Sherlock Holmes on the Air

J Elliott Matthew

Description

Eleven scripts from the famous US radio series The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Within these pages you'll discover how Holmes solved the mystery of the Amateur Mendicant Society, defended Professor Moriartys younger brother against a charge of murder, and investigated the yuletide puzzle of the French duellist who somehow survived a bullet to the heart. This collection is ideal for the Conan Doyle enthusiast, the budding scriptwriter or any actors/performers who've ever dreamed of taking a part in an original Sherlock Holmes adventure.

Sujets

• Radio

Informations

• Publié par: Andrews UK
• Date de parution: 20 décembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781780921044
• Langue: English

Extrait

Title Page

SHERLOCK HOLMES
ON THE AIR










By
M J Elliott




Publisher Information

Published in the UK by MX Publishing
335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive, London, N11 3GX
www.mxpublishing.com

Digital edition converted and distributed in 2012 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com

© Copyright 2012 Matthew Elliott
The right of Matthew Elliott to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and not of MX Publishing.

Cover layout and construction by
www.staunch.com




Dedication












For my three best girls: Gill, Megan and Martha Rose
And my best boy: Joe




Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without the warm, wonderful, talented people at Imagination Theater: Jim and Pat French, Lawrence Albert, John Patrick Lowrie, Sable Jak, Lee Pasch, Rick May, Dennis Bateman and John Armstrong, among many others. You could do a lot worse than visit www.jimfrenchproductions.com and listen to their most recent shows.
I’d also like to thank Bert Coules, who gave me several pieces of invaluable advice before I set out on this adventures, and David Stuart Davies who, as editor of the much-missed SHERLOCK Magazine, gave me my first break. We all need someone who believes in us.




About the Author

Matthew J Elliott is a writer and radio dramatist living in the United Kingdom.
For the radio, he has scripted episodes of The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Classic Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Twilight Zone, Raffles the Gentleman Thief, The Father Brown Mysteries, Kincaid the Strangeseeker, The Adventures of Harry Nile, The Perry Mason Radio Dramas, Vincent Price Presents, Wrath of the Titans, Jeeves and Wooster, Masters of Mystery and the Audie Award-nominated New Adventures of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer. He is the creator of The Hilary Caine Mysteries, which first aired in 2005. His stage play An Evening With Jeeves & Wooster was performed at the Palace Theatre, Grapevine, Texas in 2007
He has contributed Holmes pastiches to the collections Curious Incidents 2, The Game’s Afoot and Gaslight Grimoire. His story Art in the Blood can be found in The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 8. Matthew is the editor of The Whisperer in Darkness, The Horror in the Museum and The Haunter of the Dark by H P Lovecraft, The Right Hand of Doom and The Haunter of the Ring by Robert E Howard, and A Charlie Chan Omnibus by Earl Derr Biggers. His articles, fiction and reviews have appeared in the magazines SHERLOCK, Total DVD and Scarlet Street. Once a year, he acts as host of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London’s Film Evening.
On the lighter side, Matthew works with the makers of cult sci-fi comedy Mystery Science Theater 3000 on their RiffTrax website, writing and recording humorous commentaries for hit movies, including, of course, Guy Richie’s Sherlock Holmes .




Introduction: The Power of the Imagination

For two decades, Sherlock Holmes ruled the airwaves in the United States. Beginning in 1931, the character – and, of course, his faithful friend, Dr John H Watson – were regular guest in American homes via the wireless, with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce taking the lead roles from 1940 to 1946.
With the coming of television however, radio drama more of less died out in the States, and new Holmesian audio material became extremely scarce. The exception to the rule seemed to be the CBS Radio Mystery Theater of the 1970s which featured a handful of adaptation of stories from the Canon, most of them featuring Invasion of the Bodysnatchers star Kevin McCarthy as Holmes. But the rest was silence.
Until 1998 that is, when the Seattle-based Jim French Productions recorded the first episode of The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (not to be confused with the BBC radio series of the same name, which did not air until 2002). Further Adventures is one of several rotating drama series produced by French and his associates; new episodes are produced at the rate of roughly one a month. The man behind the series is, naturally, writer/producer Jim French, whose experience in radio dates back to 1943 when he served as announcer and pianist for KPAS in Pasadena. French’s credits include scripts for Dick Powell Theater and Suspense . In the 1980s he began writing and directing a series of weekly dramas for radio station KIRO in Seattle. On 17 March 1996, French’s plays were syndicated under the name “Imagination Theater” and American radio drama began its rebirth.
The series came about almost b accident when French’s business partner versatile actor/director Lawrence Albert, came across an unfinished Holmes script amongst his colleague’s papers. As a Holmes enthusiast Albert was understandably excited by the discovery. “I said to Jim, ‘You gotta finish this thing!’” Obtaining the necessary permissions from the Conan Doyle estate did not prove to be a problem, and The Poet of Death , the first of many Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was broadcast on May 17, 1998. For the first time since 1950, when actors Ben Wright and Eric Snowden had taken their last bows, Holmes and Watson had a home on American radio. The new Master Detective was John Gilbert whose delivery put one in mind of the legendary Peter Cushing in the same role. Lawrence Albert, who was struck by the actor’s physical resemblance to Holmes suggester Gilbert to Jim French. “Jim said ‘What about Watson?’” Albert recollects. “Of course I said ‘Me,’” But the actor had a very clear idea of the sort of Watson he wished to be: “Two of the greatest insults to literary characters are the portrayal of Tarzan onscreen and the depiction of Watson as a boob”. For his depiction of the good doctor, Albert drew inspiration from his two favourite Watsons, Michael Williams in BBC Radio’s complete Canon series and Richard Johnson in the 1991 film The Crucifier of Blood . “Johnson to me, looked like Watson as I see him. I’m probably closer to Williams in some respects, but then I bring my own turn to it. Watson has become such a part of me that I can become the character without any trouble at all. I wanted Watson to be real. I wanted people to experience who he really is.”
With Lee Paasch and Rick May providing sterling support as Mrs Hudson and Inspector Lestrade respectively, Gilbert and Albert appeared together in eighteen episodes, notable among them The Adventure of the Painted Leaf , in which Holmes is retained by H G Wells to recover the stolen manuscript of The Time Machine , and two stories featuring the criminally insane Dr John Bennington, French’s Moriarty-like recurring villain. Following the recording of The Adventure of the Missing Link , however, John Gilbert decided to retire from the role of Sherlock Holmes, and Jim French was faced with the problem of finding a new actor to replace him. To switch lead actors in mid-run is a hazardous but not necessarily fatal business. True, the Tom Conway/Nigel Bruce partnership during the 1946/7 radio season could not hope to match the natural chemistry between Bruce and his former Holmes, Basil Rathbone. But when Edward Hardwicke replaced David Burke as Watson to Jeremy Brett’s Sherlock, the Granada television series enjoyed the same if not greater success. The casting of John Patrick Lowrie as Imagination Theater’s second Sherlock Holmes was a natural decision. Lowrie, a towering presence both vocally and physically, served as the announcer on the first twenty episodes as well as providing a variety of additional voices. The easy on-air relationship between Lowrie and Albert ensured that the changeover between Holmeses was a smooth one. “Much of our relationship is similar in real life” Albert notes. “I like to approach Sherlock historically and unreconstructed”, explains Lowrie. “He is very definitely a product of his times. Sherlock is the embodiment of the late nineteenth century idea that man’s intellect might be capable of conquering nature and solving all of mankind’s woes. This was before World War 1 taught Europeans that they might not be as smart as they thought they were and before the environmental problems of the twentieth century thought us that conquering nature might not be that great an idea. At the time Doyle was writing, Europe was a very confident, optimistic and chauvinistic place. Sherlock exudes all of those qualities. It’s always tricky for a writer other than Doyle to explore Holmes emotional being and I’ve been very lucky to work with writers who have been very successful in doing so without creating a kinder, gentler, fuzzy, squishy Holmes. Doyle created a wonderfully complex character. Holmes cares deeply about people and yet has very little patience with them. He is passionate about the just and fair treatment of women and yet has almost no understanding of them and doesn’t trust them. He likes human beings a gre