Best-Worst-Last-First-Whatever Lists

[GUT]

The safest cars were made by British Leyland the marina,allegro,princess just to name a few if you owned one of these fine feats of British engineering you had very little chance of having an accident for the one simple fact that none of the buggers would work so you had no chance of driving it on the road in the first place.

Or the mighty P76

[pinkmoon]

Or the mighty P76

My uncle was a used car dealer for over fifty years I worked for him for a while and the cars British Leyland churned out we're a crime against humanity wheels and windscreen would fall out at least 2 oil leaks guaranteed in first six months of ownership .what amazes me now they wasn't any attempt to recall these cars in the case of the allegro it was a known fault for twelve years that there was a possibility that the rear windscreen might fall out and the rear wheels might fall of pure class and a testament to British workmanship.

[John Wheat]

Best Sherlock Holmes
1. Basil Rathbone
2. Benedict Cumberbatch

[sdreid]

The two actors who've played Paladin:

1-John Dehner-106 radio episodes

2-Richard Boone-225 television episodes

[sdreid]

Last two people living on Earth who were born in the 1800s:

1-Susannah Jones-Born July 6 of 1899

2-Emma Martinuzzi-Born November 29 of 1899

[Rosella]

Best Sherlock Holmes
1. Basil Rathbone
2. Benedict Cumberbatch

^ What about Jeremy Brett, who played him in four TV series in the 1980s/90s? Not keen?

[John Wheat]

^ What about Jeremy Brett, who played him in four TV series in the 1980s/90s? Not keen?

To Rosella

Jeremy Brett was okay as Holmes but I much prefer Rathbone and Cumberbatch.

Cheers John

[Pcdunn]

I would put Jeremy Brett at the top for playing Holmes the closest to the character as written.

I think Rathbone and Cumberbatch are both fine actors, but their turns as Holmes suffer a little for being set in different time periods. Same as "Elementary" star Johnny Lee Miller.

So my list would be:

Jeremy Brett
Basil Rathbone (after all, he was the first I saw, when his movies were on TV)
Benedict Cumberthach
Johnny Lee Miller
Robert Downey Jr.

[Steadmund Brand]

I would put Jeremy Brett at the top for playing Holmes the closest to the character as written.

I think Rathbone and Cumberbatch are both fine actors, but their turns as Holmes suffer a little for being set in different time periods. Same as "Elementary" star Johnny Lee Miller.

So my list would be:

Jeremy Brett
Basil Rathbone (after all, he was the first I saw, when his movies were on TV)
Benedict Cumberthach
Johnny Lee Miller
Robert Downey Jr.

Christopher Plummer

[Mayerling]

Christopher Plummer

Best film/television Holmes:

Rathbone
Downey
Plummer
John Neville
Peter Cushing
Sir Christopher Lee

Cumberbatch
Brett
Johnny Lee Miller
Ronald Howard

Best Moriarty's:

Andrew Scott (I love watching this fun loving psycho in action!)
George Zucco
Lionel Atwill
Henry Daniell

Special mention - Leo McKern, as a comic "Moriarty" in the movie "Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother".

Jeff

[Robert]

It's Holmes, but not as we know him :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N64G0a9-jvE

[sdreid]

My S.H. list:

1-Arthur Wontner
2-Basil Rathbone
3-Jeremy Brett

[Rosella]

For me the definitive Holmes has always been Basil Rathbone. I have a fondness for the series of films he starred in even if dear old Nigel Bruce did play a buffoonish Watson. Many of the actors who portrayed Holmes though were really years too old to play Holmes in his prime. Wontner was in his mid-fifties, Rathbone late forties, for example.

We know that William Gillette played Sherlock Holmes on stage. Presumably Conan Doyle saw his performance at some time. I wonder whether he ever saw any Sherlock Holmes films, the silent 'The Return of Sherlock Holmes' with Clive Brook in 1929, for instance, and what his reaction would have been.

[sdreid]

I certainly haven't viewed them all but Reginald Owen is, in my opinion, the worst Holmes I've seen. Others must have agreed because I think he only played him once.

[Mayerling]

I certainly haven't viewed them all but Reginald Owen is, in my opinion, the worst Holmes I've seen. Others must have agreed because I think he only played him once.

Oddly enough Owen also played Dr. Watson in an early talkie. He is not good, and I found myself wishing there had been more of the villain in that film, Alan Dinehart (a now forgotten actor who was actually very good in all roles). The film was "A Study in Scarlet" (but had little to do with the two part - half anti-Mormon western novella) that Doyle wrote in 1886 and published in December 1887). Dinehart played "Jasper Merridew" (who is not even a character in "A Study in Scarlet" - the anti-hero is Jefferson Hope, avenging his love and her father, Lucy and John Ferrier), and Merridew's name only appears in a far later story (I think "The Adventure of the Empty House" as part of a group of "M" names in Holmes' files - he knocked out Holmes tooth in some confrontation). Merridew did not even have a first name in Doyle's story. Anna May Wong played a femme fatale assistant to Dinehart.

I do like Owen, who was a good actor in dramatic parts (he's the greedy claim jumping villain in "The Call of the Wild" with Clark Gable and Jack Oakie), and comic roles ("Petticoat Fever" - try to catch the unreal dinner party scene where Owen sticks out like a sore thumb without planning to do so). Of course he is best recalled for the 1938 turn as Ebenezer Scrooge in "A Christmas Carol" - possibly the best performance in that role until eclipsed by Alistair Sim and George C. Scott.

Jeff