Three silent films – A Scandal in Bohemia, The Golden Pince-Nez and The Final Problem – have been painstakingly restored by the British Film Institute. They were shown earlier this year in Sheffield and Scarborough, and they star Eille Norwood (who always insisted that his first name be pronounced ‘Eye-ly’). Eille Norwood was, in fact, the stage name of Anthony Edward Brett; a name adopted to memorialise a former girlfriend named Eileen, and the south London suburb where he lived. He was the son of a wine merchant who plied his trade down by the River Ouse and, after Pocklington Grammar School and St John’s College, Cambridge, he spent two decades treading the boards before finally making a move into films. He certainly looked good on the screen, with his strong nose and intense, intelligent eyes.
It was Stoll Pictures, Britain’s leading movie company, which in 1921 decided to make a series of Sherlock Holmes films. The famous sleuth was already well known to picture house audiences, but director Maurice Elvey was mightily impressed with his new leading man, as he told the Leicester Chronicle on 30 October 1920: “Eille Norwood has proved himself a screen actor of the first order,” he told the press. “I cannot think of anyone better suited to the part than him.”
Stoll, Sherlock and stirring drama
Stoll would produce an astonishing 45 Holmes short films and a couple of full-length features over the next three years, and Norwood would star in all of them. He still holds the record for portraying the great detective on the big screen more than any other actor. His work even received the approval of the great detective’s creator: “His wonderful impersonation of Holmes has amazed me,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle announced, as the series began.
The last of the Stoll films – a feature-length version of The Sign of Four – would also be Eille Norwood’s final appearance on the silver screen. It told the story of an escaped convict searching for both a stolen treasure chest and the men who stole it. The Daily Express called it “the finest British film thrill on record” and it was certainly popular in Yorkshire. In Leeds, where it was showing at the recently opened Scala cinema on Albion Place, it was adjudged “a first-class mystery story and a stirring drama of action.” (Yorkshire Post, 30 October 1923)
And, as the Stoll series came to an end, Norwood performed his most famous role one last time, appearing in a new play called The Return of Sherlock Holmes, which combined elements from several old stories. The play had melodrama, action, humour and even romantic interest, and it included incidental music composed by its leading man. When it opened in London in October 1923, The Stage (11 October 1923) praised Norwood’s “admirable acting” and the Daily Telegraph noted that he was “wildly applauded at the end of each act.”
This success could have but one conclusion: he was signed up for a mammoth tour of the provinces, which would be no small undertaking for a man already well into his sixties.
Dearly beloved brethren
The Holmes play reached Hull’s Grand Theatre in March of the following year. Norwood had last visited the city during the Boer War and now he was proclaimed “the world-famous picture artist”. The Hull Daily Mail, a local newspaper praised his “perfect presentation”. “No one could be more saturnine, more confident, or more amusingly cynical,” it said.
In Huddersfield, a week later, Norwood received what a local newspaper described as a “rousing reception” at the Theatre Royal, adding, “Mr Norwood plays the imperturbable cunning detective very skilfully”. And in Halifax, the following month, he was said to have received “a most enthusiastic reception … and deserved it,” for his Holmes was “presented with an incisiveness which carried conviction, and for three hours Sir Conan Doyle’s fictional hero was almost a reality to the onlookers.” (Halifax Evening Courier, 29 April 1924)
At the end of that performance, Norwood had been urged to make a speech from the edge of the stage and was only too happy to oblige. He was a Yorkshireman, he told his delighted audience, and he therefore felt that he should address them not as “Ladies and Gentlemen,” but as “Dearly beloved brethren.”
Hull, Halifax… and Harrogate
Nowhere had given him a warmer welcome than Halifax had, he went on, and no town he’d visited had been anywhere near as sweet. He then turned to the old beggar’s litany – “From Hell, Hull and Halifax, may the Good Lord deliver us.” In truth, he said, he considered that rather overdone, for he had been to Hull during this very tour, and to Huddersfield as well, and he had in both places met with great success.
There was one final ‘H’ for Norwood. In August 1924, he performed at the Opera House in Harrogate. “Eille Norwood gets right inside the part of Sherlock Holmes,” the town’s newspaper, the Advertiser informed its readers, “and carries on the interest of this fictional detective to the full.” But that would be the last the Yorkshire stage ever saw of him.
He continued to appear in the West End, and then, in a move as dramatic as any he had made as an actor, he became a crossword-setter for the Daily Express. Although he hadn’t played the part for several years, the newspaper still felt able to bill him as “Sherlock Holmes of the stage and screen.” Some of his clues certainly harked back to those days: “To whom Sherlock Holmes owes his life” was one, “Holmes and Watson often went for one on the moors” another. (The solutions were, respectively, ‘Doyle’ and ‘Spin’.)
Eille Norwood set 2000 crosswords in total, but the start of the second world war brought an end to that. He died on Christmas Eve 1948, aged 87, at Farnham, Surrey, his Yorkshire days a distant, but surely happy memory.
Friends of Bylines Network
There has never been a greater need for grassroots journalism that investigates the stories that really matter, holds power to account and champions the voices of everyday citizens. We are proudly powered by volunteers but what we do isn’t free.
STAND WITH US for independent, citizen-led journalism that makes democracy stronger, and you will even get some exclusive benefits.
