Appendix II
The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopaedia puts the number of Holmes film adaptations since 1893 at over 1,200.51
There are literally dozens of actors who on radio, stage, TV and film, have portrayed the great consulting detective. Here are some of the most interesting for various reasons.
Regarding the filming of his tales, Conan Doyle wrote that films were in their infancy when Sherlock Holmes first appeared but he was pleased to sell the rights to a French company for a small sum – later, he had to buy the rights back at ten times the amount he had paid and regarded his original deal as a disastrous one. He was, however, delighted with the initial films by the Stoll Company with Eille Norwood as Holmes (see below), saying in his autobiography that the actor had ‘that rare quality that can only be described as glamour’.
Tom BAKER
Tom Baker, later to play Doctor Who, was cast as Holmes in the four-part 1982 BBC mini-series, The Hound of the Baskervilles. Terence Rigby played Watson.
Jeremy BRETT
For many the quintessential Holmes, Jeremy Brett starred in the Granada TV series, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, from 1984 to 1994. It premiered on American television on 14 March 1985 on Mystery! Channel with Vincent Price as host. Brett had two Watsons in the series – David Burke and Edward Hardwicke. He remarked that Holmes was more difficult to play than Hamlet. His own mercurial moods reflected those that he saw in Holmes. He wanted to be the best Holmes ever.
Clive BROOK
Clive Brook (1887–1974) played Holmes in three movies, starting with the first ‘talkie’ Holmes movie, The Return of Sherlock Holmes in 1929. The final words of the film are perhaps the most famous ones that Holmes never said – ‘Elementary, my dear Watson, Elementary’. He also played Holmes on radio and there is lively discussion about whether he, or William Gillette (see entry below), was the first here.
Sir Michael CAINE
Sir Michael Caine CBE played Holmes to Sir Ben Kingsley’s Watson in Without a Clue (1988). In this much-heralded production, although at the time of release critics did not seem to share the fun, Watson is portrayed as the mastermind and Holmes a second-rate struggling actor who, when sober, does his best to remember the lines given to him. The film won The Special Jury Prize at the 1989 Festival du Film Policier de Cognac.
Henry CAVILL
In 2020 Henry Cavill played Holmes in the film Enola Holmes starring Millie Bobby Brown. The production is based on the work of novelist Nancy Springer, and follows Holmes and his younger sister, Enola. Helena Bonham Carter plays their mother. Reviews were generally favourable.
Peter COOK
Peter Cook played Holmes to Dudley Moore’s Watson in the 1978 spoof of The Hound of the Baskervilles. It is included here as the worst-ever received film featuring Holmes and scored a 0 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This is even more remarkable as it is ablaze with comedic talent including Prunella Scales, Penelope Keith, Kenneth Williams, Roy Kinnear, Denholm Elliot, Irene Handl, Terry Thomas and Spike Milligan. Critics were merciless, especially given the high profile of all the leads. It was directed by Paul Morrisey, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Cook and Moore.
Benedict CUMBERBATCH
This portrayal, in the BBC’s Sherlock, is probably responsible for bringing Sherlock Holmes fervour to millions of new, young fans, especially in Asia. Prime Minister David Cameron was famously asked at a Q and A with young people in China, ostensibly political, if he could have the BBC hurry up and produce more episodes. The series, created by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, starred Benedict Cumberbatch with Martin Freeman as Watson between (so far, as more episodes are often flagged up in the media) 2010 and 2017. The stories are set in the present day, notably of course in London, and modern-day equivalents are given for Conan Doyle’s original features, for example, in the series, John Watson does not publish Holmes’ exploits in print but on an online blog, and in his fight against tobacco Holmes uses nicotine patches – hence a ‘three-pipe problem’ becomes ‘a three patch problem’.
Peter CUSHING
Peter Cushing played both Holmes and his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (The Great Houdini 1976). His initial film as Holmes was also the first of this famous tale to be made in colour – The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1959. He went on to play the detective in sixteen episodes of the BBC series Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes (1965–68), most of which are now lost; the BBC had a policy of wiping and reusing tapes which may have a bearing here. His final outing as Holmes was in The Masks of Death (1984). He disliked Holmes as a very mercurial and arrogant man and remarked that he had to be careful not to annoy the audience in his portrayal; he also once famously remarked that he would rather have a job sweeping Paddington station than play him again.
Johnny DEPP
This actor was the voice of Holmes in the 2018 film Sherlock Gnomes. The film was generally critically panned, although it did make a modest profit worldwide on its $65 million budget. Rotten Tomatoes website said that the greatest mystery about the film was why it existed at all.
Robert DOWNEY Jr
Robert Downey Jr first played Holmes, alongside Jude Law as Watson in the 2009 film Sherlock Holmes, directed by Guy Ritchie. It was followed in 2011 by Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. At the time of writing, a third film is scheduled, to be directed by Dexter Fletcher. Both films so far have been critical and commercial successes, although some fans see the films as more a series of action-packed stunts than homage to the canon. The 2009 film was nominated for two Academy Awards, Best Original Score and Best Art Direction.
Rupert EVERETT
Rupert Everett played Holmes in the 2004 TV film Sherlock Holmes and Case of the Silk Stocking, with Ian Hart as a sprightly Watson, married to an American psychoanalyst. Everett plays Holmes as an elegant, masterful character, with some flashes of decadence and camp. The film gained mainly positive reviews.
Stephen FRY (audio)
The pairing of Holmes and Stephen Fry, who is a lifelong Sherlockian and has recorded the entire canon, was described by The New York Times as a marriage made in heaven – one national treasure reading the adventures of another. The reason for Holmes’ continuing popularity, the same paper suggests, is that he restores order to a world that we often find incomprehensible.
Dean FUJIOKA
Voted Japan’s sexiest man in 2017, Dean Fujioka plays Holmes in the highly praised and entertaining series Sherlock: Untold Stories. Takanori Awata is Watson. Holmes is hugely popular in Japan – you can visit a Holmes-themed bar in Ikebukuru.
William GILLETTE
William Gillette (1853–1937) was an American actor who created the first great defining Holmes. He played Holmes over 1,300 times, incorporating the deerstalker hat – originally ‘added’ by the legendary illustrator, Sidney Paget in The Strand Magazine – and changing a straight pipe to a curved one, possibly because this allowed him to articulate his lines better and it also did not obscure his face from the audience. He also included in the production a magnifying glass, syringe and violin.
After ‘killing off’ Holmes, Conan Doyle found himself in need of money, especially as he was about the build his new house, ‘Undershaw’. Holmes had already appeared on stage a couple of times, but he wrote a brand new five-act play. He offered the part of Holmes firstly to Herbert Beerbohm Tree and then to Henry Irving, both of whom declined. The play was then rejigged involving several people, Conan Doyle going along with this quite happily, the only proviso being that there should be no love interest for Holmes. Gillette then came into the writing picture, famously asking Conan Doyle if he could ‘marry’ Holmes, to which came the reply: ‘You may marry or murder or do what you like with him’. The result was a four-act play, Sherlock Holmes, largely based on A Scandal in Bohemia and The Final Problem, but also incorporating elements and complete passages of dialogue from other parts of the canon. The resulting production opened in Buffalo USA before transferring to Broadway and then to the Lyric Theatre in London. Despite some sniffy critical reviews, the production was a gigantic financial success, the run at the Lyric alone making Gillette an estimated £100,000.
Between 1914 and 1919 Gillette spent over a million dollars on building Gillette Castle in Hadlyme, Connecticut; it had towers, turrets and a 3-mile miniature railroad (by which means the stone for building work had been carried). The castle and grounds eventually transferred to state ownership and has had $11 million dollars spent on it since 2002; it is currently one of the top three tourist attractions in Connecticut. As you might expect, there is some Sherlock Holmes memorabilia to be seen here. At the time of writing, the site is overwhelmingly rated five stars on TripAdvisor www.tripadvisor.co.uk.
Stuart GRANGER
Stewart Granger starred opposite Bernard Fox as Watson and William Shatner as George Stapleton in a made-for-TV American colour film of The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1972. Reviews were appalling and the original idea of further films featuring other detectives was dropped.
Charlton HESTON
The play The Crucifer of Blood, written by Paul Giovanni and based loosely on The Sign of Four ran for just over a month in Los Angeles from December 1980 to mid-January 1981. It starred Charlton Heston as Holmes and, intriguingly considering what was to happen a few years later, Jeremy Brett as Watson (see Jeremy Brett above).
Ronald HOWARD
The son of actor Leslie Howard (whose plane was mysteriously shot down in 1943, deliberately targeted, Ronald believed, by the Nazis possibly because his father had made fun of Goebbels in a film). In the 1980s he wrote In Search of My Father: A Portrait of Leslie Howard in which he explores the shooting down of the aircraft in detail. Ronald Howard has a special place in many Sherlockian hearts for the thirty-nine episodes of Sherlock Holmes, made in 1954, in which he starred opposite Howard Marion-Crawford as Watson. The Director was the American TV producer Sheldon Reynolds (1923–2003), who was to produce another, though less successful, series in 1979, Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson. The last DVD release of the 1954 series was in 2014.
Christopher LEE
Christopher Lee (1922–2015) made several contributions to the canon both as an actor and narrator. He began by playing Sir Henry Baskerville in The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1959 (with Peter Cushing as Holmes). He played Holmes himself in Sherlock Holmes und das Halsband des Todes (Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace) in 1962 and, thirty years later, Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady and Incident at Victoria Falls, both of which received middling reviews although Lee’s performance was praised. He also played Mycroft Holmes in the 1970 production, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. In 1985 he was the narrator of the TV documentary, The Many Faces of Sherlock Holmes.
Vasily LIVANOV
Sherlock fans who discover the Russian-made The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson (1979–86) generally agree that the series is a rich delight. While the settings, such as Baker Street which is actually a street in Riga, Latvia, and many others, bear little resemblance to London and the inside of 221B is quite dark containing many heavy wooden pieces of furniture that you cannot imagine Mrs Hudson tolerating or cleaning, the actual stories stay very faithful to the original texts. Holmes is played by Vasily Livanov and Watson, as a very able man, by Vitaly Solomin; the two have a light and easy chemistry between them. Some changes were necessary to satisfy the Russian censor, for instance, Holmes’ cocaine use is never mentioned. The show was an enormous success on Russian television and today can be bought on DVD with English subtitles. Livanov’s wax statue sits today inside 221B Baker Street.
Henry LLOYD-HUGHES
This actor, who appeared in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) is cast as Holmes in The Irregulars which, at the times of writing, is being produced by Netflix. Royce Pierreson is Watson.
Maksim MATVEYEV
Matveyev stars as Holmes in a new Russian TV production based on the works of Conan Doyle, the third so far, titled Sherlock Holmes in Russia. His first film was Vice in 2007, since which he has starred in many. He was made ‘Honoured Artist of the Russian Federation’ in 2018.
Sir Ian McKELLEN
McKellen plays Holmes in the fine and unusual study Mr Holmes (2015) which sees a 93-year-old Holmes living in retirement, battling to solve one last case as his mind deteriorates. Laura Linney and Milo Parker excel alongside McKellen at the peak of his powers. It gained 86 per cent on Tomatometer (Rotten Tomatoes) and gives us another version of Holmes, far more subtle and human than most.
Jonny LEE MILLER
Another actor, and friend of Benedict Cumberbatch, who portrayed Holmes in the present day, but this time working around Manhattan in the CBS series Elementary, beginning in 2012 and running seven seasons until 2019. Dr Watson is played by Lucy Liu. As there were twenty-four episodes per season, Jonny Lee Miller became at the end of season two, technically at least, the actor to have played Holmes more than any other. Holmes is portrayed as a recovering drug addict ‘exiled’ by his wealthy father to a large brownstone which he shares with Dr Joan Watson, hired by his father as a sober companion. Lee Miller has said that, for him, the shifting and developing friendship between Holmes and Watson is a key element.
Sir Roger MOORE
Many people’s favourite James Bond also makes a decent fist of playing the great consulting detective opposite Patrick Macnee (Steed in The Avengers) and Charlotte Rampling as Irene Adler, in Sherlock Holmes in New York (1976). Here, they battle Professor Moriarty as the ‘Napoleon of Crime’ tries to pull off the ultimate bank robbery. At the end of the film, a clear suggestion is left with the audience that Irene Adler’s son was fathered by Holmes (the child is uncommonly bright and Irene Adler gives Holmes a picture of him to keep). Macnee, in this film playing a bumbling Dr Watson, was to subsequently play a much more astute character alongside Christopher Lee’s Holmes (see entry above). Moore, as James Bond, and Macnee, as Sir Godfrey Tibbett, were to team up again, having enormous fun, in A View to a Kill (1985).
Eille NORWOOD
Anthony Edward Brett (1861–1948) used the stage name Eille Norwood, reputedly in part tribute to a woman he loved called Eilleen and also as he lived in Norwood, south London.
Eille Norwood played Holmes in forty-seven silent films (forty-five were shorts) between 1921 and 1923. He also played Holmes in a stage play The Return of Sherlock Holmes in 1923. Conan Doyle called his interpretation ‘wonderful’.
Peter O’TOOLE
Peter O’Toole voiced four animated productions for Australian television in 1983, one of which was The Hound of the Baskervilles. Peter O’Toole was nominated for an Academy Award eight times without winning.
Igor PETRENKO
A new Russian TV series Sherlock Holmes was aired in 2013 starring Igor Petrenko as a 27-year-old Holmes and Andrei Panin as Watson, an ex-army doctor some fifteen years older. They meet and both subsequently live in cramped and grimy rooms in central London. In this production Holmes is terrible at the violin. The production was generally welcomed. Sadly, Andrei Panin died before completing the eight episodes that make up the series but left sufficient material for the editors to finish the production.
Tim PIGOTT-SMITH
Tim Pigott-Smith (1946–2017) played Watson in William Gillette’s (see entry above) play Sherlock Holmes on Broadway, New York 1974–5. John Wood was Holmes. In 1986 he recorded Valley of Fear for BBC Radio in which he played Holmes opposite Andrew Hilton as Watson. He also wrote three children’s book featuring The Baker Street Irregulars: The Dragon Tattoo (2008), Shadow of Evil and Rose of Africa (both 2009).
Christopher PLUMMER
Murder by Decree was a 1979 joint UK/Canadian production, starring Christopher Plummer as Holmes alongside James Mason as Watson, and directed by Bob Clark. The plot, devised by John Hopkins who also wrote the script for the James Bond film Thunderball, centres around the Jack the Ripper killings. The reviews were greatly mixed.
Basil RATHBONE
The fourteen films starring Basil Rathbone, supported by a bumbling Watson played by Nigel Bruce (1939–46) are evidence that Sherlock and Elementary were not the first attempts to transfer Holmes to a different era. At the start of Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942) we are told that Holmes is ‘ageless, invincible and unchanging’, as he goes into battle with the Nazis. Rathbone, apparently selected for the role at a Hollywood party, became the definitive Holmes, elegant, quick-witted and omniscient, for a generation before tiring of the part by 1946.
Ian RICHARDSON
Ian Richardson CBE (1934–2007) played Holmes in two 1983 TV films, The Sign of Four and The Hound of the Baskervilles. The two films were shot simultaneously. The American producer Sy Weintraub, famous at the time as the force behind the Tarzan films of 1959–68, did not realise that Granada were about to film the now famous series starring Jeremy Brett and, after he found out and following complicated legal manoeuvres, abandoned his plan to film more stories.
Nicholas ROWE
Nicholas Rowe (born 1966) came to fame very early in his career in the 1985 production of Young Sherlock Holmes, reading for the part while still at school. Thirty years later he also appeared as Holmes in a film that Ian McKellen (see entry above) goes to see in the cinema in Mr Holmes (2015). Young Sherlock Holmes gained mixed reviews with some seeing the swashbuckling style as ‘Sherlock Holmes meets Raiders of the Lost Ark’ (a film by Steven Spielberg 1981). It just recouped the production budget of $18 million.
Sir Robert STEPHENS
Sir Robert Stephens (1931–95), acclaimed by many as the greatest actor of his generation, was a confirmed Holmesian and starred in Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, opposite Colin Blakely as Watson, in 1970. Christopher Lee (see entry above) played Mycroft Holmes. There was deliberate and melancholy ambiguity about Holmes’ sexuality and his exact relationship with Watson. Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, the creators and writers of the BBC’s Sherlock, have quoted the film as an inspiration. Critical reception was generally positive. In his 2002 review of the film, Peter Bradshaw describes Stephens’ Holmes as ‘splendidly debonair’.
Yuko TAKEUCHI
Yuko Takeuchi stars as Sara ‘Sherlock’ Shelly Futaba and Shihori Kanjiya as Dr Wato Tachibana in an all-female take on Holmes and Watson, Miss Sherlock, an eight-episode series set in Japan and released in 2018. This is the first major production based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original characters where both leads are women. At the time of writing, the future of the series is under review.
Geoffrey WHITEHEAD
Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson was the name given to a relatively obscure 1979 production starring Geoffrey Whitehead as Holmes, Donald Pickering as Watson and Patrick Newell as Lestrade. It was made on a low budget in Poland and directed by Sheldon Reynolds. It has an enthusiastic fan base as a cult classic, partly because the leads play very well off each other and partly for its humour but it was, unfortunately, hit by post-production issues which meant that the series was never released in the UK. There were twenty-four episodes.
Nicol WILLIAMSON
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution was a ground-breaking 1976 production based on Nicholas Meyer’s 1974 novel of the same name. The author also scripted the film. It starred Nicol Williamson as Holmes, Robert Duval as Watson, Alan Arkin as Freud and Sir Laurence Olivier as Professor Moriarty. Holmes is tricked into going to Vienna to consult Sigmund Freud as Watson fears he is dangerously unstable; it is this departure from the almost omniscient character portrayed by actors up to Rathbone that has led many critics to see this film as the forerunner of the more twitchy, moody-but-brilliant Holmes played notably by Benedict Cumberbatch (BBC’s Sherlock) and Jonny Lee Miller (CBS’ Elementary). The American press was most impressed with the film, the British press less so. It received two Academy Award nominations, for Best Writing and Best Costume Design.
Douglas WILMER
Douglas Wilmer (1920–2016) was an actor noted for playing Holmes in the 1965 series Sherlock Holmes. Nigel Stock played Watson. He was a lifelong fan of the canon and, to criticism from some, played Holmes as an unsympathetic character, declaring it would have been ‘hell’ to share rooms with him. The series was very favourably received by viewers. In 2012 he made a cameo appearance in the final episode of the BBC production of Sherlock. He had various Sherlockian aspects to his life which included running a wine bar called ‘Sherlocks’ in Woodbridge, Suffolk, in the 1980s. In 1991 he was elected an Honorary Member of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London and in 2000 the Baker Street Irregulars awarded him the Irregular Shilling. He died aged 96 on 31 March 2016.
Arthur WONTNER
Before being cast as Sherlock Holmes in 1931, Arthur Wontner had already played many stage roles, including Bunny Manders in Raffles, The Amateur Cracksman (see Walk 6), and Sexton Blake, a character derived from Holmes. Of the five films in which he played Holmes, one – The Missing Rembrandt – is lost. Some love his performances, seeing them as satisfyingly solid, but he is often referred to as ‘the forgotten Holmes’, as shortly afterwards Basil Rathbone was to make the role his own for many years.