Sherlockian Actors William Shatner & Louis Hector Together (1958)

“… all the actors in the tragedy …”

– The Adventure of the Carddboard Box (CARD)

We are of the opinion that actor Louis Hector doesn’t get enough credit for being the first to portray Sherlock Holmes on televison or for his earlier portrayals of Holmes on the radio. Only one of the nearly 80 radio broadcasts survive today and neither of his two television appearances as Holmes are known, so it makes sense that many Sherlockians don’t rattle off of his name when asked about Sherlockian actors. At the time of our Faces of Holmes post on Hector, we were under the impression that only one of his other television appearancees had survived – an 1952 episode of Tales of Tomorrow where he portrayed Dr. Bache, the head of a hospital, in The Miraculus Serum.

So we were quite pleased when we came acros this clip of the July 16, 1958 broadcast of Kraft Theatre. The drama is called The Man Who Didn’t Fly and Hector has a small role as Charles Wade (beginning at the 0:30 mark of the video. You may also recognize a young William Shatner, years before he would get a small role in a science fiction series / franchise.  For our purposes here, we like to recall Shatner as Stapleton in the Stewart Granger HOUN adaptation.

This was the 40th episode of the 11th season of Kraft Theatre. For those that would like more information about this episode, we refer you to it’s IMDB entry.

We’ll continue to share snippets about Louis Hector here, when we come across them, as his two tries as Holmes on televison were in The Adventure of the Three Garridebs. In the meantime, I hope that Shatner kid found some success as an a actor…..