The Picture of Dorian Gray August 1889, Stoddart dined with Oscar Wilde, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and T. P. Gill at the Langham Hotel, and commissioned novellas from each writer. Conan Doyle promptly submitted "The Sign of the Four" (1890) to Stoddart, but Wilde was more dilatory; Conan Doyle's second Sherlock Holmes novel was published in the February 1890 edition of "Lippincott's Monthly Magazine", yet Stoddart did not receive Wilde's manuscript for "The Picture of Dorian Gray" until 7 April 1890, nine months after having commissioned the novel from him. The literary merits of "The Picture of Dorian Gray" impressed Stoddart, but, as an editor,
The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945 film) moral leprosy was eating him away", Hallward encourages Gray to reform his life. However, Gray panics, murders his friend and seals his body in the school room next to the portrait. Dorian blackmails an old friend, Allen Campbell (Douglas Walton), to dispose of Hallward's body. He then starts a romance with Hallward's niece, Gladys (Donna Reed), who was a child when the portrait was painted. Though Gladys had always loved Dorian, and is overjoyed when he proposes marriage, those close to Gray find him suspicious and changed. Allen Campbell, distraught at his role in destroying Hallward's corpse, commits suicide. Gray