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Description
"Eyes quick, ears sharp...!"

If you haven't heard, Geocities is going to shut down my websites. Why? Because of they can't do free-hosting anymore, so "The Great Mouse Detective: Disney's Underappreciated 26th Animated Film " will need to be moved to a new server, so I've been saving the old site to a backup drive and where going through the old drawings I did for the old profiles. Many of these drawings I still love to look at, despite how old they are. Therefore, in the next few months, I'll be uploading these "ancient" drawings from the profiles over here as a record and just to share. I think I'll upload a drawing weekly until I run out and/or until I get bored, and I may even scan some old drawings that no one has yet seen before either, so look out for these!

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The Baker Street Irregulars (BSI) is a group of young street urchins — neglected, orphaned, or abandoned — recruited by Basil of Baker Street to assist him in reconnaissance for many of his cases, performing various missions, ferreting London, pursuing clues, or acquiring access to places where the detective cannot go himself. The Irregulars live together as a kind of family unto themselves, who have no one without one another, and retain an unorthodox discipline among them; despite their dirty and ragged exteriors, they will instantly draw up in line, like many disreputable statuettes, and stand with expectant faces, as they salute their dear mentor. They strive for organisation. The mere sight of an official-looking mouse seals the lips of important witnesses and vital underling connections, so that's where the Irregulars come in for "they can go everywhere, see everything, overhear everyone, overcome anything, no matter how important or petty the obstacle." The detective pays all expenses, and in return for their worthy labours, rewards an "old scale of pay" of a shilling a day, plus expenses, and a generous guinea bonus-prize to whom finds the object of their search. They are mischievous, street-wise, sharp, efficient, and eager. "Eyes quick, ears sharp," quips the detective to his little recruits.

The flamboyant Huggins is the young leader of the group and the cleverest of all the Irregulars. Half-brother to Gilly, he is the delight of the London passers-by and the darling of the urbane poor. Restlessly energetic and highly resourceful, this ever-smiling artful dodger is the most exceptional crowd-pleaser, as a sidewalk trickster, a street hustler, a savvy magician, and a compulsive kleptomaniac — a true puckish prince of pick-pocketing — who takes a great delight in pocket-watches: He has wrangled himself quite an impressive collection! Adventurous as well as audacious, dramatic, perceptive, agile, mischievously playful, delightfully witty, exceedingly inventive, and far too clever for his own good, this razzle-dazzle fast-talker can remorselessly con anything away of anyone with an irresistible smile and a sarcastic tongue. This flirtatious, violaceous-eyed charmer is not nearly as innocent as his fellow Irregulars and is quickly maturing into a quite a playboy, turning many maiden heads his direction, despite his apparent juvenility. He secures an immense number of connections and allies within London's seedy underworld, which has made him quintessential to the detective. This loyal and respected commander, benevolent caregiver, and wise and valued friend to everyone who is willing drop and push everything aside to help his mates with anything at anytime at anyplace! "To quote me is saying I was misquoted, quote, unquote, and quote."

Second-in-command of the Irregulars is Huggins' younger half-sister Gillette, or as she is more commonly addressed Gilly. She stormed, early on, among the locals as a type of holy terror and hoydenish troublemaker of the streets, and later as a five-time champion, bare-knuckled pugilist (which is illegal due to its violent nature). Gilly is a vivacious little tomboy and, in many ways, self-succeed herself as the vigilant warden and lieutenant of the group. She keeps an assiduous eye on the protection of each member of the Irregulars and appropriates each into a heterodox uniformity of order and regulation, parallel to that of a serjeant, and has no trouble in giving a clenched fist when it is due. Cynical, candid, suspicious, stubborn, resourceful, smart-mouthed, temperamental, bumptious, and often quarrelsome, she may not be the pleasantest companion to be around, spitting out a countless array of acidic scurrility, and could be described as unfeeling; but, in truth, she simply has no patience for all the trivial niceties and genteel courtesies. She concludes that such things are unnecessary and regularly prevaricates one's conversation for what should be direct and to the point, without fluff and confusion. She remarks a trenchant irritability against inner falseness and self-deception. Breviloquence is key to her nature and one needs to swallow her causal rudeness and belligerence without personal offence, as Gilly has proven herself to be the most self-sacrificing, most steadfast, most valiant, and most faithful of friends. "If you don't like my attitude, stop talking to me!"

Compassionate, sincere, eloquent, and courtly, Cushing is the aspiring cosmopolite of the group. He speaks little about his past: The illegitimate but much-adored child of a dishmaid-turned-demimonde who attempted to secure that her little boy would want for nothing, amassing a vast fortune from her powerful and wealthy benefactors, however upon her death, the beneficence bequeathed to him went missing. He had to make a living through pennies-in-a-hat jobs, creating beautiful chalk drawings on sidewalks, or selling painted handkerchiefs, to the passers-by in the busiest areas of the metropolis. Cushing carries himself with grace and gentility, sustaining impeccable manners and a polished dignity, as a type of "gentleman tramp," with the heart of an Arthurian knight and the passion of a Cavalier poet, and is always happy to lend a helping hand to a friend or a stranger. He is a proficient charmer as well who can sweet-talk his way into just about everything! Cushing can be blindly optimistic and sees the world through a pair of rose-tinted spectacles: The modern world is trapped in chaos and strife, jarring with montages and mountains of images, issues, and crises that have been unthought of in the past centuries, but Cushing delivers it plainly as the only way to live through all of this is just to smile. He is an idealist, a utopist, a hopeless daydreamer, and an incurable romantic, aspiring for the story-book "happily ever afters" wherever he may happen to step. "We are all in a perfect world filled with perfect flaws!"

Energetic, sprightly, and prankish, the ever-silent Norwood is "the mute who speaks without uttering a word." He does not know of his parentage or what happened to them, yet does have a brief recollection of living in a destitute Eastern Orthodox orphanage before he was evicted onto the streets, along with the other children. Norwood delivered himself from pauperism as a self-taught entrepreneur; he became a junk dealer, a match seller, a musician, a mime, and a juggler, usually staged his acts in London public parks. With a dusty coat and tartan-plaid scarf, this cherub-faced, happy-go-lucky imp is constantly smiling, smirking, grinning, laughing, falling over, running, and dancing about in every direction, as he dazzles daffy expressions with his large, screwball eyes and equally screwy actions — in quiet silence! He is also an avaricious pack rat, er....mouse, who has pockets unerringly full of an amazing array of surprises; one can only guess what will come in or out of those cavernous sleeves. He is a definitive comedian and a practical joker of incredible proportions, with an ethereal, other-worldly charisma, an innate knack for unpredictability, and a bright, sweet-natured sense of humour. He is a serendipitous skirt-chaser, but what he does after he catches one is debatable, for he is the epitome of childish innocence and gullibility (or, at least, one would hope so). Yet with his passion for rebelliousness and unconventionality, he is fairly shy and is easily embarrassed. Being vocally wordless does not hinder or restrict him, he distinguishes himself through pantomime. From sunrise to sunset, he can respond and correspond in volumes as he is dependent almost entirely upon his use of expressions, whistles, winks, grunts, groans, yips, yaps, waves, gestures, signs, and visuals, like his misshapen-faced "gookie." With the blustering toots and rowdy honks of his rubber-bulbed bicycle-horn and a strange "soap-bubble" clarinet, Norwood speaks from his heart, soul, and spirit out of silence.

There is, of course, the superstitious Rowe. From the narrow streets and crowded alleyways of Spitalfields, the most concentrated hub of the Jewish population in London's East End, Rowe recalls his only kith and kin as his elderly grandfather who sold chocolate bars with almond nuts on a push-cart. On a good day, they ate meat for supper; on a bad day, they ate chocolate bars with almond nuts. The bad days had a definite perk! But his grandfather eventually fell ill and bedridden until, one night, he went to sleep and never woke up, leaving the little, lost grandson to be thrown into a Dickensian work-house in Lambeth by order of the crown. He ran away and found a family with the Irregulars. Skittish, excitable, awkward, wildly imaginative, and unreasonably paranoid, yet generous and compassionate to a fault, this little Rowe is a naïve believer of tall-tales, myths, conspiracies, folklore, vampyres, werewolves, and all things that go bump in the night — always eager to hear the next fanciful story, no matter how preposterous it may be! He constantly carries with him small bunches of wolves-bane, a shaker of salt, a bulb of garlic, a cross, and a Magen David — in case of any Jewish vampyres. Well, it never hurts to be prepared! He possesses a stubborn nature of endless determination and hope, refusing to give in even when all is lost from the outset, although he is ultimately dominated by his fears and insecurities — about practically everything! "I've developed a new philosophy: I only dread one day at a time!"

The youngest of all the Irregulars, the stone-faced Keaton is the shyest and the quietest member for he has little to say about anything — even Norwood, with all his whistles and toots, is louder than Keaton. A child of the Vaudeville music-hall footlights of Stomp and Strand, he joined his parents as the youngest member of the Three Keatons, as he crawled on stage at eight months and, by the age of two, he was a star! Night after night, he routinely performed pratfalls and stunts, as he tripped over objects, stumbled down a flight of stairs, was thrown across the stage (occasionally into the guffawing audience), and trampled on as a type of theatrical punch-bag, landing either on his top of his head or simply on "a frozen granite face," but by the finale, he would bow to the audience miraculously uninjured. Devoted, magnanimous, forgetful, hap-hazardously reckless, and accident-prone to a fault, this ever-hapless and long-suffering pint-sized, dreamy-eyed Pierrot is forever at the mercy of the inexorable opposing forces around him, always at the wrong place and the wrong time, yet it is his impassivity and adaptability to those forces that allow him to survive, and triumph, over adversity. He can hurl himself into the eye of the storm and pass through safely, to roll with the punches the universe may throw at him, juggling the wildest of circumstances with an awe-inspiring sort of patience and a reflexive power to endure, with an ability to come out on the other side with an unflappable reaction and a bewildered blink, although he may not be exactly sure how he got there to here! He fosters a long-term crush on Gilly, which is obvious to everyone — but Gilly! "This would be funny if it just weren't happening to me."

The most recent addition to the Irregulars is the soft-hearted Livanov. His farming village was caught in the middle of political conflicts that were originally meant to "save the people" of Russia. His village had yet to recover from the nasty tear-away between the tyrannical landlords and their feudalist power over the impoverished serfs who were affected by the emancipation, giving land and limited freedom to the peasantry, but they would not find peace. The dangerously radical Narodniks were unable to influence its Marxist intelligentsia in the cities and moved to the villages in an attempt to teach their "moral" imperative to revolt against the monarchy. The Tsarists, however, found such ideals unwelcoming and sent the Okhranka Secret Police to crush the villages. Livanov fled with his family, as refugees, escaping his once-peaceful country for the smog-ridden streets of London and eventually losing his way; he was the lone survivor of his family, but found another one with the Baker Street Irregulars. As the wise philosopher of the group, he can quip a maxim for every task and an axiom for every answer. Bashful, benevolent, sympathetic, complaisant, and self-conscious, he is a pacifist and peacemaker, detesting all quarrels and hostilities of any kind: He separates, appeases, and compromises. But he often has to be guided by the others as he is still adjusting to English language, customs, and technology, the likes of which he has never seen before. "A mile walk with a friend has only one hundred steps."

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Each Irregular is named after a famous Sherlock Holmes actor:

British veteran "becomer" actor, Jeremy Brett (born Huggins, 1933-1995) is best known for his sniggering, lovesick, and drop-dead gorgeous Freddie Eynsford-Hill in the 1964 smash, My Fair Lady, as he portrayed Sherlock Holmes for Granada Television in five features, thirty-six episodes, a rare charity short, and a lost short in a span of ten years. All around the world, Brett is argued one of the best, if not the best Holmes, in creation, challenging only by Basil Rathbone himself. His Holmes was dark-hued portrayal that is cantankerous, affected, whimsical, flamboyant, rude, arrogant, tragic, infuriating, precipitous, eccentric, charming, intelligent, handsome, and so utterly human — and can only have been drawn from the deepest possible understanding of the text. No other Holmes has come close to Brett's portrayal of the brilliant, obsessed mind, teetering on the knife's edge, dividing madness and sheer genius. He was one of the few Holmeses that stayed as true as possible to the Sacred Writings; no other Holmes has been more successful at this than he. The author's daughter, Dame Jean Conan Doyle, told him that he was "the Sherlock Holmes of my childhood." After the death of his second wife, Brett suffered a breakdown and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder (manic depression), but the doctors prescribed medicine that conflicted with his weak heart. Jeremy Brett died in his sleep in 1995. For me, Mr. Brett is Holmes.

For several generations, Connecticut-born actor, playwright, director, and stage-manager William Gillette (1853-1937) was the image of Sherlock Holmes for millions of fans all over the world. Born in the era of melodrama, with its grand gestures and sonorous declamations, he created in his plays characters who talked and acted the way people talk and act in real life. Gillette wrote and starred in Sherlock Holmes - A Drama in Four Acts, which opened in 1899 in New York City, though he given Sir Arthur Conan Doyle co-credit for the play, he have little to with the writing. Despite adding an uncanonical, very Victorian-esque love interest, it was a smash and he took it to London in 1901 and would star as Sherlock Holmes for thirty-four years, playing him more than 1300 times before American and British audiences. It was Gillette who made the deerstalker cap a fixture to the sleuth's legend, by wearing it in his play, and was also responsible for the signature calabash (or meerschaum) pipe since is was easier to speak his lines with a curved pipe than a straight one. When Frederic Dorr Steele began illustrating the Holmes stories for Collier's Weekly in 1903, he immortalised Gillette as his model. Gillette played Holmes again in 1916 (lost) film and a 1930 radio-play (adapted by Orson Welles), which made him the first radio Sherlock Holmes in history. Tall, slender, and handsome, he was one of the world's premier actors and playwrights before and after the turn of the last century, a matinee idol of enormous appeal, and an imaginative genius who made some important contributions to the theater that are still in use today. He was a ladies' man, a train buff, and an eccentric inventor of locks. Gillette died in 1937 at the age of eighty-two and decreed, amusingly, in his will that his beloved Connecticut castle home would not be sold "to some blithering sap-head." He is one of my favourite "photographed" Holmeses and, like many Sherlockians; I wish I could have seen him in action! Unfortunately, his first and only film, Sherlock Holmes (1916), did not survive and has been lost through the ravages of time, however I was able to listen to a 1936 radio-short of his famous theatrical play, playing Holmes for the last time — Gillette died, due to a pulmonary haemorrhage, fifteen months later.

"The Gentleman of Horror" Peter Cushing (1913-1994) is perhaps one of the important figures in sci-fi and horror films, playing such immortal roles as the obsessive Dr. Frankenstein and the neurotic Dr. Van Helsing, in Hammer Film Productions for over twenty years. He also appeared in films for the other major horror producer of the time, Amicus Productions, including Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965) and its later horror anthologies, as well as a couple of Dr. Who features during the mid-1960s, but is perhaps his best-known, outside of horror films, as Grand Moff Tarkin in George Lucas' phenomenal sci-fi film, Star Wars (1977). Cushing portrayed Sherlock Holmes thrice in his long, versatile career: The Hammer Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), the televised The Masks of Death (1984), and the several episodes for the BBC Sherlock Holmes in 1968 after Douglas Wilmer left the series. Though some Sherlockians argue that Cushing was miscast as Holmes, often saying he was too short for the part, nevertheless Cushing was an exemplary Holmes, resonating incredible intelligence, twitching mania, resourcefulness, reasonable arrogance, edginess, and inner quest for perfection, with a habit of pointing a index finger up to the ceiling when he's trying to make a point. Bringing both the right intellectual air and the coiled spring of physical intensity, the "definitive" Holmes of the 1960s was restless, slightly uptight, pessimistically optimistic, and extremely playful; there isn't a scene where he wasn't playing with a prop or pointing a quick, arched finger to the sky. And there's nothing better than a Holmes who loves muffins! After Star Wars, he continued appearing in films and television sporadically, as his health allowed; the great Cushing died in Canterbury hospice, due to prostate cancer, at the age of eighty-one — a week before the premiere of Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror (1994), which he co-narrated with his dear friend and fellow Holmes actor, Christopher Lee. (Ironically, Peter Cushing had a severe case of musophobia — a fear of rodents!)

Anthony Edward Brett would become "the first great movie Holmes," although he would achieve this title under the name, Eille Norwood (1861-1948). Norwood was primarily a stage-actor in England when he landed the role that would make him famous throughout the world. In 1921, a British film company named Stoll decided to film a series of shorts based on Conan Doyle's stories. For the next two years, they would produce forty-five of the twenty-minute films, along with two longer ones. Conan Doyle's short stories fit the twenty-minute length quite well. Norwood, at the age of fifty-nine, played a brilliant, cerebral detective that was confident, quick, dramatic, peculiar, lonely, and acutely sensitive, which is not an easy task in silent atmosphere. Conan Doyle, himself, loved the films and was impressed by Norwood appearance, which resembled his idea of Holmes; however, the fact that they "modernised" Holmes to the 1920s did bothered the creator, introducing telephones, motor cars, and luxuries of which the Victorian Holmes would have never dreamed of. Conan Doyle presented him with a loud, eye-piercing Turkish-rug patterned dressing-gown as a gift, which the actor wore on camera several times. Norwood had an extreme talent for disguises and, with makeup and wigs; he could completely transform himself and be unrecognisable. With forty-seven films under his belt, Eille Norwood holds the record for the most appearances as Holmes than any other actor, but did not stop there. It came to no surprise that he took the title role in a new stage play, written by J.E. Harold Terry and Arthur Rose, called The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Sadly, very few of Norwood's films have survived the brutal ravages of time, which is true of so many silent films and much of his legacy died with it. Nevertheless, I am very honoured to have seen a few of the amazing Stoll reels. He is ranked as one of the greatest Holmeses — and I profusely agreed.

There are more Sherlock Holmes stories not written by Conan Doyle; some are quite bad but every now and then a good one comes along! Nicholas Rowe (1966-    ) played one of the more unique Holmeses in Steven Spielberg's 1985 film, Young Sherlock Holmes, or the more fittingly titled Young Sherlock Holmes and the Pyramid of Doom, merging fantasy film, classic literature, and old-fashioned British melodrama in one summer blockbuster that, lamentably, flopped. Holmes is a snooty, witty, and charming University of London undergraduate that chases after suspicious Egyptian cultists. This movie explained Holmes' aloofness to women, losing his first and only love, and his deep bitterness towards Professor Moriarty. At the time, Nicholas Rowe was a student in the prestigious Eton College when this son of a Member of Parliament got the call to be allowed to read the script. Tall, thin, uncharacteristically romantic, and exquisitely more beautiful than handsome, he was eye-candy for hordes of histrionic, young teenage girls! (Today, he has quite a cult fan following.) The story, of course, was obviously "un-Doylean," but upon reflection, it's an entertaining, if unbelievable, film. Of course, specials thanks Industrial Light and Magic, Young Sherlock Holmes holds the record for being the first live-action feature film to have a complete CGI (computer graphics image) character — the knight coming out of the stained glass window. Also note, Nicholas Rowe had better looks, better acting, and certainly a better story than Guy Henry's horrible 1982 eight-part mini-series, Young Sherlock: The Mystery of the Manor House. Mr. Rowe is presently working in market research and has worked sporadically in films ever since.

Though I am cheating by a technicality by adding this comedic actor into the Irregulars, since he does not play "Sherlock Holmes," per se. The "Great Stone Face" Buster Keaton (1895-1966), instead, portrayed the hapless title character of Sherlock, Jr. (1924). And yet it's almost impossible to describe the astounding creativity of this masterpiece; Hollywood had never seen anything like it before and, even today, after ninety years, people still ask, "How'd he do that?!" Sherlock, Jr. is one of his most famous of Keaton's comedies, which he acted, choreographed, stunted, and directed entirely himself. This spectacular Keaton feature had special effects never attempted before and stunts never attempted before either. In the film, Keaton is working in a local moving-picture theatre as a projectionist where, after his work hours, he goes to visit his girlfriend, but is embarrassed by his rival. Shortly after falling asleep in the projection room, Buster leaps into the movie and, with his skilled cinematographer, Elgin Lessley, the silent screen's comic-genius made one of the greatest films of all time. One of my favourite scenes is the explosive #13 ball in which the detective miraculously "missed" in the solo pool game. (He broke is neck in one of the stunts in this film, where Keaton runs on top of a moving train and grabs the chain of a water spout and couple of hundred pounds of water fell on top of him and fell on the metal railroad track. Filming had to stop that day due to a headache, but continued the next day. Keaton never knew he broke his neck until years later, after a routine check-up.)

Of the many incarnations of Sherlock Holmes on film and television, surely the most curious and intriguing is the Russian television series, featuring Vasili Livanov (1935-    ) as the Great Detective. The son of Boris Livanov, an eminent actor of the Moscow Art Theatre and probably the most acclaimed stage-actor of his generation, Vasili Livanov achieved cult stardom as a voice-actor of a number of Soviet cartoons, such as Bremenskie muzykanty (1969) and Krokodil Gena (1971). Vasili Livanov was shot to international fame during the 1980s, when he was starring as Sherlock Holmes in the surprisingly popular Russian TV series by director Igor Maslennikov (who has an uncanny likeness to Conan Doyle), consisting of five series broken into eleven episodes. It must have been a difficult task to create Victorian London in Russia, but the producers have done an exemplary job of it with first-rate costuming and elaborate sets. The series has an edgy atmosphere of grotesque Gothicism, begetting an exotic, if oppressive, air of Eastern Europeanism. His Holmes was larger-than-life, but mortal, man who would sit as still as a statute and suddenly contrast by bursting out in both humour and hyperactivity. His Holmes was a refined, intellect, witty, endearing, approachable, and sensitive image of Holmes, with just the right balance of quirkiness and vulnerability. His laughter was contagious, as was his tears. He is among the most believable Holmeses ever portrayed. On April 2006, Livanov was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes. His statue, as Holmes, was unveiled in Moscow in April 2007, despite the fact the series was filmed closer to St. Petersburg.

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CLIPS:
     - Jeremy Brett: The opening of "Scandal in Bohemia"
     - Jeremy Brett: Meeting the Napoleon of Crime, Professor Moriarty, in "The Final Problem"
     - William Gillette: Holmes on Radio, part 1
     - William Gillette: Holmes on Radio, part 2
     - Peter Cushing: Holmes searches for clues in "Boscombe Valley Mystery"
     - Peter Cushing: Deductions of Henry Baker's hat from "The Blue Carbuncle"
     - Eille Norwood: Disguising himself
     - Nicholas Rowe: The historical first fully-animated CGI character on film in Young Sherlock Holmes
     - Nicholas Rowe: Holmes tracks down the cultist's hideout in Young Sherlock Holmes
     - Buster Keaton: Moments of Sherlock, Jr., includes the infamous neck-breaking (literally) stunt on the train and marvels of early film special effects as he "enters" the film
     - Vasili Livanov: Holmes returns from the "dead" in "Okhota na tigra"
     - Vasili Livanov: Holmes and Watson analyse Dr. Mortimer's walking stick in "Sobaka Baskerviley"

Medium - 2B graphite.

The Baker Street Irregulars © Diane N. Tran.

Description
"Eyes quick, ears sharp...!"

If you haven't heard, Geocities is going to shut down my websites. Why? Because of they can't do free-hosting anymore, so "The Great Mouse Detective: Disney's Underappreciated 26th Animated Film " will need to be moved to a new server, so I've been saving the old site to a backup drive and where going through the old drawings I did for the old profiles. Many of these drawings I still love to look at, despite how old they are. Therefore, in the next few months, I'll be uploading these "ancient" drawings from the profiles over here as a record and just to share. I think I'll upload a drawing weekly until I run out and/or until I get bored, and I may even scan some old drawings that no one has yet seen before either, so look out for these!

------

The Baker Street Irregulars (BSI) is a group of young street urchins — neglected, orphaned, or abandoned — recruited by Basil of Baker Street to assist him in reconnaissance for many of his cases, performing various missions, ferreting London, pursuing clues, or acquiring access to places where the detective cannot go himself. The Irregulars live together as a kind of family unto themselves, who have no one without one another, and retain an unorthodox discipline among them; despite their dirty and ragged exteriors, they will instantly draw up in line, like many disreputable statuettes, and stand with expectant faces, as they salute their dear mentor. They strive for organisation. The mere sight of an official-looking mouse seals the lips of important witnesses and vital underling connections, so that's where the Irregulars come in for "they can go everywhere, see everything, overhear everyone, overcome anything, no matter how important or petty the obstacle." The detective pays all expenses, and in return for their worthy labours, rewards an "old scale of pay" of a shilling a day, plus expenses, and a generous guinea bonus-prize to whom finds the object of their search. They are mischievous, street-wise, sharp, efficient, and eager. "Eyes quick, ears sharp," quips the detective to his little recruits.

The flamboyant Huggins is the young leader of the group and the cleverest of all the Irregulars. Half-brother to Gilly, he is the delight of the London passers-by and the darling of the urbane poor. Restlessly energetic and highly resourceful, this ever-smiling artful dodger is the most exceptional crowd-pleaser, as a sidewalk trickster, a street hustler, a savvy magician, and a compulsive kleptomaniac — a true puckish prince of pick-pocketing — who takes a great delight in pocket-watches: He has wrangled himself quite an impressive collection! Adventurous as well as audacious, dramatic, perceptive, agile, mischievously playful, delightfully witty, exceedingly inventive, and far too clever for his own good, this razzle-dazzle fast-talker can remorselessly con anything away of anyone with an irresistible smile and a sarcastic tongue. This flirtatious, violaceous-eyed charmer is not nearly as innocent as his fellow Irregulars and is quickly maturing into a quite a playboy, turning many maiden heads his direction, despite his apparent juvenility. He secures an immense number of connections and allies within London's seedy underworld, which has made him quintessential to the detective. This loyal and respected commander, benevolent caregiver, and wise and valued friend to everyone who is willing drop and push everything aside to help his mates with anything at anytime at anyplace! "To quote me is saying I was misquoted, quote, unquote, and quote."

Second-in-command of the Irregulars is Huggins' younger half-sister Gillette, or as she is more commonly addressed Gilly. She stormed, early on, among the locals as a type of holy terror and hoydenish troublemaker of the streets, and later as a five-time champion, bare-knuckled pugilist (which is illegal due to its violent nature). Gilly is a vivacious little tomboy and, in many ways, self-succeed herself as the vigilant warden and lieutenant of the group. She keeps an assiduous eye on the protection of each member of the Irregulars and appropriates each into a heterodox uniformity of order and regulation, parallel to that of a serjeant, and has no trouble in giving a clenched fist when it is due. Cynical, candid, suspicious, stubborn, resourceful, smart-mouthed, temperamental, bumptious, and often quarrelsome, she may not be the pleasantest companion to be around, spitting out a countless array of acidic scurrility, and could be described as unfeeling; but, in truth, she simply has no patience for all the trivial niceties and genteel courtesies. She concludes that such things are unnecessary and regularly prevaricates one's conversation for what should be direct and to the point, without fluff and confusion. She remarks a trenchant irritability against inner falseness and self-deception. Breviloquence is key to her nature and one needs to swallow her causal rudeness and belligerence without personal offence, as Gilly has proven herself to be the most self-sacrificing, most steadfast, most valiant, and most faithful of friends. "If you don't like my attitude, stop talking to me!"

Compassionate, sincere, eloquent, and courtly, Cushing is the aspiring cosmopolite of the group. He speaks little about his past: The illegitimate but much-adored child of a dishmaid-turned-demimonde who attempted to secure that her little boy would want for nothing, amassing a vast fortune from her powerful and wealthy benefactors, however upon her death, the beneficence bequeathed to him went missing. He had to make a living through pennies-in-a-hat jobs, creating beautiful chalk drawings on sidewalks, or selling painted handkerchiefs, to the passers-by in the busiest areas of the metropolis. Cushing carries himself with grace and gentility, sustaining impeccable manners and a polished dignity, as a type of "gentleman tramp," with the heart of an Arthurian knight and the passion of a Cavalier poet, and is always happy to lend a helping hand to a friend or a stranger. He is a proficient charmer as well who can sweet-talk his way into just about everything! Cushing can be blindly optimistic and sees the world through a pair of rose-tinted spectacles: The modern world is trapped in chaos and strife, jarring with montages and mountains of images, issues, and crises that have been unthought of in the past centuries, but Cushing delivers it plainly as the only way to live through all of this is just to smile. He is an idealist, a utopist, a hopeless daydreamer, and an incurable romantic, aspiring for the story-book "happily ever afters" wherever he may happen to step. "We are all in a perfect world filled with perfect flaws!"

Energetic, sprightly, and prankish, the ever-silent Norwood is "the mute who speaks without uttering a word." He does not know of his parentage or what happened to them, yet does have a brief recollection of living in a destitute Eastern Orthodox orphanage before he was evicted onto the streets, along with the other children. Norwood delivered himself from pauperism as a self-taught entrepreneur; he became a junk dealer, a match seller, a musician, a mime, and a juggler, usually staged his acts in London public parks. With a dusty coat and tartan-plaid scarf, this cherub-faced, happy-go-lucky imp is constantly smiling, smirking, grinning, laughing, falling over, running, and dancing about in every direction, as he dazzles daffy expressions with his large, screwball eyes and equally screwy actions — in quiet silence! He is also an avaricious pack rat, er....mouse, who has pockets unerringly full of an amazing array of surprises; one can only guess what will come in or out of those cavernous sleeves. He is a definitive comedian and a practical joker of incredible proportions, with an ethereal, other-worldly charisma, an innate knack for unpredictability, and a bright, sweet-natured sense of humour. He is a serendipitous skirt-chaser, but what he does after he catches one is debatable, for he is the epitome of childish innocence and gullibility (or, at least, one would hope so). Yet with his passion for rebelliousness and unconventionality, he is fairly shy and is easily embarrassed. Being vocally wordless does not hinder or restrict him, he distinguishes himself through pantomime. From sunrise to sunset, he can respond and correspond in volumes as he is dependent almost entirely upon his use of expressions, whistles, winks, grunts, groans, yips, yaps, waves, gestures, signs, and visuals, like his misshapen-faced "gookie." With the blustering toots and rowdy honks of his rubber-bulbed bicycle-horn and a strange "soap-bubble" clarinet, Norwood speaks from his heart, soul, and spirit out of silence.

There is, of course, the superstitious Rowe. From the narrow streets and crowded alleyways of Spitalfields, the most concentrated hub of the Jewish population in London's East End, Rowe recalls his only kith and kin as his elderly grandfather who sold chocolate bars with almond nuts on a push-cart. On a good day, they ate meat for supper; on a bad day, they ate chocolate bars with almond nuts. The bad days had a definite perk! But his grandfather eventually fell ill and bedridden until, one night, he went to sleep and never woke up, leaving the little, lost grandson to be thrown into a Dickensian work-house in Lambeth by order of the crown. He ran away and found a family with the Irregulars. Skittish, excitable, awkward, wildly imaginative, and unreasonably paranoid, yet generous and compassionate to a fault, this little Rowe is a naïve believer of tall-tales, myths, conspiracies, folklore, vampyres, werewolves, and all things that go bump in the night — always eager to hear the next fanciful story, no matter how preposterous it may be! He constantly carries with him small bunches of wolves-bane, a shaker of salt, a bulb of garlic, a cross, and a Magen David — in case of any Jewish vampyres. Well, it never hurts to be prepared! He possesses a stubborn nature of endless determination and hope, refusing to give in even when all is lost from the outset, although he is ultimately dominated by his fears and insecurities — about practically everything! "I've developed a new philosophy: I only dread one day at a time!"

The youngest of all the Irregulars, the stone-faced Keaton is the shyest and the quietest member for he has little to say about anything — even Norwood, with all his whistles and toots, is louder than Keaton. A child of the Vaudeville music-hall footlights of Stomp and Strand, he joined his parents as the youngest member of the Three Keatons, as he crawled on stage at eight months and, by the age of two, he was a star! Night after night, he routinely performed pratfalls and stunts, as he tripped over objects, stumbled down a flight of stairs, was thrown across the stage (occasionally into the guffawing audience), and trampled on as a type of theatrical punch-bag, landing either on his top of his head or simply on "a frozen granite face," but by the finale, he would bow to the audience miraculously uninjured. Devoted, magnanimous, forgetful, hap-hazardously reckless, and accident-prone to a fault, this ever-hapless and long-suffering pint-sized, dreamy-eyed Pierrot is forever at the mercy of the inexorable opposing forces around him, always at the wrong place and the wrong time, yet it is his impassivity and adaptability to those forces that allow him to survive, and triumph, over adversity. He can hurl himself into the eye of the storm and pass through safely, to roll with the punches the universe may throw at him, juggling the wildest of circumstances with an awe-inspiring sort of patience and a reflexive power to endure, with an ability to come out on the other side with an unflappable reaction and a bewildered blink, although he may not be exactly sure how he got there to here! He fosters a long-term crush on Gilly, which is obvious to everyone — but Gilly! "This would be funny if it just weren't happening to me."

The most recent addition to the Irregulars is the soft-hearted Livanov. His farming village was caught in the middle of political conflicts that were originally meant to "save the people" of Russia. His village had yet to recover from the nasty tear-away between the tyrannical landlords and their feudalist power over the impoverished serfs who were affected by the emancipation, giving land and limited freedom to the peasantry, but they would not find peace. The dangerously radical Narodniks were unable to influence its Marxist intelligentsia in the cities and moved to the villages in an attempt to teach their "moral" imperative to revolt against the monarchy. The Tsarists, however, found such ideals unwelcoming and sent the Okhranka Secret Police to crush the villages. Livanov fled with his family, as refugees, escaping his once-peaceful country for the smog-ridden streets of London and eventually losing his way; he was the lone survivor of his family, but found another one with the Baker Street Irregulars. As the wise philosopher of the group, he can quip a maxim for every task and an axiom for every answer. Bashful, benevolent, sympathetic, complaisant, and self-conscious, he is a pacifist and peacemaker, detesting all quarrels and hostilities of any kind: He separates, appeases, and compromises. But he often has to be guided by the others as he is still adjusting to English language, customs, and technology, the likes of which he has never seen before. "A mile walk with a friend has only one hundred steps."

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Each Irregular is named after a famous Sherlock Holmes actor:

British veteran "becomer" actor, Jeremy Brett (born Huggins, 1933-1995) is best known for his sniggering, lovesick, and drop-dead gorgeous Freddie Eynsford-Hill in the 1964 smash, My Fair Lady, as he portrayed Sherlock Holmes for Granada Television in five features, thirty-six episodes, a rare charity short, and a lost short in a span of ten years. All around the world, Brett is argued one of the best, if not the best Holmes, in creation, challenging only by Basil Rathbone himself. His Holmes was dark-hued portrayal that is cantankerous, affected, whimsical, flamboyant, rude, arrogant, tragic, infuriating, precipitous, eccentric, charming, intelligent, handsome, and so utterly human — and can only have been drawn from the deepest possible understanding of the text. No other Holmes has come close to Brett's portrayal of the brilliant, obsessed mind, teetering on the knife's edge, dividing madness and sheer genius. He was one of the few Holmeses that stayed as true as possible to the Sacred Writings; no other Holmes has been more successful at this than he. The author's daughter, Dame Jean Conan Doyle, told him that he was "the Sherlock Holmes of my childhood." After the death of his second wife, Brett suffered a breakdown and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder (manic depression), but the doctors prescribed medicine that conflicted with his weak heart. Jeremy Brett died in his sleep in 1995. For me, Mr. Brett is Holmes.

For several generations, Connecticut-born actor, playwright, director, and stage-manager William Gillette (1853-1937) was the image of Sherlock Holmes for millions of fans all over the world. Born in the era of melodrama, with its grand gestures and sonorous declamations, he created in his plays characters who talked and acted the way people talk and act in real life. Gillette wrote and starred in Sherlock Holmes - A Drama in Four Acts, which opened in 1899 in New York City, though he given Sir Arthur Conan Doyle co-credit for the play, he have little to with the writing. Despite adding an uncanonical, very Victorian-esque love interest, it was a smash and he took it to London in 1901 and would star as Sherlock Holmes for thirty-four years, playing him more than 1300 times before American and British audiences. It was Gillette who made the deerstalker cap a fixture to the sleuth's legend, by wearing it in his play, and was also responsible for the signature calabash (or meerschaum) pipe since is was easier to speak his lines with a curved pipe than a straight one. When Frederic Dorr Steele began illustrating the Holmes stories for Collier's Weekly in 1903, he immortalised Gillette as his model. Gillette played Holmes again in 1916 (lost) film and a 1930 radio-play (adapted by Orson Welles), which made him the first radio Sherlock Holmes in history. Tall, slender, and handsome, he was one of the world's premier actors and playwrights before and after the turn of the last century, a matinee idol of enormous appeal, and an imaginative genius who made some important contributions to the theater that are still in use today. He was a ladies' man, a train buff, and an eccentric inventor of locks. Gillette died in 1937 at the age of eighty-two and decreed, amusingly, in his will that his beloved Connecticut castle home would not be sold "to some blithering sap-head." He is one of my favourite "photographed" Holmeses and, like many Sherlockians; I wish I could have seen him in action! Unfortunately, his first and only film, Sherlock Holmes (1916), did not survive and has been lost through the ravages of time, however I was able to listen to a 1936 radio-short of his famous theatrical play, playing Holmes for the last time — Gillette died, due to a pulmonary haemorrhage, fifteen months later.

"The Gentleman of Horror" Peter Cushing (1913-1994) is perhaps one of the important figures in sci-fi and horror films, playing such immortal roles as the obsessive Dr. Frankenstein and the neurotic Dr. Van Helsing, in Hammer Film Productions for over twenty years. He also appeared in films for the other major horror producer of the time, Amicus Productions, including Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965) and its later horror anthologies, as well as a couple of Dr. Who features during the mid-1960s, but is perhaps his best-known, outside of horror films, as Grand Moff Tarkin in George Lucas' phenomenal sci-fi film, Star Wars (1977). Cushing portrayed Sherlock Holmes thrice in his long, versatile career: The Hammer Hound of the Baskervilles (1959), the televised The Masks of Death (1984), and the several episodes for the BBC Sherlock Holmes in 1968 after Douglas Wilmer left the series. Though some Sherlockians argue that Cushing was miscast as Holmes, often saying he was too short for the part, nevertheless Cushing was an exemplary Holmes, resonating incredible intelligence, twitching mania, resourcefulness, reasonable arrogance, edginess, and inner quest for perfection, with a habit of pointing a index finger up to the ceiling when he's trying to make a point. Bringing both the right intellectual air and the coiled spring of physical intensity, the "definitive" Holmes of the 1960s was restless, slightly uptight, pessimistically optimistic, and extremely playful; there isn't a scene where he wasn't playing with a prop or pointing a quick, arched finger to the sky. And there's nothing better than a Holmes who loves muffins! After Star Wars, he continued appearing in films and television sporadically, as his health allowed; the great Cushing died in Canterbury hospice, due to prostate cancer, at the age of eighty-one — a week before the premiere of Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror (1994), which he co-narrated with his dear friend and fellow Holmes actor, Christopher Lee. (Ironically, Peter Cushing had a severe case of musophobia — a fear of rodents!)

Anthony Edward Brett would become "the first great movie Holmes," although he would achieve this title under the name, Eille Norwood (1861-1948). Norwood was primarily a stage-actor in England when he landed the role that would make him famous throughout the world. In 1921, a British film company named Stoll decided to film a series of shorts based on Conan Doyle's stories. For the next two years, they would produce forty-five of the twenty-minute films, along with two longer ones. Conan Doyle's short stories fit the twenty-minute length quite well. Norwood, at the age of fifty-nine, played a brilliant, cerebral detective that was confident, quick, dramatic, peculiar, lonely, and acutely sensitive, which is not an easy task in silent atmosphere. Conan Doyle, himself, loved the films and was impressed by Norwood appearance, which resembled his idea of Holmes; however, the fact that they "modernised" Holmes to the 1920s did bothered the creator, introducing telephones, motor cars, and luxuries of which the Victorian Holmes would have never dreamed of. Conan Doyle presented him with a loud, eye-piercing Turkish-rug patterned dressing-gown as a gift, which the actor wore on camera several times. Norwood had an extreme talent for disguises and, with makeup and wigs; he could completely transform himself and be unrecognisable. With forty-seven films under his belt, Eille Norwood holds the record for the most appearances as Holmes than any other actor, but did not stop there. It came to no surprise that he took the title role in a new stage play, written by J.E. Harold Terry and Arthur Rose, called The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Sadly, very few of Norwood's films have survived the brutal ravages of time, which is true of so many silent films and much of his legacy died with it. Nevertheless, I am very honoured to have seen a few of the amazing Stoll reels. He is ranked as one of the greatest Holmeses — and I profusely agreed.

There are more Sherlock Holmes stories not written by Conan Doyle; some are quite bad but every now and then a good one comes along! Nicholas Rowe (1966-    ) played one of the more unique Holmeses in Steven Spielberg's 1985 film, Young Sherlock Holmes, or the more fittingly titled Young Sherlock Holmes and the Pyramid of Doom, merging fantasy film, classic literature, and old-fashioned British melodrama in one summer blockbuster that, lamentably, flopped. Holmes is a snooty, witty, and charming University of London undergraduate that chases after suspicious Egyptian cultists. This movie explained Holmes' aloofness to women, losing his first and only love, and his deep bitterness towards Professor Moriarty. At the time, Nicholas Rowe was a student in the prestigious Eton College when this son of a Member of Parliament got the call to be allowed to read the script. Tall, thin, uncharacteristically romantic, and exquisitely more beautiful than handsome, he was eye-candy for hordes of histrionic, young teenage girls! (Today, he has quite a cult fan following.) The story, of course, was obviously "un-Doylean," but upon reflection, it's an entertaining, if unbelievable, film. Of course, specials thanks Industrial Light and Magic, Young Sherlock Holmes holds the record for being the first live-action feature film to have a complete CGI (computer graphics image) character — the knight coming out of the stained glass window. Also note, Nicholas Rowe had better looks, better acting, and certainly a better story than Guy Henry's horrible 1982 eight-part mini-series, Young Sherlock: The Mystery of the Manor House. Mr. Rowe is presently working in market research and has worked sporadically in films ever since.

Though I am cheating by a technicality by adding this comedic actor into the Irregulars, since he does not play "Sherlock Holmes," per se. The "Great Stone Face" Buster Keaton (1895-1966), instead, portrayed the hapless title character of Sherlock, Jr. (1924). And yet it's almost impossible to describe the astounding creativity of this masterpiece; Hollywood had never seen anything like it before and, even today, after ninety years, people still ask, "How'd he do that?!" Sherlock, Jr. is one of his most famous of Keaton's comedies, which he acted, choreographed, stunted, and directed entirely himself. This spectacular Keaton feature had special effects never attempted before and stunts never attempted before either. In the film, Keaton is working in a local moving-picture theatre as a projectionist where, after his work hours, he goes to visit his girlfriend, but is embarrassed by his rival. Shortly after falling asleep in the projection room, Buster leaps into the movie and, with his skilled cinematographer, Elgin Lessley, the silent screen's comic-genius made one of the greatest films of all time. One of my favourite scenes is the explosive #13 ball in which the detective miraculously "missed" in the solo pool game. (He broke is neck in one of the stunts in this film, where Keaton runs on top of a moving train and grabs the chain of a water spout and couple of hundred pounds of water fell on top of him and fell on the metal railroad track. Filming had to stop that day due to a headache, but continued the next day. Keaton never knew he broke his neck until years later, after a routine check-up.)

Of the many incarnations of Sherlock Holmes on film and television, surely the most curious and intriguing is the Russian television series, featuring Vasili Livanov (1935-    ) as the Great Detective. The son of Boris Livanov, an eminent actor of the Moscow Art Theatre and probably the most acclaimed stage-actor of his generation, Vasili Livanov achieved cult stardom as a voice-actor of a number of Soviet cartoons, such as Bremenskie muzykanty (1969) and Krokodil Gena (1971). Vasili Livanov was shot to international fame during the 1980s, when he was starring as Sherlock Holmes in the surprisingly popular Russian TV series by director Igor Maslennikov (who has an uncanny likeness to Conan Doyle), consisting of five series broken into eleven episodes. It must have been a difficult task to create Victorian London in Russia, but the producers have done an exemplary job of it with first-rate costuming and elaborate sets. The series has an edgy atmosphere of grotesque Gothicism, begetting an exotic, if oppressive, air of Eastern Europeanism. His Holmes was larger-than-life, but mortal, man who would sit as still as a statute and suddenly contrast by bursting out in both humour and hyperactivity. His Holmes was a refined, intellect, witty, endearing, approachable, and sensitive image of Holmes, with just the right balance of quirkiness and vulnerability. His laughter was contagious, as was his tears. He is among the most believable Holmeses ever portrayed. On April 2006, Livanov was awarded the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes. His statue, as Holmes, was unveiled in Moscow in April 2007, despite the fact the series was filmed closer to St. Petersburg.

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CLIPS:
     - Jeremy Brett: The opening of "Scandal in Bohemia"
     - Jeremy Brett: Meeting the Napoleon of Crime, Professor Moriarty, in "The Final Problem"
     - William Gillette: Holmes on Radio, part 1
     - William Gillette: Holmes on Radio, part 2
     - Peter Cushing: Holmes searches for clues in "Boscombe Valley Mystery"
     - Peter Cushing: Deductions of Henry Baker's hat from "The Blue Carbuncle"
     - Eille Norwood: Disguising himself
     - Nicholas Rowe: The historical first fully-animated CGI character on film in Young Sherlock Holmes
     - Nicholas Rowe: Holmes tracks down the cultist's hideout in Young Sherlock Holmes
     - Buster Keaton: Moments of Sherlock, Jr., includes the infamous neck-breaking (literally) stunt on the train and marvels of early film special effects as he "enters" the film
     - Vasili Livanov: Holmes returns from the "dead" in "Okhota na tigra"
     - Vasili Livanov: Holmes and Watson analyse Dr. Mortimer's walking stick in "Sobaka Baskerviley"

Medium - 2B graphite.

The Baker Street Irregulars © Diane N. Tran.