William Gillette was an incredibly successful American theatrical figure in the grand manner, around the turn of the century (1900's, that is). He was a large imposing man who made a career out of playing
Sherlock Holmes. His use of the deerstalker cap and curved pipe influenced countless successors in the Holmes role. He played it over 1300 times. He was the only actor up to his time to be completely successful and even respected on the British stage as well here in his home country.
He decided early on in his career that he could make the most money in theatre if he wrote, directed and acted. A critic once described him this way:
"he rarely gesticulates, and his bodily movements often seem purposely slow and deliberate. His composure is absolute and his mental grasp of a situation is complete."
According to wiki:
He could mesmerize an audience simply by standing motionless and in complete silence, or by indulging in any one of his grand gestures or subtle mannerisms. He did not gesture often but, when he did, it meant everything. He would steal a scene with a mere nod, a shrug, a glance, a twitching of the fingers, a compression of his lips, or a hardening of his face. Slight inflections in his voice spoke wonders. "Occasionally", Georg Schuttler pointed out, "when it was least expected, he gestured or moved his body so quickly that the speed of the action was compared to the swift opening and closing of a camera’s shutter.
also
S. E. Dahlinger, leading expert on the play Sherlock Holmes, summed him up: "Without seeming to raise his voice or ever to force an emotion, he could be thrilling without bombast or infinitely touching without descending to sentimentality. One of his greatest strengths as an actor was the ability to say nothing at all on the stage, relying instead on an involved, inner contemplation of an emotional or comic crisis to hold the audience silent, waiting for the moment when he would speak again."
He was an unemotional actor, unable to emote, even in love scenes, about which Montrose Moses commented, "he made appeal through the sentiment of situation, through the exquisite sensitiveness of outward detail, rather than through romantic attitude and heart fervor."
In other words, he was the first of the modern actors, choosing subtlety and realism over declamatory gesture and fiery speech. He was quite a romantic figure.
During his tour of a very popular play called
Secret Service, at the height of his popularity, he was hired by Charles Frohman to play Holmes, after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had presented the producer with a first draft of a script. Gillette wrote a draft of the play, which was burned up in a hotel fire. Gillette re-wrote the play in about a month, and then went to visit Doyle. Again, according to wiki:
Doyle and Gillette had never met, so when the two finally managed to arrange a meeting Conan Doyle's shock was understandable when the train carrying Gillette came to a halt and, instead of the actor, Sherlock Holmes himself stepped onto the platform. Sitting in his landau, Conan Doyle contemplated the apparition with open-mouthed awe until the actor whipped out a magnifying lens, examined Doyle's face closely, and declared (precisely as Holmes himself might have done), "Unquestionably an author!" Conan Doyle broke into a hearty laugh and the partnership was sealed with the mirth and hospitality of a weekend at Undershaw. The two became lifelong friends.
Gillette, not Doyle, actually penned Holmes' famous line, "this is elementary, my dear fellow."
He was an inventor, a builder and an architect as well as an actor, writer and director, and his stately home,
Seventh Sister, or
Gillette Castle as it's known now, is down the road from me a piece here in Connecticut.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillette_Castle_State_Park