The answer to last week’s trivia question was more well known than I had expected. Elementary, my dear Watson, was never spoken by Sherlock Holmes in any of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s books. Holmes did say the words elementary and my dear Watson frequently. There are a couple of different theories of where the phrase actually came from. The first recorded use of the phrase in a written work was by P.G. Wodehouse in 1909 in a serial that later became the novel, PSMITH, JOURNALIST, a book was not even about Sherlock Holmes. Some people say it was first spoken by stage actor, William Gillette in 1899 in the stage production, “Sherlock Holmes: A Drama In Four Acts”. However, they used a slight variation of the phrase. The line in the play reads, “Elementary, my dear fellow! Ho! (*Sneer) Elementary“. The actor, Clive Brook, used the exact phrase in a 1929 film, “The Return of Sherlock Holmes”. This is probably the reason we associate that phrase with Sherlock Holmes.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 20:39:49 +0000
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