Last Years and Farewell Tour
Gillette announced his retirement many times throughout his career, despite not actually accomplishing this until his death. The first announced retirement took place after the start of the 20th century, after he purchased the boat Aunt Polly which was 144 feet (44 m) in length and weighed 200 tons.
Sherlock Holmes was Gillette's foremost production with 1,300 performances (in 1899–1901, 1905, 1906, 1910, 1915, 1923, and 1929–1932). While performing on other tours, he was always forced by popular demand to include at least one extra performance of Sherlock Holmes. In 1929, at the age of 76, Gillette started the farewell tour of Sherlock Holmes, in Springfield, Massachusetts. Scheduled for two seasons, it was eventually extended into 1932. The first run of the tour included in the cast Theatre Guild actress Peg Entwistle as Gillette's female lead. Entwistle was the tragic young actress who committed suicide by jumping from the Hollywoodland sign in 1932.
In the New Amsterdam Theater of New York, on November 25, 1929, a great ceremony took place. Gillette received a signature book, autographed by 60 different world eminences. There, in his speech, Arthur Conan Doyle stated: "I consider the production a personal gratification ... My only complaint is that you made the poor hero of the anemic printed page a very limp object as compared with the glamour of your own personality which you infuse into his stage presentment". Former President Calvin Coolidge commented that the production was a "public service". Booth Tarkington told him, "I would rather see you play Sherlock Holmes than be a child again on Christmas morning."
Gillette's last appearance on stage was in Austin Strong's Three Wise Fools in 1936.
Read more about this topic: William Gillette
Famous quotes containing the words years, farewell and/or tour:
“[He said] “Mary, don’t be a fool, nobody’s asked you to speak publicly in seventy years and they’re not going to start now.””
—Mary Boyda (b. 1923)
“The poplars are felled, farewell to the shade
And the whispering sound of the cool colonnade,”
—William Cowper (1731–1800)
“Left Washington, September 6, on a tour through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Virginia.... Absent nineteen days. Received every where heartily. The country is again one and united! I am very happy to be able to feel that the course taken has turned out so well.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)