Blog

JOIN THE PETE GEEKS IN CHICAGO!
Friday, May 1st, 10-12: Glen Whelan and Giacomo Penzo from Peterson will give a presentation on the evolution of bowl-turning at the factory.
Friday, May 1st, 2-3pm: Pete Geeks will meet! Several collectors have pledged to bring some of their great Petes, including Lance Dahl, Ken Sigel, Mike Austin, and James Walsh.

One of the remarkable things about our tiny in-group of Pete Freeks is how we’re willing to share what we’ve discovered to enrich our community’s knowledge and appreciation of—as I once said—“the world’s oldest continuously operatiing briar-pipe manufacturer.”  It’s worth celebrating that this blog can help connect you and I in a fractured world bent on turning everyone into either a brand or a disposable commodity.*

This morning’s discovery we owe to Clint Stacey CPG of the UK. He sent me images from a movie book he was leafing through several months ago which, as a Sherlockian and a System man, I found extraordinary. They depicted what turns out to be the first cinematic System-smoking Sherlock Holmes, who was not Basil Rathbone, but another English actor, Clive Brook (1887-1974).

Brook made over 100 films between 1920 and 1963, and in 1934 was voted one of the most popular actors by British film-going audiences. He made the jump from silent to sound films easily, and if he had neither the physique nor the voice of Rathbone, he was still a force to be reckoned with. His most memorable roles for film fans today are Joseph Von Sternberg’s Underworld (1927) and Shanghai Express (1932), the latter playing opposite Marlene Dietrich.

Brook played Sherlock Holmes three times. First, in Paramount’s Return of Sherlock Holmes (1929), the earliest sound film to feature the Great Detective. Second, in the anthology film Paramount on Parade (1930). Finally, in Sherlock Holmes (1932), Fox Film’s loose adaptation of the William Gillette play. Film critic Russell Meritt writes it “is a droll pre-Code feature that ranks among the most stylish Sherlocks made in the black-and-white era.  This was a major studio production, directed by one of Fox’s leading directors, William K. Howard, and filmed by the legendary cinematographer, George Barnes. . . .This is not a production for Sherlockian purists, but for non-purists it’s a pleasure to watch a great studio director in top form having fun with Holmes and Hollywood genres: Moriarty is on the loose, importing American gangsters and their continental allies to wreak havoc on London pubs [!] with Tommy guns, hand grenades, and speeding cars.”**

None of these, unfortunately, is available for home viewing in good prints, although the two SH features have been preserved by Library of Congress  (Return) and the Museum of Modern Art (SH).

Three things stand out as of signal importance for us: first, that Brook smoked the Shape 9 DeLuxe (and yes, he really smokes it!); second, that he wore an Irish tweed fedora later adopted by Rathbone; and third, that European and American movie-goers knew to ask for “Sherlock Holmes’s pipe”—by which they meant the Peterson DeLuxe System 9—as early as 1929.

[1] THE PIPE

The unique characteristics of the 1937 9s shown above–the tall-looking bowl, the long shoulder on the Wear Gap and thin stem, as well as the bowl itself, can be seen in the 9s smoked by Brook. This doesn’t appear to me to be the Patent 9, nor the fatter 9 of later years.

While it’s impossible to be 100% certain, it would appear from the available stills that Brook’s 9 wasn’t the lithe Patent 9 featured in Laudisi Peterson’s recent POY and 9B releases, but neither was it the Chubby version so many of us love. The illustration from the 1937 catalog seen above, as well as the one from the Rogers 1939 catalog below are very close to what we see Brook smoking.

Lance Dahl kindly sent me several examples from his collection:

This one is without a hallmark, so after 1938, but take a look at how similar it is to the 1937 catalog illustration.

This 9B is actually an Irish Free State. The bowl looks identical with the cased example.

So here they are with one more IFS example, the bottom of the three, with a hallmark for 1926.

Comparing these examples with the Brook stills, it appears to me that they are not be the 9 / 307 I’ve previously believed to be in production from the late IFS era until recently (I say “until recently” because I don’t know if Laudisi has ceased production of the Chubby 9 in favor of the Patent Homage 9).  In any event, the Brooks version–as seen in the examples provideed by Lance–represent a version of the 9 unto themselves.  While the shank is as thick as the later Chubby 9, the bowl seems more upright.  To me.

The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1929)

Sherlock Holmes (1932) 

It would be fantastic if we could see all three films, but that’s not the case.  As of this writing, the only film you can see Brook as Holmes in is his brief sketch in Paramount on Parade, beginning at 12:45 into the film. While it’s available for streaming free at Amazon, and the print is degraded, it’s still quite clear—if you watch the entire sequence–that he’s smoking the DeLuxe 9:

William Powell (left) and Brook with Gillette-style deerstalker in Paramount on Parade (1930)

Paramount’s anthology film was intended to be broad farce, so perhaps it’s no surprise that Brook wears a deerstalker very much like William Gillette’s.

[2] THE HAT

In his serious Holmes films, Brook adopts a classy Irish tweed fedora, the same style  worn almost exclusively in the Basil Rathbone franchise:

Brook’s hat has a lower crown than Rathbone’s.

One can imagine Rathbone seeing this publicity of Clive Brook still and saying, “Aha! Hat! Peterson! Watson, order a Hansom cab!”

[3] SHERLOCK’S SYSTEM 9  AND THE PIPE SMOKER

“Now this,” you say, “is all very interesting but I don’t watch old movies.” But, I rejoinder, you do love Peterson history, and it’s right here with Clive Brook in 1929 that the bond between Kapp & Peterson, Sherlock Holmes, and the public at large is forged. This predates Basil Rathbone’s first use of the Peterson System 4AB by 14 years (in 1943’s fourth franchise film, Sherlock Holmes Faces Death).

I can only speculate of course, but with Clive Brook’s three appearances as the Great Detective, all of them sound, that the portion of the movie-going public who were also pipe smokers and fans of the detective would quite naturally have gone to their tobacconist and asked what pipe it was Holmes smoked. As we have documented that was the case in Dublin with Rathbone’s 4AB, it seems reasonable to suppose the same thing happened with Brook’s 9S.

From the point of view of a cineaste, it’s also interesting that Rathbone would take up both the Irish tweed walking hat and a Peterson. Brook had a round face and, wouldn’t you know, the bent billiard of shape 9 goes quite well with it. Rathbone, who had the chiseled steel profile of Sidney Paget’s original Strand illustrations of Holmes, doubtless preferred the 4AB because it reinforced his facial features in the same way Brook’s 9 did. But it’s really the use of the hat that cinches the homage—both actors might have stumbled each in his own way on a Peterson System as that thinking detective’s pipe, but to have Rathbone take up the same style of hat? This, Watson, is more than coincidence, surely!

1980s/90s Point-of-Sale Thinking Man Sepia Print, Ken Sigel Collection

In conclusion, it’s also fun to observe that Brook chose the System shape the Thinking Man icon is seen smoking in the illustrated versions that appeared on posters, K&P tobacco tins, and Rogers Import’s line of Peterson tobacco tins and pouches. All that’s needed now  is a Clive Brook Sherlock Holmes 9s commemorative!

IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR

While I no longer receive notices when a new Peterson line or special edition is about drop, we can still take a look in the rear view mirror and document what has already occurred. The Barley Spigots, with red Cumberland acrylic F/T stems and sterling mounts, appeared at SPC and SPEu  on Wednesday the 8^th of April, in great numbers and in a vast array of shapes across the board.

Photo courtesy James Ravenwood from his own collection.

This B10, from James Ravenwood CPG of The Briar Fellowshiop, shows off what one could find with a bit of searching and luck. And this 8 was another fine example:

RUNNING ON GUINNESS

Doctor of Pipes Mark Berman CPG sent me a link to this superb Guinness pub song, one which may be resonating with you more than usual if you’re thinking of driving to the Chicago Pipe Show in a few weeks!

Courtesy Nate Lynn CPG

Many thanks to
to Clint Stacey,
Lance Dahl,
James Ravenwood,
and Ken Sigel.

Intellectual Property
of Kapp & Peterson used with their gracious permission.

* I’m reminded of two things. Thing one, the opening sequence from Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner (1967): “I will not make any deals with you. I’ve resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. My life is my own!”—a response as timely now as it was 60 years ago to “Autocracy, Inc.” and religious nationalism.  Thing two, the rising cultural anesthesia of what Australian theologian Michael Bird calls “civic totalism”—which we used to call the Nanny State—in which a post liberal government decides what’s good for the individual and makes sure the individual has no say in that “good.” Stuart Whelan recently told us what that’s like in Australia, and our PG brethren in India and Canada and much of Europe experience this oppression daily. See Michael Bird, Religious Freedom in a Secular Age (Zondervan, 2022), pp. 85-94.

**The restoration has not been made available to the public. See CLIVE BROOK SHERLOCK HOLMES.

An XL107 Pfeifen Tesch 125th Anniversary Commemorative–from Charles Peterson’s Hamburg Shop!

Be seeing you.