Gillette, William

Gillette, William (1855–1937), actor and playwright. The lean, haughtily handsome stage star with vivid blue eyes and an aquiline nose was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of a United States senator. He studied at Yale, Harvard, and the Massachusetts Fine Arts Institute and made his professional debut as Guzman in Faint Heart Ne'er Won Fair Lady (1875) in Boston. Gillette performed numerous supporting roles at the Boston Museum before making his New York bow as the Prosecuting Attorney in The Gilded Age (1877). In 1881 he appeared in the title role of his own play, The Professor, then toured in Young Mrs. Winthrop and played briefly in his own Digby's Secretary (1884). Three major successes followed: as the comic newspaperman Thomas Beene in his own Civil War drama, Held by the Enemy (1886); the perennial liar Augustus Billings in Too Much Johnson (1894); and the Northern spy Captain Thorne in Secret Service (1896). Gillette's greatest success came in the title role of Sherlock Holmes (1899), which he adapted from Conan Doyle's famous stories. One critic wrote that the actor, famous for his “scarce gesture and staccato sentence,” “looks the part and carries it in his accustomed nonchalant and pictorially effective way.” He scored again in the title role of Barrie's The Admirable Crichton (1903), then spent most of his later career reviving his earlier successes. Yet he shone as millionaire Henry Wilton in A Successful Calamity (1917) and as Mr. Dearth in Barrie's fantasy Dear Brutus (1918). Of this last performance John Corbin wrote in the Times that Gillette “has never been more humanly gracious and delicately real,” while Helen Hayes, who was in the play, recalled his “silken quality,” his “felicitous combination of grain and polish” and added, “I was never again to see such timing as this man had.” Among the many other plays that Gillette wrote were such adaptations as Esmeralda (1881) with F. H. Burnett, She (1887), All the Comforts of Home (1890), Mr. Wilkinson's Widows (1891), and Settled out of Court (1892). Biography: Sherlock Holmes and Much More, Doris E. Cook, 1970.