherlock Holmes. 'Thank you for that, but all I know is that I had a crack at him. I never actually saw him, you know--he was always a few steps ahead and I never actually caught up with him. To be Sherlock is so difficult because he is such an elusive pimpernel. Maybe I got a few things right.
"More than a few things I am sure. Especially in the earlier series before ill health began to take its toll. Jeremy Brett was the perfect incarnation of the magical Conan Doyle creation.


"I asked JB why he thought this elusive character still fascinated us after over a hundred years. 'He's evergreen. He is one of the most attractive, intriguing, elusive, intellectual genuises that has ever been written about. Men find him fascinating because he is so self-contained and totally in-control, while women see him as a challenge: they want to break that icy demeanour and reveal the real emotions beneath. Of course, SH has a feminine side to him, too--that intuitive quality which is part of his magic.'
I knew that JB was somewhat dismayed at the way the final series was dismissed by the more brutal critics. 'I was desperately ill and for the most part overweight due to the drugs being prescribed, but I do believe that some of the episodes were among the best. These shows are not a one-man-band--they are a team effort; and in the last batch I had a wonderful director, Sarah Hellings, who made a marvelous input into the shows which helped me so much.
"It was Sarah Hellings who directed two of his favourites from the final series, The Red Circle and The Cardboard Box. 'I was particularly pleased with The Cardboard Box partly because I'd lost a lot of weight and I looked better and I thought it was very well put together. It was a dark and sinister story and seemed to belong to my attempts at the earlier stories. It did originally come from The Memoirs, after all.'
"I was also aware that Jeremy was pleased to end the last show with a version of Conan Doyle's closing speech from the bleak finale of this tale...'What is the meaning of it, Watson? What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.'
"But what of Jeremy Brett's future? 'Well, at the moment my spirits are high. I've had a year without any mental problems whatsoever, and while the old ticker remains a little tired, a little weary, I'm cheerful and optimistic. I'm on 12 pills each morning--I do rattle when I walk down the street. But what a way to go, with Sherlock Holmes. And you know there will be another Sherlock along any minute. Let's give the new generation a try.'
"At presstime there is a possibility that JB will play a small role in a film in Ireland this summer. [This is a reality--the film is Moll Flanders, due out around Christmas 1995--llo] Although I believe there is the spirit of the phoenix about Jeremy and in some way he will dazzle us once more in some way in the future, it is certain he will never play Sherlock Holmes again. This is sad for me and for the millions who have thrilled to his performance as The Great Detective. While it is appropriate to feel this sadness, we must also cherish his body of work that exists. He may never tease Rosalie Williams' Mrs. Hudson again, or frustrate and then amuse Edward Hardwicke's Watson again, or bring the foremost champion of law and order to thrilling life on the small screen; but, he did once, and he did it brilliantly. That is something to be very thankful for."


一小段对于Jeremy的采访，来源不详
It got dangerous for me about the tenth film (Norwood). I began to feel there was nothing in my life but Holmes.
Holmes is a very difficult man to live with inside. He's obsessive, and he's dazzling, and I became very weary in my psyche, my head. It was rather like being a violin wound up too tight. The thing was, I had become changed by the stories. I was marinaded in them. They're pre-Freud, pre-psychology, and much wilder. You realize they're much more destructive and dangerous than you could have imagined. Holmes is his own Special Branch. He's a man who flirts with crime all the time, and I always think this rubs off.
I have always believed that the best way an actor can stay sane is to leave his part behind at the end of the day. But when you are living away from home as I have done in Manchester, the hotel where you are staying can become a prison. You close the door and you're locked in. Now that can be alright for playing a difficult part like Sherlock Holmes because it prevents any distractions. The isolation can be wonderful for the part. For a time. But it is definitely not good for your lifestyle.
In October of 1983 I started dreaming about Holmes, and the dreams turned into nightmares. It was as well I had another part to go to in America before coming back to do The Return. For he had worn me threadbare. I was over-Holmesed.

SHDM: You finished you association with Holmes on The Casebook series.
MC: It was my swan song.
SHDM: Was it by choice?
MC: It was a mistake on my part. It came at a time when Jeremy was having one of his frequent decisions that he would do no more; ‘I’m in a rut. I’m going to be trapped in this part forever. Its time I hung up the pipe’. I believed him. I thought that’s it-it’s going to stop. Granada offered me the Maigret series and I thought OK. I’ll have a go at another famous detective. So I began work on that.
Meanwhile Jeremy got fired up with the notion of completing the canon and came rushing back to Granada saying ‘There’s lots more stories you know.’ And so they agreed, the show was a great money maker for the company though.
It was a case of ‘Sorry Michael, you’ve now committed yourself to something else, June Wyndham Davies has been working on the series for a while and it’s going to her.’
I was very sorry to have missed out, but there was nothing I could do about it.
SHDM: Which are you favourite episodes from the series?
MC: The Dancing Men is a favourite. I think it worked particularly well. The Red Headed League is also a favourite. I was watching The Second Stain quite recently and I thought that was extremely well executed. And of course The Final Problem. I know Jeremy was very fond of that silent sequence in The Resident Patient where he goes around the room examining cigarette ends and so on. It was very brave because one of the rules of TV is that you don’t leave the soundtrack blank for long or you get people phoning up and asking what’s gone wrong.
SHDM: Tell us more about A Study In Celluloid?
MC: Well I do talk about a lovely moment which occurred during the making of Scandal In Bohemia when DB came up to me and said ‘Already I’m running out of expressions of puzzlement or admiration in the face of our resident genius. Couldn’t I go into the lion’s cage occasionally?’ And Jeremy roared with laughter in the background.
That was always a problem; how do you give Watson more to do. We wrestled with it endlessly. Another of the pleasures with the series was attempting to portray this great Victorian friendship. It’s something that would be sneered about today. There have been books about the gay Sherlock. I think we managed to portray what was much more commonly accepted at the time of the stories; that two men could have an asexual friendship and they complemented each other.
SHDM: Writing the book must have stirred up many memories. What are your final thoughts on Michael Cox’s Holmes?
MC: I look back on it with enormous pleasure. I’m extremely proud of it. Working with the likes of David Burke, Edward Hardwicke and of course, Jeremy Brett was an absolute privilege. I’m so glad it happened at a time when Independent Television was in the mood of being loyal to decent works of fiction.
SHDM: Thank you for your time and good luck with the book.
MC: Thank you.

依然来自Michael Cox，Study In Celluloid，其中有些内容会与我附在相应剧集下面的部分内容相同。
They are producder accounts by Michael Cox. Almost all these articles were originally in the Sherlock Holmes Gazette.
Solitary Cyclist
This was the first film to be made (in June 83) although it was never intended to be the first in order of transmission. Like many other producers before me, I wanted to get the style of the series firmly established before making the episode on which we would be judged by our audience and the critics. So this film and two others were made before we embarked on Scandal which was to be our curtain-raiser. Each film had to succeed in its own right of course, but these first 3 essays gave us all the opportunity to experiment with characterisation in addition to the visual and narrative technique. So we dug deep into the canon and chose what was considered to be a strong and typical story. Alan Plater had written a straightforward and faithful screenplay-so faithful that I wondered if a modern audience would accept some of the dialogue.
It seemed to me that we were on the edge of melodrama and that some viewers might topple over it into laughter. That was to be avoided at all costs because it would have been fatal to make fun of Doyle's characters. I wanted to present them as he did, as contemporary men and women, sometimes pitiful or grotesque but always real. We discussed this in rehearsal and finally decided to trust the author and the cast, particularly John Castle who played Carruthers, who delivered his lines with such conviction that I never questioned the style of dialogue again.
From the very first scene we seized every possible opportunity to use the exterior set which was built for us and to escape from the sitting room of 221b for the inevitable scenes of exposition and discussion between Holmes and Watson. Later in the episode we set one of those discussions in the barber shop on Baker Street which the design team had provided for visual variety.
In the 40 films which followed, directors became more and more aware of the dangers of repeating themselves in that familiar sitting room. There is a limit to the number of angles from which it can be shot.
Whatever else he achieved in these stories Doyle gave us one of the greatest portraits if friendship in English Literature and we were determined to put that on the screen more faihfully that it had ever be done before. It is a partticularly Victorian relationship, utterly asexual and circumsribed by strict rules, but characterised by loyalty, respect and admiration.
In the first of the flashbacks, there is another example of the way in which the dramatist and actor fleshed out the reality of Victorian villiany. Carruthers accomplice, Roaring Jack Woodley is described in the story as the 'most odious person...a coarse, puffy faced, red moustached young man, who was forver making eyes at Violet when they first meet.' In the film he is given a line which is particularly chilling. When Carruthers mentions his 10 year old daughter, it is Woodley who supplies her name 'young Sarah'. Michael Siberry delivers that line in a way which suggests that Sarah will not be safe from Woodley's attentions for many years more.
Violet's journey to Farnham Station was made more dramatic by the directors assumption that the sharp turning at which she lays her trap for her pursuer takes the road over the railway bridge. As Violet stops to confront the cyclist following her, a train roars underneath and the road is obscured in its steam. When it clears the cyclist has vanished as if by magic. At least it seems that a train road is under the bridge, in actual fact there was no railway and no train, only a smoke machine and a sound effect supplied in the editing process.
The second part of the film comprises Holmes' encounter with Woodley 'a straight left against a slogging ruffian', allowed JB a flourish all of his own. The dancing footwork at the start of the fight was his: the ripple of applause from bystanders when the bully is disposed of was the directors idea.
In our film, Doyle's final paragraph has been expanded into a small domestic comedy in Baker Street. The return of the tobacco experiment with which the story began is picked up here and concludes with Holmes almost setting fire to their rooms, a piece of broad comedy, which in hindsight, I could have done without.


The Speckled Band
This was the second film we made and was dramatised by Jeremy Paul who ended up contributing to more of the 41 scripts than any other writer.
The story has the classic ingredients, the bell-rope which rings no bell, the ventilator which provides no ventilation and the bed clamped to the floor. Plus of course, it has the snake, a swamp adder. The snake we had was harmless, but I imagine most human beings have an instinctive aversion to reptiles so I have enormous respect for Jeremy Kemp and Denise Armon who allowed the creature to crawl over them.
During filming, we went through the humurous process of trying to name the snake, eventually we settled on Kevin, suggested by designer Mike Grimes who explained that it reminded him of someone he once worked with.
This film is one of the most faithful adaptations we did, Jeremy Paul fleshed out the scenes occasionally, but the case in in tact
Seeing it again after 13 years, I notice how the relationship between Holmes and Watson was growing. The jokes about Watson's appetite are sustained and David Burke is doing exactly what I hoped, making Watson into a man whose company one would enjoy. JB is perhaps a little waspish at times and was criticised for that. I think it took him some time to find that Holmes has a great heart as well as a great brain.
The Naval Treaty
This is one of the most confusing of all the cases and we certainly did not solve all the problems its presents. We stuck closely to the original all the way, a little too closely in some cases.
There is a very curious moment during Holmes and Watson's first meeting with their client when the detective picks up a moss rose and launches into a lecture on religon, the goodness of Providence and the hope to be derived from flowers. Its a charming speech although it doesn't make a great deal of sense and it is hard to understand why Holmes indulges in this sudden flight of fancy.We tossed around various theories but in the end Jeremy Paul shortened Doyle's words slightly and JB ran away with the idea that I wanted to cut the speech altogether. Not at all-but this became an occasion when the actor saw himself as champion of Doyle, fighting his corner against a producer who would not trust the original. As a result in the film we have a third version of the text of which JB gives a full-blooded romantic reading.
We crossed swords again over another section of dialogue. On the train back from Woking, Holmes delivers a piece of philosophy.
'Look at those big isolated clumps of buildings rising up above the slates...lighthouses my boy, beacons of the future. Capsules with hundreds of bright little seeds out of which will spring the wiser, better England of the future'.
Even if we could have found an acceptable railway carriage, it was my belief that you could not put that scene on film without showing the audience what H&W see: the view over Clapham Junction as it as in the 1890's. That was beyond us and I managed to convince JB that Holmes' faith in democracy and the younger generations had to go. He was reluctant to accept this but its odd that when he and Watson arrive back in Baker Street in the film, Holmes chases away 2 street urchins, calling them 'young varmints' rather than 'bright little seeds', but then Jeremy was not an entirely consistent man.


He brought an actors intelligence to the series and that prompted him to unearth a fascinating sub-text in the story. It was Jeremy who noticed that the whole fabric of the story is replete with tensions which derive from the British class system.
We filmed in high summer in the tiny village of Pott Shrigley, which was drenched in sunshine and gave Holmes an excuse to don a cream tropical suit and relax in the Derbyshire hills while waiting for nightfall and his encounter with the villian, an encounter that turned out to be somewhat disappointing because we were in danger of overunning and therefore had to shoot it very quickly and simply. The result is an oddly stylised view of the fight in silhouette and slow motion.
Overall a difficult shoot, but one I look back on with great fondness.
The Red Headed League
'For the keen observer, our opening sequence contains an essential clue to the mystery: the proximity of Wilson's shop to the City and Suburban Bank, but we gave nothing else away. The arrival of a valuable deposit is watched by a shifty character who collects a not dropped by an accomplice and delivers it to his employer. At this stage we see only the hands of the employer, but what sinister hands they are, claw-like and rapacious.
The sequence in which Wilson applies for a vacancy in the League is directed with considerable flair by John Bruce. We are told that 'Fleet Street was choked with red headed folk and Pope's Court looked like a coster's orange barrow' which is not an easy image to achieve. We genuinely needed red heads, natural, dyed or wigged, but trade union regulations prevented us from plucking them off the street. As far as I can remember, John was allowed a crowd of only 50 but he deployed them so adroitly from shot to shot that Doyle's scene is splendidly realised.
Wilson's description of Spaulding has convinced Holmes that he is dealing with the elusive John Clay, an aristocrat among criminals. For him, John Hawkesworth added the line 'he was educated at Eton and Oxford, so Watson bring the gun'.
For a British audience it may be distracting now that Richard Wilson, our Duncan Ross, is indelibly associated with Victor Meldrew from hit comedy series 'One Foot in the Grave'. In 1985 he was the perfect foil for Roger Hammond as Wilson, issuing his instructions on the absurd task of copying out the Encyclopedia Britannica. He also has some of the very best dialogue. Comic writing of the highest order
When the League is dissolved, Ross (now no longer red-headed) reports the success of the scheme to the mastermind behind it all. There can be no doubt that this is Moriarty.
When Holmes explains his suspicions that the Professor is behind the planned robbery, we borrowed some dialogue from The Final Problem in order to relay to the audience just how significant a threat this man poses.
After Duncan Ross admits his failure to Moriarty, he leaves looking like a man who has not long to live and as Holmes explains to Watson how he solved the case, on the other side of the street, the Professor observes the man who has done much to frustrate him. For the first time we see that reptillian oscillation of the head which signifies the deep malevolence of Holmes' opponent.'


The Blue Carbuncle
Paul Finney, who dramatised this story, stuck very close to the original story, making only one significant change. Doyle tells us very clearly the month and the date of the case, the jewel was stolen on 22 December and Peterson discovered it in the crop of the goose on 27 December. It is, I believe the only Christmas story in the canon and we took full advantage of that by playing it a few days earlier. So the Countess, the Horners and Dr Watson have all been Christmas shopping. Apart from giving Watson a greater share of dialogue than Doyle does, the scenes which follow are almost word for word as originally written. This certainly satisfied JB's passion for total fidelity but at the same time encouraged David Burke to give us a more than usually affable Watson.
Ken Campbell gives an extraordinary, possessed performance as Ryder, making him one of Doyles most eccentric villians. One can well believe that this man would have chosen such a bizarre hiding place for his stolen goods. Holmes has no problem extracting a confession from this miserable creature but then makes the surprising decision to release him without penalty. When Watson challenges this, Holmes says that he is 'not retained by the ******' and JB gives the line a fiercely angry reading that sent a shiver around the set.
For a moment we glimpse the demons beneath that urbane exterior.
But how on earth did Holmes return to jewel without explaining where it was found, extract Peterson's just reward, persuade the Countess not to press charges and secure the release of Horner? Perhaps its best not to ask too many questions but simply be grateful that -in our version at least-Horner is reunited with his family on a white Christmas morning.
The Norwood Builder
This promised to be a rather expensive episode where vehicles are concerned. We wanted to make the fire at Norwood as spectacular as possible and started to search the country for Victorian fire fighting equipment. Almost at the last moment our production manager discovered that Preston Fire Service maintained a period brigade complete with uniformed volunteers and they were only too happy to make the short journey South and appear in the film. The cost was much more reasonable than a budget-conscious producer had any right to expect.
Another director coming fresh to the series brought a novel idea to Baker Street; the notion of road repairs. He and his designer proved to me that scaffolding and traction engines were actually cheaper than horse-drawn carriages and a throng of pedestrian so they carried the day.
Colin Jeavons makes his first appearance as Lestrade in this film, the most consistent ****** presence in an area of casting which was latterly a little confused. It seems hard to call an actor 'a sallow, rat-faced fellow' but Colin really did make a splendid Lestrade.
For the scene where Holmes takes on the guise of a tramp, Richard Harris, the dramatist surmised that he would plunge straight into the disguise in order to penetrate the fellowship of the road, but this presented JB with a problem. He argued that Holmes, away from Baker Street, would not have access to his make-up kit and could not therefore make any elaborate change in his appearance. The very simplest strategy would have to suffice. This meant that Holmes as a vagrant had floppy hair, a dirty face and a strange rural accent. I doubt if Watson or Mrs Hudson would have been taken in.


I still chuckle at that scene at the end where Holmes experiments with the bales of straw and buckets of water. Holmes' assertion that 'we can do better than that. Now full voice and together', always reminds me of a pantomine comedian with the song sheet unfurled. A tribute perhaps to Basil Rathbone and the masterly music hall turn he gave us in his 1939 'Adventures'.
The Crooked Man
In the autumn of 1983 we made The Dancing Men and The Crooked Man as numbers 5 and 6 in our production schedule. For the first few days we made our first overnight stays away from our Manchester base. We found our location for Ridling Thorpe Manor near Carnforth in Lancashire which meant a road trip of 150 miles which is too much for a film unit to tackle on a daily basis.
The economics of travel are complex. An overnight stay involves hotel bills and meals for a team of 50 people and that is money which does not show on screen. But it does buy time at the beginning and end of the day which would otherwise be wasted in travelling. In this case the hotel bills were justified and the unit spent a week shooting at Leighton Hall.
By the nature of his job, a producer on a series cannot possibly be behind the camera for every shot. He is involved in the editing of the previous episode, the casting of the next and the scripting of the one after that. So I arrived on this location a day or two after work had started. I travelled with Alan Grint who was going to direct The Crooked Man and wanted to explain what he had in mind for his leading men. We were greeted by JB, armed as usual with his copy of the original stories and flourishing The Crooked Man script. ‘I’ve solved it’, he cried, ‘I know how to re-write the next episode!’
My heart sank. This could only mean that he had hated what he had read and that Alan and I were in for a long and painful discussion. It took place in my hotel room that evening, over several stiff drinks, and achieved absolutely nothing. Our plans were laid and all that Alan and I could do was attempt to justify them to a disgruntled leading man. Patently we failed. Which is sad but it taught me a valuable lesson; never try to make a silk purse out of story you believe to be a sow’s ear. All the other stories I worked on came out of Doyle’s top drawer.
Although Holmes calls this The Crooked Man ‘one of the strangest cases which ever perplexed a man’s brain’, this was a story I was not keen to do. But John Hawkesworth persuaded me that it would provide a change of pace in our first group. In fact the script went through several versions before I was prepared to give it to our director and even then I had misgivings, preferring Bill Craigs script for The Regiate Squires, but in the end I surrendered.
We stood the first part of the story on its head and assumed that Watson had brought the case to Holmes. We went on to assume that Holmes would hate all things military ‘with his whole bohemian soul’. JB took this assumption rather too much to heart and played the early scenes with complete contempt for the army establishment. Paul Chapman, who played Major Murphy found this a little difficult to understand. You can almost hear him saying ‘Why does this man, stalking around my office, hate me so intensely?’ which Holmes appears to do until Murphy mentions how well he knows the dead man’s widow. The possibility that he knows her too well makes Murphy a suspect and Holmes appears to warm to him as a result.


For the central section which Hawkesworth scripted, Holmes travels to the Barclays’s home and collects the details of Barclay’s horror struck death, the missing key and the frontprints which point to an intruder and his mysterious companion. JB loved racing across the terrace and lawn, demonstrating his athletic, almost balletic physicality.
The next stage was the visit to the Mission . This is the setting which David Burke found so acutely disappointing. Perhaps we could have found a suitable street, cleared it of cars and tv ariels, re-dressed some houses with Victorian doors and windows, erected a practical period gas lamp and set up an expensive night shoot. Instead we put the meeting into a believable context. I don’t believe that very much was lost and we certainly gained an appropriate location for the crucial evidence of Miss Morrison.
Here again we find the line ‘a promise is a promise’ which obviously meant more to Doyle than it did to Holmes. In order to save Nancy’s life, he persuades her friend to break her word and Fiona Shaw delivers the line beautifully. She pauses in the middle and her voice almost tails away, knowing that-however justified-she has betrayed a principle. But then Miss Shaw is a rather special actress.
Our version of this rather awkward story ends as the original does with an explanation of Nancy’s Biblical reference to ‘David’. It is prefaced by a phrase from Watson which has echoed through the history of the detective story ‘...there’s just one thing I don’t understand’. And its rounded off with a reference to the great unspoken Canonical cliche. At the start of this tale Holmes comes as near as he ever does to saying, ‘Elementary, my dear Watson’. So it seemed only fair that Watson, having caught him out in a small deception, should be allowed to say, ‘Elementary, my dear Holmes’.


The Greek Interpreter
Here again is a story with a slightly disappointing ending but its irresistible because it introduces us to Holmes’ brother, Mycroft. This is a character who appears more often in films than he does in the original stories. On this occasion he has a case to put before his brother so Holmes and Watson go to the Diogenes Club to meet him. It was great fun to re-create (at Tatton Hall in Cheshire) Mycroft’s haven for ‘the most unsociable and unclubbable men in town’ with its slippered servants amd air of total silence where ‘no member is permitted to take notice of any other one’. If only it existed in real life!
In the Strangers Room Watson is given another lesson in observation as the brothers take up positions at the window overlooking St James’s Park and compete with each other in deducing the circumstances of passers-by. David Burke’s expression of admiration at this performance is one of the delights of the scene. When Mr Melas, the interpreter of the title, arrives to be introduced to Holmes, JB and Alan Grint our director, worked together to devise that beautifully staged moment when Holmes emerges from behind the bulk of his brother. It seems to mirror the way in which the detective gained recognition in spite of the achievements of his older sibling.
In the original story, after a mysterious Mr Davenport replies to Mycroft’s advertisement and provides vital information about the prisoner, his sister and the house where they are held, our heroes set off in pursuit and are only just time to save the life of Melas. The Greek captive is dead and the villians, taking the girl with them, have flown.
At this point-only two thirds of the way through our film- Doyle’s story ends. ‘And this was the singular case of the Grecian Interpreter’, we are told, ‘the explanation of which is still involved in some mystery’. Which it certainly is and the part played by the girl is one of the most puzzling aspects of it.
Clearly something would have to be done, so after much discussion and debate, we decided to follow the criminals and their victim’s sister as they attempted to leave the country. JB came up with an interesting way of demonstrating Holmes’ deep suspicions of the female sex, by having Holmes glance into the girl’s deserted bedroom and remarking that ‘the lady left in hast but without a struggle’. Considering that Sophy had seen her brother tortured by Kemp and Latimer and yet had left without him, he may perhaps be forgiven.
Taking their cue from an abandoned railway time-table, the Holmes brothers and Watson board the boat train at Herne Hill. I originally had misgivings about Mycroft departing so far from his routine and showing such energy, but remembering that he had acted as Watson’s coachman in another story, I agreed that it was possible.
After Holmes confronts Latimer and Sophy in their compartment, the latter protests her innocence, but Latimer is foolhardy enough to try and escape from the moving train. As he swings from the door of the compartment another locomotive travelling in the oposite direction seals his fate. As Holmes and Watson look on in horror, it was David Burkes idea to grab onto JB’s hand, this little touch wasn’t scripted.
All of this was shot –with the help of a brave stuntman- on the Bluebell Line at Sheffield Park in Sussex. We chose this extravagant location because it offers not only a fine period station but the rolling stock, impeccably maintained by the Bluebell Railway Preservation Society, includes the London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway’s directors’ saloon.
At the episodes conclusion, Holmes explains ‘It is not a crime to have a cold heart and not a single shred of compassion’. Where Watson, in his account is prepared to give Sophy the benefit of a slender doubt, Holmes remains a cynic about women.