69th Annual Dinner of The Hounds of the Baskerville (sic)
Chicago’s original, senior and most singular Sherlockian Society
Will be held on October 14, 2016
Featured Speaker
Henry Zecher
“William Gillette, America’s Sherlock Holmes”
For a brief period when Hollywood was just a bunch of orange trees, Chicago was the center of the filmmaking world. Essanay Studios was cranking out several silent films per month, including the very first Sherlock Holmes film, starring William Gillette, in 1916. Thought to be lost forever, a new print was discovered in 2014…so wrote the Obscura Society. With all of the excitement generated by finding and restoring this print, and the 100th anniversary screening of Gillette’s film, I thought it was high time to have Henry Zecher as our featured speaker. Henry is arguably the world’s leading authority on the man who created the most instantly recognized image in the world: William Gillette as Sherlock Holmes. Zecher, a free-lance writer on historical subject matter, spent 14-years researching Gillette before writing his acclaimed book, William Gillette, America’s Sherlock Holmes. The time was well spent. The District Messenger, newsletter of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London, said this. . . “Gillette was ‘one of the modern theatre’s pioneering dramatists, one of its most majestic actors and one of its most fascinating personalities…Mr. Zecher’s fourteen years’ research has uncovered no scandal, no sensation, just the fascinating life of a brilliant, chivalrous, witty gentleman, and he’s done Gillette proud.”
You may also hear a word or two from me about the Hounds 75th inaugural anniversary.
Come at once if convenient. If inconvenient, come all the same.