Someone asked me recently if I was a “Sherlock Holmes fan.”
I was astonished because I thought they knew me better than that!
But it reminded me that maybe I don’t sound this particular trumpet loudly enough, and/or often enough.
So please allow me to tell the story of “Sherlock Holmes and Me.” Chronologically, no less!
Here’s where it begins for me, sometime in the early 1970s — I catch the very end of WOMAN IN GREEN on Saturday afternoon TV. I am instantly taken by the character of Holmes, though unaware that this story was “extracanonical.” A quick trip to my local library will sort that out!
Almost before I know it, I am obsessed… !
It’s 1981 and I am a mere slip of a lad in junior college, but when asked to write a play for the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society to perform at the annual conference, I immediately respond with an adaptation of “The Blue Carbuncle.”
I wish I had photos of that performance! But alas. Back there in the Stone Age we didn’t all have cameras in our pockets at all times.
Off to graduate school in Illinois in 1983 — and into my first official BSI Scion: The Occupants of the Empty House.
I am trained in the ways of the Force by masters Gordon Speck, Bill Cochran, and Joe Eckrich. They encourage my writing and drawing to an extraordinary degree — I might never have gone further with my Sherlockian enthusiasm if not for them.
1985–
My friends in grad school hustle together a production of the fine play by Alden Nowling and Walter Learning, The Incredible Murder of Cardinal Tosca, with — I will be forever grateful — your humble servant as Sherlock Holmes. This is cracking good fun all around and it fills me with the desire to keep playing Holmes forever.
Crouched over an IBM Selectric on the floor of my girlfriend’s apartment — possibly looking a bit like Schroeder at his piano — I write the first version of my play Holmes & Watson, which takes its inspiration from “The Empty House” and presumes to offer “what really happened.”
I can’t remember when I receive my first invitation to a BSI dinner! But I know it is in the late 80s because …
… one of those weekends I accidentally end up having breakfast (seated at the Algonquin Round Table!) with Isaac Asimov (!), who is kind enough to take my script and will later send me this wonderful postcard. Naturally I will use this quote on every edition (or mention!) of Holmes & Watson.
My script finds its way into the hands of Jeremy Brett, through no doing of my own. That lovely man writes me a postcard I will always treasure.
He closes with the remark: “Still trying to capture him. Never will!”
I send Holmes & Watson out into the world and it is picked up by, of all places, my alma mater: the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Proclaimed the winner of the Ruby Lloyd Apsey Play Search, UAB produces it in the spring of 1989 with Jack Cannon as Holmes and Alan Gardner as Watson.
The production is a huge success — packing the house when we offered, as a bonus, a talk from Phil Shreffler, at the time the editor of The Baker Street Journal.
One of the people who sees Holmes & Watson in Birmingham is NY producer Bernard Block, who is so delighted with it all that he buys the sets, props, and costumes (I like to say “lock, stock, and deerstalker”) with the intent of taking it all to New York. He believes in the show — and me — enough to mount a limited engagement off-Broadway, with the playwright as Holmes, beginning in January 1990.
Alan Gardner reprises his role as Watson and together we have the adventure of a lifetime. Plenty of things go wrong onstage (don’t they always?) but we make it through somehow and play to packed houses for sixteen performances.
A happy bonus of the experience is that we take aboard a volunteer to help run the show: Paul Singleton. In some ways this is the best part of the experience for me because Paul will remain one of my dearest friends ever after.
The decision is made to “take the show uptown,” which means to engage a theatre for an open run with a bigger budget and everything. Then we learn The Secret of Sherlock Holmes is coming to NYC — with Jeremy Brett and Edward Hardwicke — so we chicken out. Imagine our dismay when we learn, long after our window of advantage has closed, that Secret of Sherlock Holmes is not coming to NYC after all.
I return to Birmingham to find my phone ringing. It’s my agent asking if I would like (!!!) to pitch stories for Star Trek: the Next Generation. Soon I am at Paramount talking with the writers and producer of this, my favorite TV series at the time — which has recently established that the android Data sometimes cosplays Sherlock Holmes in the Enterprise holodeck.
One of the dozens of story ideas I pitch bounces back because the producers are under the impression that the Conan Doyle Estate does not like the Data/Sherlock idea. Au contraire, I assure them with the help of Jon Lellenberg, who is at the time the Executor of American Rights for the stories.
That magical door re-opened, the showrunners hear and like my pitch for what will ultimately become the episode “Ship in a Bottle,” in which Holodeck Moriarty threatens to become a Real Boy. (A real bad boy.)
By the time the final script is shot there is so little of my original idea left that I do not receive story credit (boo) … the writing credit goes, as it should, to that season’s head writer, René Echevarria.
But still. Star Trek gets another Moriarty story thanks to me.
Circa 1994, I join what may be my “Scion 1.5.” (Are they recognized as an official Scion?) The Hounds of the Internet message board!
I find them to be a remarkably active and thoughtful group, and I am proud to say I was a member of the longest-established online group for “the discussion of Sherlock Holmes and kindred topics.”
The grandest treat for me in the Hounds is in meeting — and becoming friends forever — with Karen Wilson.
Late 90s … Some of my cartoons are published in The Baker Street Journal, official journal of the Baker Street Irregulars.
Most of these will be headed “From the Doctor’s Diary” and are silly versions of comments made by Watson in his written accounts.
This is one of my favorites.
I join my second official Scion: the Genius Loci of Birmingham.
Fool that I am, I volunteer to be the editor of the Genius Loci monthly newsletter, “The Freemen’s Crier.”
I write articles and reflections on each story, then retire after editing sixty issues, because by then I have written about every story in the Canon.
My back copies of the “Crier” have been lost in the turmoil of many house moves. I wonder if any still exist…?
The Alabama Humanities Alliance seeks me out for their “Road Scholars” program, sending speakers out all over the state of Alabama to talk about a wide variety of topics. I am proud and happy to be “the Sherlock Holmes guy,” talking about Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes anywhere and everywhere.
Imagine! Getting paid to talk about Sherlock Holmes!
Holmes & Watson is now in print and gaining fans, I’m happy to say, literally around the world. The play is produced in theatres large and small with varying results… it turns out that it’s a more difficult play to produce and perform than I had thought.
But when the Library Theatre in Hoover, Alabama asks me to produce a play for them, I suggest we make a big deal of the Tenth Anniversary of Holmes & Watson with a reunion of the off-Broadway cast. Alan and I perform the show for a week of packed houses, this time getting to run wild on Kel Laeger‘s extraordinary 221b set. Click the image below to see it in all its glory:
Summer 2012 and ffg.
I am invited to speak — and to offer the Toast to the Literary Agent — at the gathering A Scintillation of Scions. I am delighted to be asked back repeatedly; apparently I did not wear out my welcome.
I am invited as a Panelist for Sherlock Seattle 2013 and seated among giants: My fellow panelists were Laurie R. King and Leslie S. Klinger!
After watching several Sherlockian films, my wife (the brilliant media psychologist Dr. Karen Shackleford) asks a reasonable question: “Why can Sherlock be a mouse, a dog, or a robot — but can’t be a woman?”
This sets me on the path of writing a webseries with a female “Holmes” and a female “Watson,” featuring updated versions of Canonical Tales.
The pilot is called “Silver Blade” (because somebody dies after apparently having their hand cut off with a circular saw) and in 2015 it gets a professional production.
The entire pilot episode can be watched from here! It stars my multi-talented frequent-partner-in-crime Alana Jordan, the brilliant Gia Mora, and the dauntless Vince Cusimano. It is ingeniously designed and artfully directed by my best friend of all time, Hollywood filmmaker David Duncan!
Herlock has its World Premiere at the 2015 221bcon!
The wonderful reception the show receives inspires and instigates a long relationship with that fan gathering, and with its untiring creator, Heather Holloway.
After this, the film will be seen online by about 10,000 people. My only regret is that none of us involved in creating this work know enough about promotion and marketing to make the series “fly.” A fatal error.
Early 2018. I am invited to write the chapter “If Sherlock Holmes Was in Service” for the volume Sherlock Holmes Is Like: Sixty Comparisons for an Incomparable Character edited by Chris Redmond.
This feels like closure to me since Chris Redmond’s books were among the very first Sherlockian scholarship I ever collected.
In my chapter I playfully consider the similarities between Sherlock Holmes and Reginald Jeeves. Their timelines overlap at just the right way; you don’t suppose…?
I am interviewed on the outstanding podcast “I Hear of Sherlock Everywhere,” for their episode 152 which is released on September 15th, 2018. The hosts are my great friends Scott Monty and Burt Wolder. It is almost certainly the most fun I’ve ever had talking about myself, thanks to these extraordinarily genial hosts.
Now I can invite you to visit their page about this episode, and/or listen to the episode right here:
A Scintillation of Scions moves online during the pandemic, giving me a chance in 2021 to offer a talk by video, which is frankly where I’m most comfortable because I can distract the audience with graphics and special effects.
This is a few minutes of whimsy and not to be taken seriously.
January 2022 —
At this year’s BSI dinner good old Paul Singleton introduces me to one of my heroes, the world-famous playwright Ken Ludwig!
I am astonished to learn that he is not only aware of Holmes & Watson but saw the off-Broadway production and remembers it with great fondness!
He autographs my copy of his play Baskerville with these words:
“For Lee Shackleford, with joy in the theatre and admiration — indeed adulation — for “Holmes & Watson” and all your body of work. Here’s to a long-time friendship.”
Spring 2022–
I am invited to submit a story for the Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson: Medical Mysteries (Volume One), edited by Derrick Belanger, Brian Belanger, and Ed Chan, MD.
My story is called “The Adventure of the True Nature of Things.” It may shock some readers! We shall see.
THEN! I am invited to submit a piece for the Belanger Books volume “Writing Holmes!” My article “We Just Want it to Never End” appears in the book released in January 2023.
Both books are jam-packed with outstanding content created by some of the Sherlockiana’s best and brightest! I am proud to be in such company.
January 2023 —
At the William Gillette Memorial Luncheon (part of the annual BSI Sherlock Holmes Birthday Celebration Weekend in New York City) I portray Holmes in William Gillette’s silly short play, “The Painful Predicament of Sherlock Holmes,” with Tiffany Knight as the charming source of the predicament and Greg Oliver Bodine as the loyal lad Billie.
It is all great fun despite the sad circumstance that I am a last-minute substitute for Paul Singleton, temporarily down with COVID.
One happy side-effect of this performance is that it urges Howard Ostrom, keeper of the extraordinary website Sherlock Holmes on Screens (which has expanded to include stage appearances), to update my photos in that amazing database:
Just when I think my Sherlockian life can’t get much better, my dream of more than thirty years is realized. At the 2023 BSI Dinner, Michael Kean (the current “Wiggins”) calls me up to the stage to receive my official Investiture in the Baker Street Irregulars. The reaction of those assembled is worth the wait of decades!
Every person invested in the BSI is given a name from the Canon (the original 60 Sherlock Holmes stories). I have often wondered what mine might be … and am delighted by my investiture as “Woodman’s Lee.” It acknowledges my first name, which means “peaceful” — a wonderful irony because Woodman’s Lee is the site of an exceptionally violent crime in the story “The Adventure of Black Peter.”
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