Meeting Minutes
Sherlock Holmes
South Downers Meeting
Via Zoom
January 25, 2023
Zoom Attendees: Phil Angelo, Connie Angelo, August Anselmo, Bill Buck, Bert Jacobson, Diane Siaroff, Sandy Kozinn, Jack Levitt, Deb Morgan, Gerry Morgan, Thomas Schildhouse, Bob Sharfman, Lenette Staudinger, and Cynthia Karabush.
Phil showed the video of “The Scarlet Claw” for those who zoomed for that part of the meeting at 5:00 PM. It was a Basil Rathbone & Nigel Bruce movie released in May 1944. This is one of fourteen Holmes movies that Rathbone & Bruce participated in between 1939 and 1946. Some of this series, including tonight’s movie, was restored and colorized in the 1970s. The first two movies in the series, “Hound of the Baskervilles” was based on Doyle’s story and “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes” was based on an 1899 play “Sherlock Holmes” written by William Gillette. They were produced by 20th Century Fox in 1939 and are set in the 19th century. They were produced with large budgets. Universal secured rights to the characters of Holmes & Watson from the Doyle estate and wrote their own version of stories for the remaining twelve films. The studio set them in the 1940’s sometimes with anti-Nazi themes and produced them as B pictures with lower budgets. The first of these was “The Voice of Terror” which was released in 1942.
Phil called the meeting to order at 7:01 PM.
There was a discussion of “The Scarlet Claw” movie.
South Downers News:
Phil mentioned that he had found a $2 book at the grocery store named The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols by Nicholas Meyer who also wrote The Seven Percent Solution. It was a good mix of adventure and history.
Phil noted that it is time for the annual dues. Please send $20 to Lenette Staudinger, 9049 Sheri La., Orland Park, IL 60462. Make the check out to The South Downers.
The Quiz on “All Canon Quiz on Romance” was compiled by Phil. With 100 points possible, the results were as follows: Bert 88, Deb 80, Jack 86, Gerry 94, Tom 64. Lenette 45. We all enjoyed the extensive & interesting coverage of approximately fifty characters from about thirty-four stories from the canon. Good job, Phil!
NOTE:Phil’s answers are attached at the end of this document.
Love and Marriage presented by Phil
It was the theme song for the television show, “Married … with Children.” For 11 years on Fox, we learned of the suffering of Al Bundy, a shoe salesman and his lazy wife Peggy. The song was the type that would play over and over in your brain. It was a 1955 Sinatra tune.
The point here is how we think of the canon. You can have your murders, your jewel thefts, your bank robberies and your espionage cases. Forget all that. The real heart of the Sherlock Holmes-Arthur Conan Doyle canon is “Love and Marriage.” Nearly two-thirds of all the cases have a love affair, a love triangle or tangled husband-wife relations at their core.
Consider this. Arthur Conan Doyle was married twice. It appears that he fell in love with wife number two while wife number one was still alive. Doyle, biographers say, seems to have been physically faithful, even if he mentally drifted. So marriage and love were topics was close to his heart. Pun intended.
I counted 16 cases in the canon where there was a love triangle. My count may be light. Most of them, three-quarters of them, involve one woman choosing between two men. Or looking for a second fellow after the first one proves to be a failure, a cad or simply evil. In the very first short story, a Scandal in Bohemia, we have Irene Adler. At first, she was the playful lover of the King, disguised before Holmes as Count Von Kramm. The king appears to have had the powerful aphrodisiac of money, but has little else to recommend him to the opposite sex. She throws him over for Godfrey Norton.
In the first novel, A Study in Scarlet, Lucy Ferrier escapes dying of thirst and starvation on the Plains only to fall into the hands of the Mormons. She becomes the polygamous wife of Enoch Drebber, all the while hoping for the strong arms of cowboy Jefferson Hope. Hope’s rescue attempt fails. Lucy dies of a broken heart. Hope seeks revenge, which succeeds, but he succumbs to a failing heart (symbolism here) at the end.
This is a recurring theme in the canon — a woman trying to escape a lousy marriage or engagement: Anna Coram wedded to stool pigeon Sergius; Nancy Devoy entrapped by the scheming James Barclay; Hatty Doran accepting Lord St. Simon for his title; Mary Fraser married to wife-beater Sir Eustace Bankenstall; Ettie Shafter ditching Scowrer Teddy Baldwin for Jack McMurdo. Mrs. McFarlane marries a better man than Jonas Oldacre after she catches Jonas releasing a cat in an aviary of birds.
In only a handful of these cases is there a happy ending, either immediately or implied in the future. Hatty Doran and Mary Fraser seem to march into the sunset with love assured or promised. But in so many others, the end is a tragedy. Lucy Ferrier is dead. She is joined by the sad ends of James Barclay, Hilton Cubitt and Anna Coram. It gets grimmer as we moved toward the end of the canon. In the Retired Colourman, both the wife and her lover die. In The Veiled Lodger we have the death of Ronder, a cowardly moment from lover Leonardo the Strongman and the possible suicide of Eugenia Ronder.
If Doyle sends any message, consciously or unconsciously, it may be that the straying in love or marriage is not a good thing. Of the 12 cases involving one woman choosing between two fellas, less than half have a happy ending. Few Hallmark Channel fairytale endings here
The odds are even longer in the four cases where a man chooses between two women. Butler Brunton in The Musgrave Ritual cheats on his first love, then asks her for help. He pays for this misjudgment with his life. Brunton is described as a virtuoso. He can unravel the ritual. He can play every instrument. But he cannot fathom the mind of a reasonable woman. In The Cardboard Box, Jim Browner cheats on his wife, then winds up killing her and her lover. Turnabout was not fair play. Maria Gibson, having lost the affection of her husband in Thor Bridge, commits suicide while staging it to frame her rival for murder. Lion killer Leon Sterndale had hoped for love with Brenda Tregennis, but was trapped in a loveless marriage himself by the deplorable divorce laws of England, in the tale, The Devil’s Foot. Having killed big game in Africa, he now kills Brenda’s killer.
Love or love’s revenge is more of a motive for murder in the canon than anything else.
But Doyle does see love as worthwhile. Three of the worst villains of the canon are James Windibank, Jephro Rucastle and Grimesby Roylott. What do these three have in common? Each resorts to trickery to try to keep their daughter or stepdaughters from marrying — all for the sake of keeping the money for themselves. Blood may be thicker than water, but it is not thicker than the English pound. Roylott is the worst of the three. In The Speckled Band, he kills one daughter and aims to kill another, using the rare method of the snake in the ventilator. He ends up dead himself. Rucastle imprisons a daughter, trying to worry her into brain fever. She survives and lives to love, while Rucastle is maimed by his own mastiff.
The most puzzling of these three cases is A Case of Identity. James Windibank disguises himself to make his own stepdaughter fall in love with him. Must have been one hell of a disguise. Holmes finds him reprehensible enough to threaten to trash him. Sherlock says Windibank will rise from crime to crime until he ends up on the gallows. Yet he lets him go.
Of course, some people make bad choices in significant others on their own. For them, love is blind. In The Three Gables, Douglas Maberley falls for scheming cougar Isadora Klein. He regrets it, writes about it, but does not live to regret it. Why did Beryl Stapleton stick with Jack Stapleton so long in The Hound of the Baskervilles? He had failed in business and hit her. She should have left. Same question for Mrs. Carey, the wife of the vicious drunk, in the case named for him, Black Peter. Why not leave, sooner?
Violet de Merville is smitten with Baron Gruner, who had killed his first wife, in The Illustrious Client. She won’t listen to Holmes, and is likely only saved from death by the actions of Kitty Winter, who blasts the Baron with fatal revolver bullets. That Alice Morphy planned to wed the creepy creeping Professor Presbury in The Creeping Man, shows that when love is not completely blind, it can be near-sighted.
In The Beryl Coronet and The Greek Interpreter, Mary and Sophy Kratides, respectively, fall for crooks who want to steal from their families.
But it is not all gloom and doom. There are hero husbands and heroine wives and sweethearts in the canon.
Doyle’s view of romance was entirely conventional. Doyle was certainly aware of the homosexuality scandal involving Oscar Wilde. The author of “The Picture of Dorian Grey” was accused of homosexuality, then a crime in England. He sued for libel, lost his case and then was successfully prosecuted for gross indecency with a man.
Doyle would also have been aware of the presence of prostitution. Jack the Ripper’s victims were prostitutes. Charles Dickens wrote of the seamier underside of urban Victorian Britain. Doyle did not. We have cads like Woodley and Black Gorgiano, but we are really spared the worst. As befitting someone whose epitaph was “Steel True, Blade Straight,” Doyle’s views on romance were uplifting, hopeful. The good guys may not always win, but the bad guys were typically punished.
We have the image of Godfrey Staunton, trapped by the class standards of his time, loyally tending to a dying wife in The Missing Three/Quarter. Emilia Lucca sings the praises of husband Gennaro when he protects her by killing the odious Black Gorgiano in The Red Circle. Perhaps best is the loving and broad-minded Grant Munro in The Yellow Face. He hugs his interracial stepdaughter and tells his wife, “I am not a very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.”
There are also ladies who stand by their man, as Tammy Wynette would sing. Alice Turner in The Boscombe Valley Mystery, Annie Harrison in The Naval Treaty and Violet Westbury in The Bruce-Partington Plans all affirm their man’s innocence. But the award for best wife goes to Signora Victor Durando who was willing to risk her life to seek revenge on her husband’s killer in Wisteria Lodge.
Kudos, too, to those ladies who emerge from a tangled story to find love later. So, to Hatty Doran, to Violet Smith, to Mary Fraser to Helen Stoner to Irene Adler to others, we end with the words of singer Gene Pitney, in the canon, Only Love can Break a Heart, Only Love Can Mend It Again.
Jack’s Agony Column
For anyone going to Portland, Oregon there is a play called Miss Holmes and Miss Watson Apartment 2B before February 12th. The two women solve a murder mystery. There was an interview with Rick Rubbens who wrote about the creative app. They asked which books should be read by twenty-one. He said that Sherlock Holmes is a great one to pursue. The earlier the better. It is a great primer for awareness and practice.
Every Saturday afternoon a radio station, WNIV from 1 to 5 there is something called an old-time radio show. Every couple of weeks they will do a Rathbone & Bruce Sherlock Holmes thing.
On WFMT every Saturday morning at 9:00 AM they have music from the movies. A few weeks ago, they had one on about three Holmes movies.
Holmes’ birthday was this month.
Strand magazine was a recipient of a special award called the Edgar award from the Mystery Writers of American. Named for Edgar Allen Poe whose 214th birthday was a couple of days ago. He was born in 1809. Poe wrote the first real detective story “The Purloined letter”.
Nice review of the Baker Street Irregular weekend. Installed about twenty new people.
There is a website address, I hear of Sherlock everywhere. The website is ihose@hearofsherlock.com
Joke: Two guys are talking: one says to the other, “Do you know the name of Sherlock Holmes’ son.” The other says, “What son?” The first says, “No, that was his roommate.”
In the Sun Times there is a thing called Wordy Gurdy in which they give a definition and the answer to the question is rhyming. For example: Molar Gumshoe is a Tooth Sleuth.
Toast to the Case: Phil read a toast to the Canonical Women of Courage.
Raise your glass filled with English ale,
To honor canonical courage female.
Helen Stoner brave in her sister’s room,
While an adder might slither in the gloom.
Beryl Stapleton a warning would sound,
Beware, Henry and Watson of the hound.
Mother Ferguson would suck out poison
To help protect an innocent infant son.
Bride Emilia Lucca from Italy’s Porsilippo,
Flashes out the message danger, “Pericolo.”
Elsie Cubitt tries to shield husband Hilton,
But Chicago crook Slaney put the hit on.
In several tales women take their reprisal.
When threatened we all do seek survival.
Shamed Kitty Winter threw vitriol at Gruner,
After he had wooed her and ruined her.
Plump Milverton was the blackmailing king.
A woman and a revolver led to his slaying.
Yet of all the women in these many stories,
Think of brave Mrs. Hudson down on her knees,
Moving Holmes’ statue with moves ever so slight,
To fool Moran and an air gun’s bullet’s flight.
It’s great to have a woman whose pedigree is royal.
What you really want is someone who is brave and loyal.
Jack: A Toast to Sherlock Holmes
I rise to toast Sherlock Holmes, and it’s very clear
what he means to us all. It’s elementary my dear.
It’s his deerstalker hat and his meerschaum pipe,
his knowledge of bicycle tires, and typewriter type.
It’s his magnifying glass, and the VR on the wall,
his Stradivarius violin, and Baskerville Hall.
His many disguises and the Persian slipper,
Mrs. Hudson’s breakfasts of coffee, tea, and kipper.
We met him first in the Case of the Scarlet Study
when he is introduced to Dr. Watson, his chronicler and buddy.
There was rarely a case that he would ever lose.
He could solve the biggest problem with the smallest of clues.
He was not without faults. He could be exceedingly vain.
He smoked and he drank, and he used cocaine.
His exploits have been translated into almost every tongue
And by Stanford and Wiggins may he be eternally young.
For us he’s alive and will always be real.
He’s a hero for justice and a court of last appeal.
If there was never a canon, it would have been a disaster.
So, let’s drink to Sherlock Holmes, detectives’ great master.
The next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, February 22, 2023, at Scrementi’s, if the weather is OK, otherwise we stay at home. It is planned to be a mystery with 12 suspects. There will be 33 clues, nine murder weapons, 12 clues in one round and then two rounds of 6 apiece. Some of the clues will be mailed to folks in envelopes. Some will be read in person and/or over the zoom. We go through clues one at a time. Prizes for the correct solution.
August Anselmo read 221B.
Phil thanked everyone for attending via zoom.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:05 PM.
Sherlock Holmes
South Downers Meeting
Scrementi’s & Via Zoom
September 28, 2022
Attendees: Phil Angelo, Connie Angelo, Bonnie Dimon, Jan Graziadei, Bert Jacobson, Jack Levitt, Deb Morgan, Gerry Morgan, Lynette Staudinger, Tom Schildhouse and Diane Siaroff. Via Zoom: August Anselmo, Cynthia Karabush, George Shannon, and Kelly Weber.
We enjoyed the video of “The Voice of Terror” with Basil Rathbone as Sherlock. At the ending of the movie Holmes and Watson are standing together and Rathbone delivers his final comment that is almost exactly as Doyle wrote it at the end of tonight’s story, “His Last Bow”.
Phil called the meeting to order at 7:00 PM.
South Downers News
None tonight.
Quiz on “His Last Bow” by Kelly.
Kelly reviewed the answers for the quiz.
Results: Bert & Gerry 14 and Jack 9.
Illustrations from the case were displayed on the screen drawn by several different artists.
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Diane gave a presentation on: Mata Hari.
Note: This presentation is available in a separate document “Mata Hari Presentation 9 28 2022.
Toast to the Case: Phil read his toast to the case.
Jack’s Agony Column
There is a play on the north side called “Miss Holmes Returns” There was a “Miss Holmes” and Sherlock is played by a woman. It will be continuing until October 16th. There is a Watson and a Lestrade in it. It received two and a half stars.
This appeared in Sunday’spaper and it’s called a jumbled crossword. It was so good they ran it for two straight weeks. The clue was “Who first appeared in print in 1887” and the answer was Sherlock Holmes.
There was a cartoon that in the last frame someone says “OK Sherlock”.
I have some Help save the Bee bookmarks if anyone is interested.
Not exactly Sherlock but there are a group of Who dun’its. Twelve exemplary crime writers have put together twelve new Jane Marple mysteries. The title is “Marple’s Twelve New Mysteries”. If you are into Agatha Christie, you might be interested in that.
There is a Japanese cartoon series called Sherlock Hound. There are twenty-six episodes from 1984 to 1985. Has subtitles in English. It is an animated TV series.
The Torists met this week and won’t meet until three months.
The Criterion Bar is trying to get new members and they are going to try on a Sunday from noon to three at a restaurant and have zoom, too.
Hot off the press: on Jeopardy today, the topic was waterfalls. The item was “What was the name of the waterfall where Holmes met Moriarty”.
Phil commented on the “Murder on the Orient Express” play at Drury Lane. It is scheduled for October 6th. Several people will be going.
The next meeting is scheduled for October 26th. This is the Halloween meeting so feel free to come dressed as a character or anything else Sherlockian. We will be at Scrementi’s with a movie at 5:00 the meeting will be at 7:00 PM. The quiz will be on “The Mazarin Stone” and Lenette will compose the quiz. Phil will have a program on Italians in The Canon.
Deb read 221B.
Phil thanked the Zoom participants.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:15 PM.