A week ago, I opened up Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s first (1887)
Sherlock Holmes full length novel, titled: A Study in Scarlet. The first half of the novel was what we have
come to expect from Sherlock Holmes detective stories. The plot is simple,
Scotland Yard’s crack detectives can’t seem to figure out a murder. They turn
to Holmes for help. By mid-book Holmes has figured out that it is a revenge
murder, and who the killer is, but “revenging what” remains unclear.
It is then that Doyle’s book moves into flashback, and a
dramatic shift it is. Gone is London,
Scotland Yard and in fact England itself. The set has moved a few decades back, and to the western U.S., where a pioneer man named John Ferrier and his daughter
Lucy, have been rescued from death in the desert by Brigham Young who is leading
the mass migration of Mormons to what will become Salt Lake City.
The author then begins what can best be described as a
unthrottled attack on the Mormon Church, particularly on the subject of
polygamy.
When Lucy grows up, she falls in love with a young man
named Jefferson Hope. Problem is, Hope is not a Mormon. Church leaders have
decided Lucy will go into an arranged marriage with one of their own. Hope, Ferrier and Lucy will flee in the
middle of the night, and when church leaders discover them missing, they send a
party to capture them. Two days later, while Hope is away from camp hunting, the
Mormon posse will find the camp, kill Ferrier and return the girl to Salt Lake
City where she is forced into marriage. She will die a month later, broken
hearted. Hope will vow revenge, which brings us back to London many years later.
The book displays an amazing versatility in writing by
Doyle, who seamlessly switches from London-speak, to American pioneer
western-speak. Impressive.
As I often do, I decided to watch a couple of the several
movies based on this book. The first was
actually an animation (1983) with Peter O’Toole providing the voice of Sherlock
Holmes. It was fun, however it made one big change in the script – while it
kept the love-revenge theme, it totally eliminated all mention of the Mormon Church.
1933 Black/White Movie Version
Script writers of the second movie (1933) I watched, starring
Reginald Owen and Anna May Wong, took even more liberties. In fact, aside from
the title, the “based on” credit to the author, and a couple of the clues,
nothing, absolutely nothing, about the movie plot has anything at all to do
with the book plot. In the movie, the
“revenge” is based on greed relating to a smuggled Chinese imperial jewel. LOL
Recommendation: Book, definitely. Animated Version, maybe - it is sort of fun, 1933 Movie Version, No.
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