Did you ever stop and think where we’d be today without Agatha Christie, Alfred Hitchcock, and Arthur Conan Doyle? We would never have had the pleasure of Miss Marple, Hercule Poirot, Dr. Watson, Sherlock Holmes or even Norman Bates’ company.
I love the ocean; the sea; the coast at any time of year. I don’t care if it is hot, humid, or blustery as long as it is a large body of salt water where I can look out toward that illusive, mystical horizon. I first dug my toes into the sand on the Gulf Coast in Galveston, Texas when I was six. It was on a family summer vacation; my bathing suit was navy blue with tiny white polka dots; my hair was in pigtails, and my little sister sat on a mound of sand surrounded by my handmade mote I was filling with salt water from my bucket.
What do Leonard Nimoy, John Cleese, Roger Moore, Jeremy Brett, Robert Downey Jr., and Wishbone The Dog have in common? Along with dozens of other actors, they’ve portrayed Sherlock Holmes in movies and TV episodes based on Arthur Conan Doyle’s original Holmes stories.
I’ve often wondered about the profundity of one of the most famous quotes from Arthur Conan Doyle’s entire Canon. Was Holmes aware he was destined to become the world’s greatest detective? Did he know his name would become a household word synonymous with clever, deductive reasoning? That he would live on forever? My guess is he probably did.
Film directing in the 1930s was a series of peaks and valleys for British-born Alfred Hitchcock. By 1939, the Master of Suspense had directed twenty-three films in his homeland; but with success came frustration. He was under contract with British International Pictures, and forced to accept film projects that were not to his liking. Many were simply adaptations of novels and plays, and his creativity was stifled by restrictions placed upon him by studio executives.
