Sherlock Holmes (1939 film series)

Sherlock Holmes
Starring	Basil Rathbone (Sherlock Holmes), Nigel Bruce (Dr. Watson), Mary Gordon (Mrs Hudson) and Dennis Hoey (Insp Lestrade)
Distributed by	Two films Twentieth Century Fox, 12 films Universal Studios
Release date	1939 - 1946
Language	English

Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce played Arthur Conan Doyle's characters Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson respectively in fourteen black-and-white films released between 1939 and 1946.

Beginning at Twentieth Century Fox

The first two films were produced by Twentieth Century Fox. The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1939 was originally intended as a one-off production. However, as the release met with critical success in the US, the studio followed it up the same year with The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which established what was to become a popular trend of combining elements from several Sherlock Holmes stories to create new tales. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was ostensibly based on William Gillette's 1899 play, but was actually quite different.

The Hound and The Adventures were the first Sherlock Holmes films to be set in the proper Victorian era – all previous Holmes films had been set at the time of the respective films' release, up to and including the 1930s British series featuring Arthur Wontner.

Move to Universal

Twentieth Century Fox dropped the Sherlock Holmes series after the second film. There is no clear reason for this, although Holmes scholars such as the late Richard Valley (editor of Scarlet Street magazine) and others have suggested that the poor critical reception for The Hound in Great Britain may have been a factor. The subsequent 12 films later produced by Universal Studios are unrelated to the first two Fox pictures (except in the casting of Rathbone and Bruce, as well as Mary Gordon as housekeeper Mrs. Hudson), although the films are often regarded as a single series.

Universal Studios purchased the rights to some of the short stories from the Conan Doyle estate in early 1942 and planned a new series of films, including both original scripts and (loose) adaptations of the canon. Rathbone and Bruce (who had continued playing Holmes and Watson in radio broadcasts after the films were discontinued by Fox) were the obvious choice for the leading roles.

Wartime propaganda

Universal shifted the setting from Victorian England to then present day 1940s – partly for budgetary reasons but also to give a modern action-adventure feel, in tune with popular contemporary tastes.

Following the entry of the United States into the Second World War, the first three Universal movies featured explicit anti-Nazi themes: Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror, Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon, and Sherlock Holmes in Washington. Universal noted at the beginning of each film that Holmes remained "ageless" as they updated him to face 20th century villains — in this case, the Nazis.

These movies often paralleled real-life events. For example, in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror, Holmes battles a Nazi radio program, similar to the real-life "Germany Calling" broadcasts of the British traitor Lord Haw-Haw. In Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon, the British and Germans fight to secure the "Tobel bombsight", analogous to the real-life Norden Bombsight.

Starting with 1942's Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon, all of the remaining films were directed by Roy William Neill.

Six additional films were made during World War II: Sherlock Holmes Faces Death, The Spider Woman, The Scarlet Claw, The Pearl of Death, The House of Fear, and The Woman in Green (made after the end of European hostilities but prior to the Japanese surrender). These movies have no explicit war references and are "standard" Holmes mysteries. Sherlock Holmes Faces Death is set in a convalescent home for shell-shock victims, but the plot is not war-related. At the end of The Spider Woman appears a shooting gallery whose moving targets are effigies of Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito, but the plot is not war-related either. Holmes quotes Churchill regarding the vital role of Canada in Anglo-American relations at the end of The Scarlet Claw, which is similar to the final scene of Sherlock Holmes in Washington, but there is no direct reference to the war and no explicit anti-Nazi propaganda.

The Pearl of Death was an attempt by Universal to launch a new "monster" called "The Creeper", portrayed by Rondo Hatton. Hatton went on to reprise the role in House of Horrors and The Brute Man, both released in 1946.

Following the war, three more films were made: Pursuit to Algiers, Terror by Night, and Dressed to Kill.

Even after the films ceased to be used for explicit propaganda purposes (both during the latter years of the war, when Allied victory seemed more assured, and after the war's conclusion), the writers of the Universal series never reverted to the Victorian setting of the two Fox productions and of the original Holmes' stories and characters.

The duo also made numerous radio recordings as Holmes and Watson, one of which was used in the Disney film The Great Mouse Detective, for the cameos of Sherlock Holmes and Watson. Rathbone eventually tired of his role (though Bruce never did).

Differences between the books and films

Most of the movies took great liberties with the Sherlock Holmes canon:

• Beginning in 1942, Holmes was updated to fight modern villains, such as the Nazis. However, after the first three films, his enemies became much less politically oriented and the war was never referred to after Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943).
• Several Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stories were often mixed to create a new narrative. Only The Hound of the Baskervilles closely followed its source material.
• Bruce's portrayal of Dr. Watson as a doddering old fool is quite different from Conan Doyle's conception of him in the original stories, where he is a competent, if unexceptional, physician.
• The same is true of the Inspector Lestrade character, whose portrayal by actor Dennis Hoey is unlike the character in the Conan Doyle stories.

Cast

Mary Gordon played Mrs. Hudson in all the films in which the character appears, and Dennis Hoey portrayed Inspector Lestrade in a number of the Universal series.

Throughout the Universal series, supporting actors often reappeared in varying roles. For example, Harry Cording played:

• a dive patron in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror
• Jack Brady in Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon
• the roof henchman in The Spider Woman
• George Gelder in The Pearl of Death
• Captain Jack Simpson in The House of Fear
• Mock in Terror by Night
• Hamid in Dressed to Kill

Henry Daniell, Frederick Worlock, and Gerald Hamer also made several appearances in different roles throughout the life of the series. Evelyn Ankers, who gained fame as Universal's "scream queen," was both the Limehouse barmaid Kitty in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror and the villainous Naomi Drake in The Pearl of Death.

Holmes' arch-nemesis, Professor Moriarty, was portrayed by three actors: Lionel Atwill in 1943's Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon, Henry Daniell in The Woman in Green, and George Zucco in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. He "dies" violently in each of the three episodes, one of the few times that a villain dies repeatedly in a film series (though his death in The Woman in Green apparently had some permanency, as Holmes remarks in Terror By Night, "...Colonel Sebastian Moran was the most sinister, ruthless, and diabolically clever henchman of our late but unlamented friend, Professor Moriarty.").

Status

Four of the films are in the public domain:

• Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943)
• The Woman in Green (1945)
• Terror by Night (1946)
• Dressed to Kill (1946)

The original nitrate elements of Terror by Night have been poorly preserved. In particular, the last few minutes are damaged and versions commonly available on low-quality home video show skips and sound problems. The digitally remastered version does not have these problems and is in excellent condition.

The four public domain films are the Rathbone-Bruce films most often shown on television, and have also been released in colorized format. The others, including the classic Hound of the Baskervilles, are very seldom shown, even on the Fox Movie Channel, which shows Twentieth Century-Fox films exclusively. However, Turner Classic Movies aired almost all of the Rathbone/Bruce films on December 25-26, 2009.

The master elements to the classic Rathbone-Bruce films (from both Fox and Universal) have passed on over the decades from the two studios to other independent companies, and today they reside with CBS Television Distribution (whose KingWorld predecessor inherited the films in 2003). All of the films were formally restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive in 2003, and these restorations have been issued on home video via MPI Home Video.

The films

• 1. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)
• 2. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939)
• 3. Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942)
• 4. Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943)
• 5. Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943)
• 6. Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943)
• 7. The Spider Woman (1944)
• 8. The Scarlet Claw (1944)
• 9. The Pearl of Death (1944)
• 10. The House of Fear (1945)
• 11. The Woman in Green (1945)
• 12. Pursuit to Algiers (1945)
• 13. Terror by Night (1946)
• 14. Dressed to Kill (1946)

Other Rathbone-Bruce appearances as Holmes and Watson

Radio

After their first two films in 1939, Rathbone and Bruce also starred in the American radio series, The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The series proved enormously popular, and ran from 1939 to 1946.

The series is generally credited with keeping Rathbone and Bruce’s portrayal of the characters alive during the three-year gap in the films, and helped the characters reach a wider audience. It remains questionable whether the film series would have even been resurrected without the radio series having continued in the meantime.

Two hundred and twenty episodes were made, of which around one hundred and fifty are now thought to survive, with over fifty of these episodes being freely available on the internet. The episodes are all in the public domain.

Given the limited number of Conan Doyle stories, script editor Edith Meisner wrote a large number of original scenarios for the series. As with the film series, even the wholly original stories would lift plot elements and lines of dialogue from the canon. Unlike the film series, the radio episodes retained their Victorian setting right up until the very end of the run, with each episode opening as the radio announcer would talk to an elderly, retired Dr Watson, now somewhat improbably living in a bungalow in California, and he would reminisce about one of Holmes’ cases.

When Rathbone stepped down from the film role in 1946, he also left the radio series at the same time. Nigel Bruce, however, continued for another year, and the 1946-7 series gave him top billing alongside Tom Conway, who took over the role of Holmes. Conway was partly cast because he had a voice remarkably similar to Rathbone’s, and 39 episodes were made with the Conway-Bruce partnership.

It should be noted that the series was not specifically created for Rathbone and Bruce – the Sherlock Holmes series, under various titles, ran on American radio from 1930 to 1950 with a variety of actors in the lead roles. However, the duo proved by far the most popular and long-serving actors in the lead roles, and were no doubt helped by their being the only actors in the radio series to also play their roles on screen (although the late William Gillette, best known as Holmes on stage, had been Holmes in a 1916 film, and had starred in the very first radio episode in 1930).

The radio series is very highly regarded by enthusiasts of Old Time Radio, being one of the more popular series subscribed to today. However, there are frequent interruption for sponsors’ messages, particularly endorsements of Petri wine by the radio announcer, and occasionally, Dr Watson.

Film appearances outside the series

At the same time that the film series was being made, Rathbone and Bruce had a short comedic cameo as Holmes and Watson in the 1943 comedy musical extravaganza Crazy House. In the bit Watson rushes in to tell Holmes that the comedy team of Olsen and Johnson have landed on the Universal lot, but Holmes already knows. When Watson asks how, Rathbone replies: "I am Sherlock Holmes. I know everything." They also made their only non-Holmes/Watson appearance together in the 1944 film adaptation of Frenchman's Creek.

Television

Seven years after the radio series had finished, Rathbone twice agreed to reprise the role of Holmes, first on television, and then on stage. The television appearance was for a half-hour episode of the CBS series Suspense, entitled "The Adventure of the Black Baronet", broadcast on 26 May 1953. Martyn Green played Watson opposite Rathbone. It was intended to be a pilot for a subsequent television series, but the option was not picked up by any network.

Stage

Later in 1953, Rathbone agreed to reprise the part for a Sherlock Holmes stage play on Broadway. He had hoped that Bruce could perform as Watson, but Bruce was too ill to agree to appear, and died while the play was still in rehearsal. The play opened to largely negative reviews, and only ran for three performances.

Records

Rathbone's last connection with the Sherlock Holmes role were his releasing a set of five records in 1958, titled 'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes'. These featured complete and unabridged readings of four Holmes stories by Rathbone. The stories were: "A Scandal in Bohemia", "The Adventure of the Red-Headed League", "The Adventure of the Speckled Band", and "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle".

External links

• A film clip of Sherlock Holmes Trailers is available for viewing at the Internet Archive