Adam Graham (37:40)
Welcome back. I actually really enjoyed this episode. It does a great job capturing the kind of spirit and style that makes Home so appealing. In this episode, we hear him doing things that his compatriots don't understand, and we, the audience, don't understand at first because he's got this so very different view of the world and of the case. His mind is moving in different directions. And I totally love how they managed to capture this. Holmes is just so much fun in this episode. And I think that some listeners commented on the fact that Richard Gordon's performance was quite a bit different than so many of the later Holmes radio stories. And I think that's because Gordon, if he's influenced by anything, and I think the same can be said for Lewis Hector, who would follow him in the Sherlock Holmes role, he was influenced by William Gillette's performance and the stage plays and the way that those were performed. Basil Rathbone came along and really just decided to do his own thing, to take the role and to offer his own interpretation and make it his own. And then most of the Holmes actors, until at least Ben Wright, just essentially decided to go ahead and try and imitate Basil Rathbone, much to Rathbone's annoyance. But that's another story. Speaking of another story, those who have read through the Sherlock Holmes stories will be scratching their heads at the idea that this is an adaptation of the Final Problem. I talked about this, you know, a decade ago, if you remember, before we were at episode 1000, like episode 09 something, when they did the Final Problem in the John Gielgud Ralph Richardson series. And that series really tried to be extremely faithful to the source material. The problem with the Final Problem is that it is so exposition based. There's not a whole lot of action or character interaction. It was something that Doyle wrote as a way to escape writing Sherlock Holmes stories, not as something that he expected to be, you know, dramatized in some full detail. So it's very tough to dramatize. And so I think many of the New Adventures writers, and particularly the writer of this story decided, you know, let's just go ahead and we're introduced to Professor Moriarty in the Final Problem, but we don't actually see Holmes busting up Moriarty's operations and how fiendish those operations were. So let's go ahead and tell a story of Holmes doing that. Now, of course, in terms of the canon, that presents some problems in that. In the Final Problem, when Holmes references Moriarty to Watson, that was the first time that Watson had heard of him. But I think that Doyle kind of created some of that within the canon. So I guess we can forgive the writer of this episode. The disclaimer at the end about the stars of the program not appearing in any other program as a crime solving detective and his doctor friend was intriguing. And I did a little bit of research and I have no idea what exactly it was about, though I can kind of speculate. It was 1932, which was still very much a Wild west era for American radio. The great radio networks were still just getting established. There was a lot of chaos in the radio media and some shady operators. It's not inconceivable that with the success of the Sherlock Holmes program, which by, according to this had been on the air for three years, that someone decided, you know, we have a couple of actors who sound really similar to the Holmes and Watson characters. Let's go ahead and put our own detective series on the air and see if we can cash in on it. And then someone writes into G Washington Coffee and notifies them of this and you get that sort of announcement at the end of the program might also get some lawyers involved as well. Particularly since the character of Sherlock Holmes in 195032 was very much under copyright. But alas, I could find no details as to what sort of drama went on. If any on this worth noting here. Joseph Bell, who hosts this program, would be the host of several Sherlock Holmes programs. In fact, after Petrie Wine left as sponsor of Sherlock Holmes along with Basil Rathbone leaving, he served as the host during the Tom Conway Nigel Bruce era, 1946 and 47 for Kremel Hair Tonic. The book premium really caught my interest. It was such an interesting promotion as G. Washington Coffee issued its own special edition of Sherlock Holmes stories, seven stories, six selected from the Holmes canon. And I thought it would be interesting to have a copy of it. It's a great piece of radio history from the very first long running Sherlock Holmes series. And I thought it would be even more fun to give listeners to the podcast a chance to own their own copy. So I bought a copy of the book off of ebay and it is going to be a prize in the first ever giveaway I've done on the Great Detectives of Old Time Radio. You can go to giveaway.greatdetectives.net and enter to win this book along with four other prizes. So let me go ahead and I will talk about the book itself. The book contains seven Sherlock Holmes stories. On the title page it's listed as the G. Washington edition and it includes the Adventure of the Illustrious Client, the Adventure of the Blanche Soldier, the Adventure of the Mazarin Stone, the Adventure of the Three Gables, the Adventure of the Creeping man, the Adventure of the Sussex Vampire, and the Adventure of the Veiled Lodger. So most of these are from some of the later Holmes stories. But that's not all. While doing some research, I found out that G. Washington Coffee had issued an earlier high end book, a copy of the Hound of the Baskervilles. This one is also labeled as the G. Washington Edition. It was printed in 1930 and it features a picture of star Richard Gordon in addition to the text of the novel. I think I would classify the condition of each of these books as in good condition. They are far from met. There are things along the COVID and somewhere, particularly on the spines of the books. They're both hardcovers. They're not worth a force fortune or anything, but they're fun things to have. A nice piece of radio history from the first American Sherlock Holmes series over radio. The first prize is choice of the two books. The second prize is whatever the first place winner didn't choose. Our third prize is the new Great Detectives of Old Time Radio. Pullover hoodie. Yes, we're going to have a new T shirt design for the first time in I think three years. What will it be? Stay tuned. And we have two fourth prizes which are a T shirt and our latest design to be announced in the fall. To enter go to giveaway.greatdetives.net you can get one entry without having to do anything. All entries are free and you can earn an additional entry by visiting our website or by doing some tasks to help us on social Media. So check it out at giveaway.greatdetectives.net the deadline for entry is Saturday, August 27th. The winner to be announced Tuesday, September 6th, or I should say winners. So look forward to having your entries. And of course, we'll send out the books as soon as we confirm the information from the winners of the first and second prize and get the sweatshirts and T shirts out as soon as is practical, once we have everything finalized. And we'll be talking more about those designs coming up later on. Well, now let's go ahead and thank our Patreon supporter of the day. Thank you to Delilah, patreon Supporter since December 2019, currently supporting us at the Seamus level of $4 or more per month. Again, thanks so much for your support, Delilah. And that will actually do it for today. Next Tuesday, we'll be bringing you a previously uncirculated episode of Defense Attorney. But join us back here tomorrow for Dangerous Assignment. Where?
