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. The Secret Weapon is gently patriotic towards England in its themes.
Starting with 1943'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 Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Hirohito, but the plot is not war-related either. Holmes quotes Winston 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 in fear of being typecast, though Bruce never did and was open to playing Watson further.
Read more about this topic: Sherlock Holmes (1939 Film Series)
Famous quotes containing the words wartime and/or propaganda:
“The man who gets drunk in peacetime is a coward. The man who gets drunk in wartime goes on being a coward.”
—José Bergamín (1895–1983)
“All propaganda or popularization involves a putting of the complex into the simple, but such a move is instantly deconstructive. For if the complex can be put into the simple, then it cannot be as complex as it seemed in the first place; and if the simple can be an adequate medium of such complexity, then it cannot after all be as simple as all that.”
—Terry Eagleton (b. 1943)