The films of Sherlock Holmes

The location is a room in Baker Street, somewhere on the edge of eternity.

It is a room endlessly the same, yet it has changed shape and perspective a hundred different times in a hundred films made by a myriad of film companies. Outside on the fogbound streets, one hears the clatter of horse-drawn carriages along with modern motor cars, and the footfalls of Victorian villains and Nazi spies. Sherlock Holmes lives in this room, his features changing with the visages of some of the foremost actors of the twentieth century, yet always essentially the same. The greatest detective of literature has become the super-sleuth of the screen: more films have been devoted to his career than any other cinematic hero. He is the most popular screen detective of all time. This book is a chronicle of Sherlock Holmes's screen career. It is a study in atmosphere. For the reason Sherlock Holmes, film detective, has endured so well may be the trappings, both Victorian and later, which have surrounded him and his friend Dr. Watson across six screen decades. Many great actors have played Holmes on the screen and in these pages you'll meet them all. John Barrymore, Clive Brook, Arthur Wontner, Basil Rathbone, Peter Cushing, and Nicol Williamson are only a few of the interpreters of the great detective. You will also meet the troubled baronets and other frightened clients, the Scotland Yard men and master criminals, the regents and the riffraff which peopled the world of the great detective--that twilight, gas-lit, sinister world that is forever Sherlock's London. This book contains some of the best mystery motion pictures ever made. It is carefully researched and illustrated with hundreds of rare photographs. It is the history of Holmes on screen.