The Sherlock Holmes File

The figure in deerstalker and Inverness cape, smoking a calabash pipe and repeating "Elementary, my dear Watson," is familiar to all. Yet none of the features of this image of Sherlock Holmes are to be found in Conan Doyle, they have been introduced by artists who illustrated the stories and actors who played the part.

Some of the artistic and theatrical interpretations of Sherlock Holmes and his world were extraordinarily accurate; others were interesting misrepresentations of the original character. Here is a vivid demonstration of the great variety of imaginative ways that Sherlock Holmes has been seen in the entertainment media - films, the stage, television - and commercially - comics, cereal boxes, cigarette advertising, games, and so forth. Rare and hitherto unpublished posters, advertisements, and stills have been included.

Here is a sampling of the fascinating material to be found in this largest picture gallery of Holmes ever assembled: "Which of You Is Holmes": a chapter on impersonators, comprising over twenty stage and at least thirty screen and television Holmeses, which includes comments from the actors on the problems of portraying him. "I want to make money on 'Holmes' quick, so as to be through with it," William Gillette is quoted as saying, and Alan Wheatley thought, "In my opinion he just seemed to be an insufferable prig," while today's Robert Stephens has said, "When I did it, it was more melancholic, more disillusioned." An amazing collection of more than seventy pictures of Holmes in and out of disguise, in and out of Baker Street, with and without Watson, and particularly when tackling that demoniac dog in The Hound of the Baskervilles (a comparison of the seven film and two television adaptations of this best-known Sherlock Holmes story) "Furnished Rooms to Let" shows and describes the various settings used in the dramatizations, both interiors of the famous consulting room and exteriors of Baker Street: including the versions of the confrontation there between the two Master Minds

The file even has a firsthand account of that unique expedition of 1968 when Holmes, Watson, and a handful of characters from the adventures toiled through Switzerland to re-enact the Holmes-Moriarty death struggle at the Reichenbach Falls.