Detective work

Re Susan King’s “Retrospective Is Elementary” (June 27): No mention was made of American actor William Gillette (1853-1937), who wrote the first Sherlock Holmes play for the stage and is credited with adorning Holmes with the deerstalker hat, the Inverness cape and the calabash pipe.

Gillette created the “look” of Holmes, much to the delight of Arthur Conan Doyle, when the two met in the summer of 1899. Indeed, it is Gillette, not Doyle, who gave the detective his famous expression: “Elementary, my dear Watson.”

John-Frederick Jones

Costa Mesa