Adaptations
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself wrote a stage play based on The Speckled Band. In December 1909, Conan Doyle had leased the Adelphi Theatre in the Strand for a production of his elaborate drama The House of Temperley. The play was not a smashing success. When King Edward VII died suddenly the following spring, the West End theatres closed in mourning. Temperley was already losing money weekly; the closing spelled its demise. Conan Doyle had refused an earlier offer to sublet the playhouse to a musical comedy. With a ruinously expensive theatre on his hands, Conan Doyle decided to play "a bold and energetic game." The American actor William Gillette had achieved considerable success portraying the famous detective in the stageplay Sherlock Holmes, which was based on an earlier Conan Doyle script. Conan Doyle was "charmed with the play, the acting, and the pecuniary result," and determined to cash in on its popularity. He wrote his own play in what he later referred to as "record time," and so saved the situation.
Conan Doyle wrote:
"I shut myself up and devoted my whole mind to making a sensational Sherlock Holmes drama. I wrote it in a week and called it 'The Speckled Band' after the short story of that name. I do not think I exaggerate if I say that within a fortnight of the one play shutting down I had a company working upon the rehearsals of a second one, which had been written in the interval. It was a considerable success."
The Speckled Band was Arthur Conan Doyle's third stageplay and was the second Holmes dramatization. It was based with some modifications on the short story of the same name which, according to Adrian Conan Doyle, was his father's favorite Sherlock Holmes tale.
Conan Doyle engaged the estimable H. A. Saintsbury, who had toured with the Gillette company, to portray Sherlock Holmes; Lyn Harding, a talented character actor of leering villains, to play Dr. Rylott (which was spelled "Roylott" in the original short story); Claude King to play Doctor Watson; and a live snake as the title character. On June 4th, 1910, less than a month after the other play's closing, the Adelphi's lights again kindled and Sherlock Holmes walked the stage.
Holmes and Watson worked their usual magic on the audiences; but this time they were nearly overshadowed by the burly villain, Dr. Grimesby Rylott, who petted his snake in its wicker basket while the Hindu servant played eerie music on a pipe. Even Conan Doyle's bow was upstaged when Lyn Harding appeared at curtain call with the snake draped around his neck.
"Lyn Harding, as the half-epileptic and wholly formidable Doctor Grimesby Rylott, was most masterful, while Saintsbury as Sherlock Holmes was also very good. Before the end of the run, I had cleared off all that I had lost upon the other play, and I had created a permanent property of some value. It became a stock piece and is even now touring the country."
The Speckled Band ran for 169 performances at the Adelphi Theatre before transferring to the Globe on August 8th. The play enjoyed a successful tour in England, with two touring-companies on the road by the end of August, while the New York presentation was marred by clumsy production.
Conan Doyle's financial difficulties were at an end, yet there were still problems to be resolved with the production. While the human cast was excellent, the live snake proved to be a rather poor performer.
"We had a fine rock boa to play the title-rôle, a snake which was the pride of my heart, so one can imagine my disgust when I saw that one critic ended his disparaging review by the words, 'The crisis of the play was produced by the appearance of a palpably artificial serpent.' I was inclined to offer him a goodly sum if he would undertake to go to bed with it. The real fault of the play was that in trying to give Holmes a worthy antagonist I overdid it and produced a more interesting personality in the villain. The terrible ending was also against it."
However, it was a considerable success and saved a difficult -- almost a desperate -- situation. Another criticism of the play is that the form of the Sherlock Holmes short stories is missing. Holmes appears late in the narrative, while the ending is missing Holmes' explanations of how he came to his deductions -- considered de rigueur among Holmes aficionados.
The production moved to New York. There was a London revival of this play in 1921.
The short story was also adapted for a 1923 film starring Eille Norwood as Holmes and a 1931 film starring Raymond Massey as the detective. In 1958, Massey's daughter, Anna Massey, married another actor who famously played Holmes: Jeremy Brett.
A half-hour television adaptation starring Alan Napier and Melville Cooper was broadcast in 1949.
The pilot episode of the BBC's 1964-1965 series Sherlock Holmes was a new version of "The Speckled Band", airing in May 1964. It was written by Giles Cooper, directed by Robin Midgley, and starred Douglas Wilmer as Holmes and Nigel Stock as Watson.
"The Speckled Band" was the eighth episode of the first series of Holmes adaptations starring Jeremy Brett.
The 1944 film The Spider Woman is based on several Holmes stories, among them "The Speckled Band."
"The Speckled Band" was adapted as part of the anime series, Sherlock Hound. In this version, Moriarty poses as Roylott to steal Helen's money, and Hound gets involved when his motorcar breaks down and must stay at their home for the night.
The BBC series Sherlock episode "A Scandal in Belgravia" made reference to the book with a case, briefly seen, but later mentioned as "the Speckled Blonde" as the murder victim was a blonde woman whose corpse was observed to have numerous punctures which Watson describes as speckles.
Read more about this topic: The Adventure Of The Speckled Band