William Gillette, America's Sherlock Holmes

William Gillette is best-remembered today as the living personification of Sherlock Holmes, but he was much more than that. He was one of the nineteenth century’s greatest stars, among its most successful actors and playwrights. In a career spanning six decades, he was one of the best-known celebrities in the Western world, a towering figure in an age of towering figures. Among his friends were Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Theodore Roosevelt, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Thomas Nast and Ma...