ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE & DETECTIVE SHERLOCK HOLMES

Today, The Morgans have contacted Arthur Conan Doyle. The Grandma has disappeared this morning. She was last seen in Hyde Park wearing a Nordic rune pendant and a red sports shirt with the number 7 on it. The family is worried and has asked Arthur to contact Sherlock Holmes, the famous detective. The family has been practicing a new test for Cambridge A2 and has been practising some English vocabulary about Inside The House, Food and Drink and Animals.

 

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Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle (22 May 1859-7 July 1930) was a Scottish writer best known for his detective fiction featuring the character Sherlock Holmes.

 

Originally a physician, in 1887 he published A Study in Scarlet, the first of four novels about Holmes and Dr. Watson. In addition, Doyle wrote over fifty short stories featuring the famous detective.

The Sherlock Holmes stories are generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction. Doyle is also known for writing the fictional adventures of Professor Challenger and for propagating the mystery of the Mary Celeste. He was a prolific writer whose other works include fantasy and science fiction stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction and historical novels.

More information: Arthur Conan Doyle

A sequel to A Study in Scarlet was commissioned, and The Sign of the Four appeared in Lippincott's Magazine in February 1890, under agreement with the Ward Lock company.

In December 1893, to dedicate more of his time to his historical novels, Doyle had Holmes and Professor Moriarty plunge to their deaths together down the Reichenbach Falls in the story The Final Problem. Public outcry, however, led him to feature Holmes in 1901 in the novel The Hound of the Baskervilles.

In 1903, Doyle published his first Holmes short story in ten years, The Adventure of the Empty House, in which it was explained that only Moriarty had fallen, but since Holmes had other dangerous enemies, especially Colonel Sebastian Moran, he had arranged to also be perceived as dead. 

Holmes was ultimately featured in a total of 56 short stories, the last published in 1927, and four novels by Doyle, and has since appeared in many novels and stories by other authors.

Doyle had a longstanding interest in mystical subjects. He was initiated as a Freemason on 26 January 1887 at the Phoenix Lodge No. 257 in Southsea. He resigned from the Lodge in 1889, but returned to it in 1902, only to resign again in 1911.

More information: Biography.com

Also in Southsea in 1887, influenced by a member of the Portsmouth Literary and Philosophical Society, Major-General Alfred Wilks Drayson, he began a series of psychic investigations. These included attending around 20 seances, experiments in telepathy and sittings with mediums. Writing to Spiritualist journal Light, that year, he declared himself to be a Spiritualist and spoke of one particular psychic event that had convinced him.

Though he later wavered, he remained fascinated by the paranormal. He was a founding member of the Hampshire Society for Psychical Research in 1889 and joined the London-based Society for Psychical Research in 1893. 

He joined Sir Sidney Scott and Frank Podmore on a poltergeist investigation in Devon in 1894. Nevertheless, during this period, he remained, in essence, a dilettante.

Doyle was found clutching his chest in the hall of Windlesham Manor, his house in Crowborough, East Sussex, on 7 July 1930. He died of a heart attack at the age of 71. At the time of his death, there was some controversy concerning his burial place, as he was avowedly not a Christian, considering himself a Spiritualist. He was first buried on 11 July 1930 in Windlesham rose garden.

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When you have eliminated the impossible, 

whatever remains, however improbable, 

must be the truth. 

Arthur Conan Doyle

1891, THE MUSIC HALL AKA CARNEGIE HALL OPENS IN NYC

Today, The Grandma has been listening to some music, and she has remembered the Music Hall in New York City (later known as Carnegie Hall), a wonderful place that had its grand opening and first public performance, with Tchaikovsky as the guest conductor.

Meanwhile, The Grangers have been practising some English vocabulary about Animals and Clothes.

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Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th and 57th Streets.

Designed by architect William Burnet Tuthill and built by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1891, it is one of the most prestigious venues in the world for both classical music and popular music.

Carnegie Hall has its own artistic programming, development, and marketing departments and presents about 250 performances each season. It is also rented out to performing groups. The hall has not had a resident company since 1962, when the New York Philharmonic moved to Lincoln Center's Philharmonic Hall, renamed Avery Fisher Hall in 1973 and David Geffen Hall in 2015.

Carnegie Hall has 3,671 seats, divided among three auditoriums. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1962, and the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission designated the building as a city landmark in 1967.

Carnegie Hall is on the east side of Seventh Avenue between 56th Street and 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park, in the Midtown Manhattan neighbourhood of New York City. The site covers 2,565.8 m2. Its lot is 61 m wide, covering the entire width of the block between 56th Street to the south and 57th Street to the north, and extends 46 m eastward from Seventh Avenue.

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Carnegie Hall shares the city block with the Carnegie Hall Tower, Russian Tea Room, and Metropolitan Tower to the east.

It is cater-corner from the Osborne Apartments. It also faces the Rodin Studios and 888 Seventh Avenue to the west; Alwyn Court, the Louis H. Chalif Normal School of Dancing, and One57 to the north; the Park Central Hotel to the southwest; and the CitySpire Center to the southeast. Right outside the hall is an entrance to the New York City Subway's 57th Street–Seventh Avenue station, served by the N, ​Q, ​R, and ​W trains.

Carnegie Hall is part of an artistic hub that developed around the two blocks of West 57th Street from Sixth Avenue west to Broadway during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Its opening in 1891 directly contributed to the development of the hub. The area contains several buildings constructed as residences for artists and musicians, such as 130 and 140 West 57th Street, the Osborne Apartments, and the Rodin Studios. In addition, the area contained the headquarters of organizations such as the American Fine Arts Society, the Lotos Club, and the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Carnegie Hall is named after Andrew Carnegie, who funded its construction. It was intended as a venue for the Oratorio Society of New York and the New York Symphony Society, on whose boards Carnegie served. Construction began in 1890, and was carried out by Isaac A. Hopper and Company.

Although the building was in use from April 1891, the official opening night was May 5, with a concert conducted by Walter Damrosch and Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

The hall was owned by the Carnegie family until 1925, when Carnegie's widow sold it to a real estate developer, Robert E. Simon. When Simon died in 1935, his son, Robert E. Simon, Jr., became owner.

More information: Classic New York History

On the corner of 57th and 7th Avenue sits
the most famous concert hall in the world.
No less a figure than when Tchaikovsky
led the first performances in 1891.
Virtually every major artist has performed there.
There is simply no place like it.
The first time I stepped foot in Carnegie Hall was in 1964.

Leonard Slatkin

55 CENTRAL PARK WEST, GHOSTBUSTERS IN MANHATTAN

Today, The Grandma has visited 55 Central Park West in New York City. 

 

It is one of the most enchanted buildings of the city and she has had the wonderful help of The Ghostbusters to enter in.

 

Meanwhile, The Newtons have been preparing their Cambridge Exam. They have studied some vocabulary about Animals and Clothes.

 

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Ghostbusters is a 1984 American supernatural comedy film directed and produced by Ivan Reitman, and written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis.

It stars Bill Murray, Aykroyd, and Ramis as Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, and Egon Spengler, three eccentric parapsychologists who start a ghost-catching business in New York City. It also stars Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis, and features Annie Potts, William Atherton, and Ernie Hudson in supporting roles.

Based on his own fascination with spirituality, Aykroyd conceived Ghostbusters as a project starring himself and John Belushi, in which they would adventure through time and space battling supernatural threats.

Following Belushi's death in 1982, and with Aykroyd's concept deemed financially impractical, Ramis was hired to help rewrite the script to set it in New York City and make it more realistic. It was the first comedy film to employ expensive special effects, and Columbia Pictures, concerned about its relatively high $25-30 million budget, had little faith in its box office potential. Filming took place from October 1983 to January 1984, in New York City and Los Angeles.

Due to competition for special effects studios among various films in development at the time, Richard Edlund used part of the budget to found Boss Film Studios, which employed a combination of practical effects, miniatures, and puppets to deliver the ghoulish visuals.

Ghostbusters was released on June 8, 1984, to critical acclaim and became a cultural phenomenon. 

It was well received for its blend of comedy, action, and horror, and Murray's performance was often singled out for praise. It earned $282.2 million during its initial theatrical run, making it the second-highest-grossing film of 1984 in the United States and Canada, and the then-highest-grossing comedy ever. 

It was the number-one film in theaters for seven consecutive weeks and one of only four films to gross more than $100 million that year. Further theatrical releases have increased the total gross to around $295.2 million, making it one of the most successful comedy films of the 1980s. In 2015, the Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. Its theme song, Ghostbusters by Ray Parker Jr., was also a number-one hit.

More information: Mental Floss

With its effect on popular culture, and a dedicated fan following, the success of Ghostbusters launched a multi-billion dollar multimedia franchise. This included the popular animated television series The Real Ghostbusters (1986), its sequel Extreme Ghostbusters (1997), video games, board games, comic books, clothing, music, and haunted attractions.

Ghostbusters was followed in 1989 by Ghostbusters II, which fared less well financially and critically, and attempts to develop a second sequel paused in 2014 following Ramis's death. After a 2016 reboot received mixed reviews and underperformed financially, a second sequel to the 1984 film, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, was released in November 2021.

Principal photography began in New York City on October 28, 1983. On the first day, Reitman brought Murray to the set, still unsure if he had read the script. Filming in New York lasted for approximately six weeks, finishing just before Christmas. Reitman was conscious they had to complete the New York phase before they encountered inhospitable December weather.

At the time, choosing to shoot in New York City was considered risky. In the early 1980s, many saw the city as synonymous with fiscal disaster and violence, and Los Angeles was seen as the center of the entertainment industry.

In a 2014 interview, Reitman said he chose New York because I wanted the film to be... my New York movie. As Reitman was working with comedians, he encouraged improvisation, adapting multiple takes and keeping the cast creations that worked, but directing them back to the script.

Some guerrilla filmmaking took place, capturing spontaneous scenes at iconic locations around the city, including one shot at Rockefeller Center where the actors were chased off by a real security guard.

A scene was shot on Central Park West with extras chanting Ghostbusters before the name had been cleared. Medjuck contacted the studio, urging them to secure permission to use the word as the title.

The building at 55 Central Park West served as the home of Weaver's character and the setting of the Ghostbusters' climactic battle with Gozer. 

The art department added extra floors and embellishments using matte paintings, models, and digital effects to create the focal point of ghostly activity.

More information: Roger Ebert

We’re ready to believe you!

The Ghostbusters