Sherlock Holmes (1939 Film Series) - Cast

Cast

Mary Gordon played Mrs. Hudson in all the films in which the character appears, and Dennis Hoey portrayed Inspector Lestrade in most 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, Hillary Brooke 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.").