Sherlock Holmes

[Herlock Sholmes]

I love all things Holmes/Doyle. In a small way I’m a bit of a collector too. Books, movies, tv and radio shows, autographs, postcards etc. Yup full blown saddo-ness. As we’re all armchair detectives I just wondered if there were any Holmes fans on here? If there are I’d be interested to know who is your favourite interpreter of Holmes? Maybe your worst too? A top ten if you have one. Maybe your favourite Holmes movies too? Just testing the water here. I won’t burst into tears if I get no replies.

[Wickerman]

Basil Rathbone was always my favourite when I was a kid, I just wish those films had stuck more to the original script.
I have all the Jeremy Brett shows, and still play them when the wife goes out

Yes, a strong Holmesian fan, but I have yet to finish one of the books, for some reason I struggle with fiction.
The last fiction book I read was The Alienist, and that was some years ago.
I wish I could read Doyle's stories, I've tried so many times. I keep the Strand version of all his stories more as a momento than anything else.

[Robert]

A world of peasoupers, train journeys and Mrs Hudson's kippers. Lovely!

[Herlock Sholmes]

Basil Rathbone was always my favourite when I was a kid, I just wish those films had stuck more to the original script.
I have all the Jeremy Brett shows, and still play them when the wife goes out

Yes, a strong Holmesian fan, but I have yet to finish one of the books, for some reason I struggle with fiction.
The last fiction book I read was The Alienist, and that was some years ago.
I wish I could read Doyle's stories, I've tried so many times. I keep the Strand version of all his stories more as a momento than anything else.

Rathbone was great and the Holmes that I grew up with. Couldn’t agree more about wishing that they had stuck to original plots but Universal wanted Holmes fighting Nazi’s and spies. The first two Fox movies are excellent though. Their Hound Of The Baskerville is still considered the best ever. Rathbone and Bruce also did over 80 radio shows which were great but were mostly pastiches.

Brett was the finest Holmes ever for me. Genius.

Rathbone and bruce also did a cameo which not everyone is aware of

https://youtu.be/D9EG9XwuiDQ

[Herlock Sholmes]

A world of peasoupers, train journeys and Mrs Hudson's kippers. Lovely!

And, as Vincent Starrett said in his poem “it’s always 1895.”

[Robert]

Hi Michael

Brett was tremendous. But as for the ones I grew up with, those were Wilmer and Cushing, with Nigel Stock being Watson to both. I dimly remember the Ronald Howard ones (not for purists, though having watched some of them recently, I find they're not bad). Rathbone was very good, though the films were slightly unbalanced in that they had TWO idiots in them.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Hi Michael

Brett was tremendous. But as for the ones I grew up with, those were Wilmer and Cushing, with Nigel Stock being Watson to both. I dimly remember the Ronald Howard ones (not for purists, though having watched some of them recently, I find they're not bad). Rathbone was very good, though the films were slightly unbalanced in that they had TWO idiots in them.

Hello Robert,

Wilmer and Cushing were both excellent. Similar to the Ronald Howard movies were the Geoffrey Whitehead ones made in the 80’s which are now available on dvd.

I also thought that John Neville was very good in A Study In Terror. He was asked to take over from Wilmer on tv but he was too busy with theatre work and so Cushing got the job. The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes with Robert Stephens was also great. Mark Gatiss’s favourite movie.

On the radio the Clive Morrison series was the equivalent of the Grenada series. Well worth listening too.

[Wickerman]

This is funny to me now, but the three most disappointing things I found out after my teenage years, and all in the same year was; that Sweeney Todd was fiction; that the Beetles didn't write Twist and Shout; and that A Study in Terror was not a Conan Doyle story.
I was gutted!, and I've never forgotten them.

[Ozzy]

My location is still The Bar Of Gold Upper Swandam Lane but with this new forum software, at least for me, I'm not seeing my location although it's still there on my User profile page.

I read the canon when I was about 10 or 11.

This Rathbone Bruce role reversal is good fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55f9ZdJnlKk

I'm of the age where Cushing is my Holmes. It's a shame that there's more Wilmer/Stock episodes in the BBC vaults compared to Cushing/Stock.

There's a number of TV and radio shows that don't exist now, in some cases never recorded in the first place as they went out live and that was that. The Dr Who collectors have their holy grails and likewise Holmes/Doyle collectors. Did you catch Dr Watson and the Darkwater Hall Mystery in 1974? I've been meaning to contact the BBC to see if they have it in their vaults.
https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/4f2dd8a6...61d41bdb83e947

One actor who I would love to of seen play Holmes but as far as I'm aware he never did is Michael Hordern. Not even any audiobooks although I have all his readings of MR James as I think they are the best. The Argo cassettes.

There's something about Brett that always niggled me. Too twitchy sometimes although whenever I tell others that they always say, well it's the 7% (5% after Watson's faffing around with it) solution, to which I have no reply!

One of my favourite passages from a canon story, A Case Of Identity.
"This is the Dundas separation case, and, as it happens, I was engaged in clearing up some small points in connection with it. The husband was a teetotaler, there was no other woman, and the conduct complained of was that he had drifted into the habit of winding up every meal by taking out his false teeth and hurling them at his wife, which, you will allow, is not an action likely to occur to the imagination of the average story-teller. Take a pinch of snuff, Doctor, and acknowledge that I have scored over you in your example."

[Herlock Sholmes]

There's a number of TV and radio shows that don't exist now, in some cases never recorded in the first place as they went out live and that was that. The Dr Who collectors have their holy grails and likewise Holmes/Doyle collectors. Did you catch Dr Watson and the Darkwater Hall Mystery in 1974? I've been meaning to contact the BBC to see if they have it in their vaults.

There was a tv series in the 50’s starting Alan Wheatley which was unfortunately never recorded. Also missing is The Missing Rembrandt starring Arthur Wontner (the first great talking Holmes imo, and the actor that looked more like the Paget drawings of Holmes than anyone.) Things do turn up occasionally though. In recent years we’ve had the Gillette movie turn up as well as the recently discovered and released 1929 Hound Of The Baskervilles starring Carlyle Blackwell.

A few months ago I spoke to another member of The Sherlock Holmes Society Of London who said that he had The Darkwater Hall Mystery and he was going to dig it out and make me a copy but I’ve heard nothing yet.

[Robert]

So instead of Colonel Sebastian Moran trying to kill Holmes with an air rifle, it was Robin Hood with a bow and arrow.

[Graham]

I've also been a Holmes fan for as long as I can remember. As far as screen Holmes goes, my absolute favourite has to be Jeremy Brett, followed by Peter Cushing. My least favourite (of the more modern Holmes portrayals at least) is Richard Roxburgh, a one-off Sherlock in a 2002 TV production of The Hound. Almost as risible IMHO as the 1978 spoof production of The Hound with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.

In many of the pre-Brett Holmes productions, Dr Watson is more often than not portrayed as a bumbling idiot - most notably by Nigel Bruce. I've often wondered why this should be how some producers view Watson, as Conan Doyle plainly never intended him as such in the stories.

Here's a couple of Sherlockian puzzles to tickle your fancy:

1] How, in The Hound, would Stapleton, real name Rodger Baskerville, been able to make a legal claim to the estate and fortune of Sir Charles Baskerville? Think about it: he is known to the locals as Stapleton; he uses the hound to see off Sir Henry; when the deed is done he suddenly presents himself as the long-lost heir to the Baskerville fortune. So who will believe him? And why should Sir Henry have to troll off on a world tour to recover his senses when he could quite legally have married Beryl Stapleton, who obviously fancied him rotten, once her murderous husband had been consigned to the depths of the Great Grimpen Mire? Or is that deep Victorian delicacy?

2] In the Bruce-Partington Plans, Holmes and Watson await the arrival of the rotter who stole the plans for money, at 13 Caulfield Gardens, the home of the 'secret agent' Oberstein. When the door opens and the new arrival is grabbed, Holmes 'gave a whistle of surprise' and said, "You can write me down an ass this time, Watson. This is not the bird I was looking for". So who was the 'bird he was looking for'? Holmes never said, but it could only have been Sidney Johnson, the only other person who had access to the secret plans. So why was it kept a secret?

There are plenty of other Sherlockian 'mysteries', of which more later.

Graham

[Herlock Sholmes]

I've also been a Holmes fan for as long as I can remember. As far as screen Holmes goes, my absolute favourite has to be Jeremy Brett, followed by Peter Cushing. My least favourite (of the more modern Holmes portrayals at least) is Richard Roxburgh, a one-off Sherlock in a 2002 TV production of The Hound. Almost as risible IMHO as the 1978 spoof production of The Hound with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.

In many of the pre-Brett Holmes productions, Dr Watson is more often than not portrayed as a bumbling idiot - most notably by Nigel Bruce. I've often wondered why this should be how some producers view Watson, as Conan Doyle plainly never intended him as such in the stories.

Here's a couple of Sherlockian puzzles to tickle your fancy:

1] How, in The Hound, would Stapleton, real name Rodger Baskerville, been able to make a legal claim to the estate and fortune of Sir Charles Baskerville? Think about it: he is known to the locals as Stapleton; he uses the hound to see off Sir Henry; when the deed is done he suddenly presents himself as the long-lost heir to the Baskerville fortune. So who will believe him? And why should Sir Henry have to troll off on a world tour to recover his senses when he could quite legally have married Beryl Stapleton, who obviously fancied him rotten, once her murderous husband had been consigned to the depths of the Great Grimpen Mire? Or is that deep Victorian delicacy?

2] In the Bruce-Partington Plans, Holmes and Watson await the arrival of the rotter who stole the plans for money, at 13 Caulfield Gardens, the home of the 'secret agent' Oberstein. When the door opens and the new arrival is grabbed, Holmes 'gave a whistle of surprise' and said, "You can write me down an ass this time, Watson. This is not the bird I was looking for". So who was the 'bird he was looking for'? Holmes never said, but it could only have been Sidney Johnson, the only other person who had access to the secret plans. So why was it kept a secret?

There are plenty of other Sherlockian 'mysteries', of which more later.

Graham

Hello Graham.

I certainly agree about Roxburgh’s Holmes but I have to tell you....without a single, solitary shadow of a doubt in my mind the worst Holmes ever was in the worst Holmes movie ever The Hounds Of London. Holmes was played by a wheezy Patrick Macnee. Truly awful. A couple of notable Holmes’s. The Russian series with Vasily Livanov as Holmes (he was Mr Thatcher’s favourite Holmes apparently) isworth watching though it’s marred slightly by poor subtitles. Famously Stoke Moran in The Speckled Band became Stock Moron! I also liked Rupert Everett in The case Of The Silk Stockings. Pity it was only a one-off.

I was certainly fond of Nigel Bruce but of course he wasn’t an accurate portrayal of Watson. They chose Bruce because he pretty much played the same role in every movie and they thought that he would offset the cold rationality of Rathbone.

So many puzzles and mysteries Graham. Most famous I suppose is how Mr Watson managed to get her husband’s name wrong?

[Graham]

So many puzzles and mysteries Graham. Most famous I suppose is how Mr Watson managed to get her husband’s name wrong?

Hm, yes. Off the top of my balding bonce, I think that's 'The Man With The Twisted Lip'. Watson's name, as far as any of we mere mortals is concerned, is 'John H Watson'. As is written in white paint on the lid of the tin box in Cox's Vaults - the box which contains his records. I think, if I remember correctly, that it was Dorothy L Sayers who proposed an answer to this oddity, in that the 'H' in John H Watson was in actuality 'Hamish', Scottish for James, and as such was a pet name of his dear wife for Watson. Bless. Or it could just have been a mistake. Will we ever know?

Graham

[etenguy]

I love all things Holmes/Doyle. In a small way I’m a bit of a collector too. Books, movies, tv and radio shows, autographs, postcards etc. Yup full blown saddo-ness. As we’re all armchair detectives I just wondered if there were any Holmes fans on here? If there are I’d be interested to know who is your favourite interpreter of Holmes? Maybe your worst too? A top ten if you have one. Maybe your favourite Holmes movies too? Just testing the water here. I won’t burst into tears if I get no replies.

A slight tangent, but if you are interested in Doyle as well as Holmes - the Julian Barnes novel, Arthur and George is a good read.

I'm still trying to reconcile the creator of Holmes with his belief in fairies.