I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere

Another Pointed Look at the Needle Reference

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"they are as sharp as needles, too" (STUD)</h4>
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Even Sherlock Holmes was wrong once in a while, and clearly I was following in his erring footsteps when I suggested, in <a href="http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2015/03/sharp-observations-about-that-needle.html#.VQyVlfnF-mE">a March 18 posting</a> here on I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere, that the annoying expression "Quick, Watson, the needle!" dates from the 1930s. As soon as my speculations appeared, Sherlockian scholars were whispering Norbury in my ear, sending awkward reminders that the phrase is known to have existed much earlier than that.<br />
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Ian Schoenherr, Ray Wilcockson, and Mattias Boström were all very helpful in this regard, pointing to needle references in such sources as the Commercial Telegraphers' Journal (July 1911) and — long before the Lilly Library became an important repository of Sherlockian material — the Indiana University yearbook for 1912. 
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<a href="https://twitter.com/ianschoenherr">@ianschoenherr</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/IHearofSherlock">@IHearofSherlock</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/darkgreendesk">@darkgreendesk</a> This is from DeWaal: <a href="http://t.co/b2T2M3zJrG">pic.twitter.com/b2T2M3zJrG</a><br />
— Mattias Boström, BSI (@mattias221b) <a href="https://twitter.com/mattias221b/status/578207395001856000">March 18, 2015</a></blockquote>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">
<a href="https://twitter.com/darkgreendesk">@darkgreendesk</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/mattias221b">@mattias221b</a> This comes from The Packard, July 8, 1911 <a href="http://t.co/lATasdO4XV">pic.twitter.com/lATasdO4XV</a><br />
— Ian Schoenherr (@ianschoenherr) <a href="https://twitter.com/ianschoenherr/status/578194089826463744">March 18, 2015</a></blockquote>
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I learned with interest that cartoonist Tad Dorgan (TAD), whose "Daffydills" was a popular comic feature in the early years of the 20th century, used "Quick, Watson, the needle" often, as well as variations of it such as "Quick, Watson, the gun!" Dorgan, incidentally, is thought to be the originator of other immortal phrases such as "<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDd8shcLvHI" target="_blank">Yes, we have no bananas</a>" and "See what the boys in the back room will have."<br />
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More embarrassingly, I learned that Dorgan's use of the phrase was no secret, as Julie McKuras of the <a href="http://www.norwegianexplorers.org/" target="_blank">Norwegian Explorers of Minnesota</a> discussed it at length in <a href="https://www.lib.umn.edu/pdf/holmes/v15n1.pdf" target="_blank">the March 2011 issue of the newsletter</a> published by <a href="https://www.lib.umn.edu/scrbm/holmes" target="_blank">the Friends of the Sherlock Holmes Collections</a> at the University of Minnesota. The Minnesota collection includes Dorgan cartoons collected by the late John Bennett Shaw, as well as other early attestations. "The quotes are rampant in magazine articles dating from the period 1910 onward," McKuras writes. (Who knew? Plenty of people, apparently, but not me.)<br />
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But the phrase goes back even earlier — back, apparently, to the operetta "The Red Mill", first staged on Broadway in September 1906, with music by Victor Herbert and libretto by Henry Blossom. (It was loosely adapted for a 1927 film starring Marion Davies, whose brother-in-law George Regas played a minor role in the 1939 "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" in which the Watsonian needle is also mentioned.) <br />
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Wouldn't you know, McKuras is aware of "The Red Mill" too. She reports that it<br />
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starred comedians Fred Stone and David Montgomery as two American vaudevillians. Stone and Montgomery were famous for their performances as the Scarecrow and Tin Man in the 1903 stage production of <i>The Wizard of Oz</i>." </blockquote>
And she quotes an earlier critic:<br />
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Their roles in The Red Mill, as good-for-nothing con men and laze-abouts whose inner sense of entrepreneurship awakens when they are called upon to impersonate Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, set the tone for one of the most popular character types of Broadway theater through the 1940s." </blockquote>
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The Ohio Light Opera produced <a href="http://amzn.to/1Fg0hFD" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">an album of the "Red Mill" music in 2001</a> — apparently on two LP records, which might indeed prompt an urgent call for a needle. Amazon currently stocks it.<br />
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That great Sherlockian Vincent Starrett said in 1932 that he had written to Fred Stone to ask about the origins of the jab about the needle. His letter mentioning that inquiry, addressed to Gray Chandler Briggs, is reproduced in <i>"Dear Starrett —" "Dear Briggs —</i>", edited by John Nieminski and Jon L. Lellenberg for the Baker Street Irregulars History Series (1989). But if Starrett ever received a reply from Stone, it is not known, at least not to me.<br />
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All this evidence seems to demolish my suggestion that "Quick, Watson, the needle" owes something to a commercial slogan popular in the 1940s, "Quick, Henry, the Flit!" Indeed, it begins to seem more likely that it was the other way round — that Watson and the needle were already firmly lodged in the public mind, and helped to make Henry and the Flit so successful.<br />
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"Watson," said he, "if it should ever strike you that I am getting a little over-confident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case than it deserves, kindly whisper `Norbury' in my ear, and I shall be infinitely obliged to you."</blockquote>
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- "The Yellow Face"<br />
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Another Pointed Look at the Needle Reference

"they are as sharp as needles, too" (STUD) Even Sherlock Holmes was wrong once in a while, and clearly I was following in h...

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by Chris Redmond

The Earliest Sherlock Holmes - Star Trek Crossovers

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“some uneasiness at the strange enterprise upon which we were embarking” [SIGN]</div>
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Two of the earliest Sherlock Holmes-Star Trek Crossovers were created before Lt. Commander Data donned a deerstalker. The Intergalactic Etc. Sherlock Bones series is arguably the first Star Trek crossover character (1975), as it predates <i>The Federation Holmes</i> (1978). These stories represent opposite ends of the crossover literature; <i>The Federation Holmes</i> is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, while the Sherlock Bones series was a Star Trek parody.<br />
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In the 22nd Century, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson are recreated on the planet from the original <i>Star Trek</i> series episode “Shore Leave.” Their existence is devised to counter the evil of the previously recreated Professor Moriarty. These stories first appeared in issues of <i>The Holmesian Federation</i>, which first appeared in 1978. Twelve original and one bonus story were collected in <i><a href="http://www.batteredbox.com/SherlockianPastiches/Federation.htm" target="_blank">The Federation Holmes: Casebook Number One: A Baker's Dozen of Sherlock Holmes – Star Trek Parodies</a></i> by Dana Martin Batory. <br />
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The first story in <i>The Federation Holmes</i> features the crew of the Enterprise. Later, they appear only in cameo roles. Quickly Holmes and Watson set up their agency on Memory Alpha. Holmes dives into learning alien cultures and customs; collects his scrapbooks; and resumes publishing scientific papers. Watson adopts the new medical instruments, stashing his medical tricorder, medikit and hypo spray in his Gladstone bag. Some memorable guest stars were Cyrano Jones, Denebian Slime Devils and a mention of Lord <a href="http://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2007/08/episode-06-peter-blau-part-1.html" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Peter Blau</a>.<br />
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The stories are well written, and have a distinct Watsonian flair for painting the scenes that bring a reader into the story. Unlike the original Canon, the stories were written in the third person.<br />
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Before the Holmesian Federation, the Intergalactic Etc. first published a Star Trek Fanzine in 1975. “Sherlock Bones” appeared in the first issue; his stories were a regular feature running in each issue. Due to their popularity, three special collections of the stories were printed: <i>The Adventures of Sherlock Bones #1</i>, <i>The Adventures of Sherlock Bones #2</i>, and <i>Sherlock Bones Strikes Again</i>.<br />
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With titles like “The Clandestine Adventure of the Arcane Tomato” and “From the Reminiscences of Doctor Leonard McCoy”, the stories were tongue in cheek, with Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy putting Nurse Chapel to work as his assistant, Nurse Watson. He created his own network of crewmembers to aid in his investigations, the Medical Unit Irregulars, headed by Ensign Chekov. Together they fought against the evil Professor Spockiarty. Some of the stories borrowed incidents from the Canon and adapted them to adventures onboard the Enterprise.<br />
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As an editor-author of the Intergalactic Etc., it would be difficult for me to objectively review these stories. Rereading them during  the writing this post has proven entertaining as well as nostalgic. They were written during the editors’ years in high school and college, spanning almost a decade. An objective review that <a href="http://www.mrhalliday.com/klhalliday/Zinedex/ContentsS.htm#SherlockBones" target="_blank">appears on Halliday’s Zinedex</a> commented “they've grown on me and now I think they're pretty fun.”<br />
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These fanzines are occasionally available on eBay, but there is a rumor that the editors are considering a re-release. You can <a href="http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Sherlock_Bones" target="_blank">read about The Adventures of Sherlock Bones here</a>.<br />
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This post covered two of the earliest Sherlock Holmes-Star Trek crossovers. Since then, there have been countless stories published or posted to the web. To start learning about more recent crossovers, <a href="https://www.fanfiction.net/Star-Trek-2009-and-Sherlock-Crossovers/4863/7190/" target="_blank">check out Fanfiction.net, a database of fanfiction works</a>. <br />
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These crossovers influenced both universes. Tying Sherlock Holmes into the Star Trek universe was a way to increase the buzz about a canceled series and engage more fans. In those day, fanzines and conventions were the primitive equivalent to current social media.<br />
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When the first story appeared in the first issue in 1975, the series had concluded six years previously, leaving the fans wanting more. The Star Trek fan movement and the fanzines kept the franchise alive, and even influenced the naming the first space shuttle built for atmospheric test flights. At the time when these early stories were written, Star Trek’s fan movement may have influenced the Sherlock Holmes universes less dramatically, but it served as a way to keep the Canon relevant.<br />
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The stories demonstrated that Sherlock Holmes can be part of any place, any time. The influence of Star Trek’s fan movement is more evident today, having laid the groundwork and demonstrated how fans can engage with the universe of Sherlock Holmes, where it is always 1895.<br />
<br /><br /><h4 style="text-align: left;"><b><i>Editor's Note:</i></b></h4><div>Lest we forget, Nicholas Meyer, BSI ("A Fine Morocco Case"), author of <i>The Seven Per-Cent Solution</i>, also directed Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. His memoir, <i><a href="https://amzn.to/3DX41gT" target="_blank">The View From the Bridge: Memories from Star Trek and a Life in Hollywood</a></i>, spans those connections.

You can listen to our two interviews with Meyer in <a href="https://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2015/11/episode-85-nicholas-meyer.html#.YTiyqY5Kjb0" target="_blank">Episode 85: Nicholas Meyer</a> and <a href="https://www.ihearofsherlock.com/2019/10/episode-178-adventure-of-peculiar.html" target="_blank">Episode 178: The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols</a>. <div><br /></div><div> --<div><br />
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The Earliest Sherlock Holmes - Star Trek Crossovers

“some uneasiness at the strange enterprise upon which we were embarking” [SIGN] Two of the earliest Sherlock Holmes-Star Trek Crossov...

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by M. M. M.

Sherlock Holmes - The Origins of a Legend

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"the source and origin" [SIXN] </h4>
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Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper appeared in London around the same time. There is a major difference between them, however, in that, whilst one of them was all too real, the other was fictional.<br />
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However, it often happens that the line between them gets somewhat blurred and some believe that Jack the Ripper was fictional and that Sherlock Holmes was reality.<br />
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The character of Holmes was very much based on a group of real people and, in a new online documentary <b><i>The Man Who Killed Sherlock Holmes</i></b>, the filmmakers set out to chart the origins and the career of the world’s most famous consulting detective.<br />
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Follow him from his gestation in the streets of Edinburgh to his arrival in London, where he and his trusted friend and colleague Dr. John H. Watson would capture the hearts and minds of the Victorian public.<br />
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Indeed, Holmes’s almost superhuman abilities, coupled with his almost uncanny ability to solve even the most complex of cases by observing, deducing and reasoning - often by spotting tiny little clues that the ordinary police had missed - must have seemed to many readers to be the perfect foil for the real-life detectives who at the time were trying to hunt Jack the Ripper down in the streets of East London.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="338" mozallowfullscreen="" src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/122041604?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="600"></iframe> <br />
<a href="https://vimeo.com/122041604">The Sherlock Holmes Documentary - Part One</a> from <a href="https://vimeo.com/thetimechannel">The Time Channel</a> on <a href="https://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
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Arthur Conan Doyle</h3>
Holmes’s creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, was born in Picardy Place, Edinburgh on the 22nd May 1859.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV2iFm0FhMDkHHvHSLm9lyLTuVsna1tAY5srpX6IkdodYaDvO_JomPYPrhPcirVa4A5Tj_ZuWuaa2sylEwVfz-vaMwlGJ-MtMw5clSiZJyoR50mxXcDJ12chf8E_AxHqocyVUA9sBzBgzh/s1600/Charles+Altamont+Doyle+faeries.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjV2iFm0FhMDkHHvHSLm9lyLTuVsna1tAY5srpX6IkdodYaDvO_JomPYPrhPcirVa4A5Tj_ZuWuaa2sylEwVfz-vaMwlGJ-MtMw5clSiZJyoR50mxXcDJ12chf8E_AxHqocyVUA9sBzBgzh/s1600/Charles+Altamont+Doyle+faeries.jpg" width="213" /></a>His father, Charles Altamont Doyle, was a gifted artist who created some wonderfully fantastical illustrations that had an almost ethereal air about them.<br />
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He created scenes that showed fairies and other supernatural creatures swirling around the tower and spire of St. Giles’s Cathedral in Edinburgh. Indeed,  the seeds of Conan Doyle’s later interest in spiritualism, fairies and the paranormal were, most likely, sown at his father’s knee.<br />
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Later, when Conan Doyle was beginning to write his Sherlock Holmes stories, he would ask his father to provide the illustrations for the early works, and Charles, evidently, recognized his own traits in the character of his son’s creations as he drew the detective, more or less, as a mirror image of himself.<br />
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A Chronic Alcoholic</h3>
However, Charles was also a chronic alcoholic and Arthur’s childhood was blighted by his father’s drinking. Conan Doyle’s mother, Mary, would often have to carry her comatose husband to his bed, and on several occasions Charles would  go so far as to sell his own clothing and various household possessions in order to raise the money to buy alcohol.<br />
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Throughout his younger days, the family were forced to move frequently as Charles’s condition, and the family’s finances, took several downward spirals.</div>
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How Charles Influenced Holmes</h3>
Again, these childhood experiences firmly embedded themselves in young Arthur’s memory and they would re-surface years later in both the character of Sherlock Holmes and in his adventures. Holmes’s famous, or infamous, addiction to cocaine, for example, is very much based on his father’s “habit.” Drunkenness, often accompanied by violence, is a recurrent theme in the adventures of Holmes and Watson,  whilst the character of the alcoholic husband  crops up time and time again in the stories.</div>
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Conan Doyle was fortunate, however, in that his mother struggled to bring some semblance of normality to the family home and would do all that she could to keep young Arthur away from the destabilizing effect of his father’s drinking.<br />
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Childhood Tales of Chivalry / Sent Away</h3>
She took solace in medieval tales of chivalry and would regale her children with epic stories of the adventures of bold knights riding bravely to  the rescue of distressed damsels.<br />
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The young Conan Doyle absorbed these tales with enthusiasm and they too lodged in his memory from where they would later resurface to influence him, both professionally and personally. Indeed, the adult Conan Doyle’s chivalry, together with his willingness to take up the cudgel on behalf of the underdog, were legendary and both of these traits were, doubtless, influenced by the tales he had absorbed from his mother throughout his childhood years.<br />
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However, his mother was also determined that her husband's drinking would have as little effect as possible on her children, and to that end, when Arthur was nine, several uncles paid for him to be sent to the Jesuit preparatory school Hodder Place in England, and from here he progressed to the main Jesuit college, Stonyhurst.<br />
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The Return of Conan Doyle</h3>
He returned to Edinburgh in 1876 and enrolled at the University of Edinburgh Medical School where he began writing short stories. As is the case with many writer,  he had several rejections from various magazines until, in  September 1879, his first story,The Mystery of Sasassa Valley, a story set in South Africa, was published in Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal.<br />
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However, Conan Doyle wasn’t particularly enamored by the world of academia (he had hated Stonyhurst and was little more enthused by University), so he decided to embark upon an adventure that would, by his own admission, turn him into a big strapping man.<br />
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We will follow him on that adventure on our next installment of the Sherlock Holmes Documentary.<br />
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[<i><b>Editor's note</b>: the above was adapted from <a href="http://www.jack-the-ripper-tour.com/generalnews/sherlock-holmes-the-beginnings" target="_blank">Jack the Ripper Tour</a>, where it was originally posted</i>.]<br />
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Sherlock Holmes - The Origins of a Legend

"the source and origin" [SIXN] Sherlock Holmes and Jack the Ripper appeared in London around the same time. There is a majo...

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by Scott Monty

Sharp Observations About That Needle

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"And, no doubt, to free the country from a pest?" [MAZA]</h4>
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What four-word sentence is every bit as spurious as "Elementary, my dear Watson" and twenty times as annoying?</div>
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"Quick, Watson, the needle!" of course. Neither phrase appears anywhere in the Sherlockian canon, but both are the stuff of popular imagination and bad television scripts. In 1961, writing in <i><a href="http://bakerstreetjournal.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">The Baker Street Journal</a></i>, Ruth Berman denounced the needle phrase   in verse. She wrote in part:</div>
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Irregulars explode in wrath,<br />They do not stop to wheedle,<br />When folks who think they're quoting Holmes<br />Cry, "Quick, Watson! the needle."</blockquote>
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The origins of the "Elementary" line are fodder for another day (since I understand that a prominent Sherlockian researcher has found an earlier source for it than P. G. Wodehouse's 1915 novel <a href="http://amzn.to/1O4mrgl" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"><i>Psmith, Journalist</i>)</a>. But what can definitely be said about   the embarrassing reminder that Holmes was briefly a drug user, with the implication that he was enabled by his physician-friend? </div>
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We do know that it resembles a line from the greatest Sherlock Holmes film ever made, <i>The Hound of the Baskervilles</i> from 1939 starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Ernest Pascal, an English-American novelist and screenwriter who was responsible for   the scripts of about 30 films between 1926 and 1943, apparently created the words that Rathbone utters in the closing scene: "Oh, Watson, the needle!" But at least there is no demeaning — and ungrammatical — "Quick."</div>
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However, within a few years the "Quick, Watson" version was current. In a volume of anecdote and reminiscence published in 1946, <i><a href="http://amzn.to/1MImc9h" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">From the Top of the Stairs</a></i>, Gretchen Finletter wrote this — about actor William Gillette, rather than Basil Rathbone:<br />
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"To shiver   over Sherlock Holmes in his silk dressing gown when he cried, 'Quick, Watson, the needle!' bared his arm and stuck the hypodermic into the upper wrist, and then gazed out over the audience with that, oh, so tired look — that was a moment of mature experience   in one's life. It made the Peter Pan goings on mere childish falderal." </blockquote>
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Well, she was wrong. The line about the needle does not appear in William Gillette's play, although the needle itself does. It's quite possible that Finletter's fallible memory created the misquotation, earning the scorn of Sherlockians throughout generations   to come. Certainly she was in error in imagining that Gillette (who died in 1937) ever uttered it.</div>
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She may also have been influenced by one of the earliest and greatest slogan campaigns in the history of American advertising, though it had nothing to do with Sherlock Holmes or needles. From 1928 to 1945, the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey promoted   its mineral oil insecticide, Flit, with a series of magazine advertisements. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flit" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a> sums up the advertising campaign: "The ads typically showed people threatened by whimsical, menacing insect-like creatures."</div>
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The slogan, which became a popular catch-phrase across the United States, was "Quick, Henry, the Flit!" Wikipedia again: "It spawned a song and was used as a punch line for comedians such as Fred Allen and Jack Benny." Almost certainly, it spawned an annoying   catch-phrase for Sherlock Holmes as well.</div>
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And those whimsical insects? They were drawn by a young cartoonist and commercial artist named Theodor Geisel. You may know him as Dr. Seuss.<br />
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