Film
It has been estimated that Sherlock Holmes is the most prolific screen character in the history of cinema. The first known film featuring Holmes is Sherlock Holmes Baffled, a one-reel film running less than a minute, made by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in 1900. This was followed by a 1905 Vitagraph film Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; or, Held for Ransom, featuring Maurice Costello as Holmes.
Many similar films were made in the early years of the twentieth century, most notably the 13 one- and two-reel films produced by the Danish Nordisk Film Company between 1908 and 1911. The only non-lost film is Sherlock Holmes i Bondefangerkløer, produced in 1910. Holmes was originally played by Viggo Larsen. Other actors who played Holmes in those films were Otto Lagoni, Einar Zangenberg, Lauritz Olsen and Alwin Neuss. In 1911 the American Biograph company produced a series of 11 short comedies based on the Holmes character with Mack Sennett (later of Keystone Kops fame) in the title role.
By 1916, Harry Arthur Saintsbury, who had played Holmes on stage hundreds of times in Gillette’s play, reprised the role in the 1916 film The Valley of Fear.
The next significant cycle of Holmes films were produced by the Stoll Films company in Britain. Between 1921 and 1923 they produced a total of 47 two-reelers, all featuring noted West End actor Eille Norwood in the lead with Hubert Willis as Watson. A later British series produced between 1933 and 1936 starred Arthur Wontner as Holmes.
John Barrymore played the role in a 1922 movie entitled Sherlock Holmes, with Roland Young as Watson and William Powell in his first screen appearance. This Goldwyn film is the first Holmes movie made with high production values and a major star.
Clive Brook played Sherlock Holmes three times: The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1929), as part of an anthology film, Paramount on Parade (1930), and Sherlock Holmes (1932).
In 1931 Raymond Massey played Sherlock Holmes in his screen debut, The Speckled Band.
Also in the 1930s Arthur Wontner played Holmes in five British films.
Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce played Holmes and Watson in The Hound of the Baskervilles which launched a 14 film series. Rathbone is regarded as the Holmes of his generation.
Many other films have been comedies and parodies which poke fun at Holmes, Watson, their relationship and other characters. These have included Billy Wilder's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes with Robert Stephens and Colin Blakely as Holmes and Watson.
More serious, non-canonical films were A Study in Terror (with John Neville and Donald Houston) and Murder by Decree (with Christopher Plummer and James Mason) both of which involved Holmes and Watson investigating the murders by the Whitechapel serial killer Jack the Ripper. And Young Sherlock Holmes with Nicholas Rowe as Holmes and Alan Cox as Watson playing the duo as schoolboys (in this film one of Holmes' early mentors becomes an enemy who, in the final credits, hides out in the Swiss Alps and signs his name as Moriarty).
The 1974 novel The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, a "lost manuscript" of a Holmes adventure, was also made into a film in 1976 starring Nicol Williamson as Holmes and Robert Duvall as Watson.
The 1988 film Without a Clue was a comedic twist on the familiar Holmes legend. Dr. John Watson (Ben Kingsley) is a genius crime fighter and successful author. Fans of his novels clamor to see the real Sherlock Holmes and Watson realizes that his audience simply would not accept the fact that Holmes was a fabrication and to reveal himself as the creator and brains behind him would be tantamount to literary suicide. To solve his dilemmas, Watson hires Reginald Kincaid (Michael Caine), an alcoholic, womanizing, ne'er-do-well actor to impersonate Holmes.
The twenty-eighth film in the VeggieTales series is entitled Sheerluck Holmes and the Golden Ruler, and features Larry the Cucumber as Holmes and Bob the Tomato as Watson.
Robert Downey, Jr. appears as the detective in the Guy Ritchie–directed Sherlock Holmes (2009) and its sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011), with Jude Law as Dr. Watson.
Columbia Pictures is planning a Holmes comedy with Sacha Baron Cohen as the great detective. It is being written by Etan Cohen and will be co-produced by Judd Apatow.
In 2010, low-budget film company The Asylum produced Sherlock Holmes, which is intended to capitalize on Guy Ritchie's film. It stars new actor Ben Syder as Holmes and Torchwood actor Gareth David Lloyd as Watson. It was shot in Wales and directed by Rachel Lee Goldenberg.
A short, 30-minute film titled Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Five Acts was produced by Thomas Lynskey starring Lynskey as Holmes, Robert Bagdon as Dr. Watson, and Jacob Swing as Jack the Ripper. The film attempted to be true to the original themes of the books, as well as details regarding the Ripper case, while avoiding coming to an already possible conclusion to the real life case. Some evidence and characters in the Ripper case was made up for the film to give it a more original ending.
See also the 1971 film They Might Be Giants, starring George C. Scott and Joanne Woodward, which portrays a man who believes himself to be Sherlock Holmes.
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