The Hound of the Baskervilles

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Rathbone and Bruce
Basil Rathbone, left, solves mysteries as Holmes, while Nigel Bruce is befuddled as Watson.

Victdorian Sherlock

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939): Film, 80 minutes; director Sidney Lanfield; writer Ernest Pascal; featuring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Wendy Barrie, Richard Greene, John Carradine

The most popular Holmes, at least for most of the twentieth century, is probably that of Basil Rathbone who, with Nigel Bruce as his bumbling assistant, starred in fourteen Sherlock Holmes movies from 1939 to 1946—as well as in more than two hundred radio dramas.

Rathbone as Holmes
Original Rathbone as Holmes.

Rathbone, an accomplished stage actor, picked up many of the detective's characteristics from Wontner and others who had preceded him in establishing the figure in the public mind. But he played Holmes more intensely, he developed a new chemistry with his Watson, and he added a touch more of his own self-righteousness. As the series went on, he also updated Holmes in the harder-edged style of 1930s and 1940s film sleuths.

The result of his work is an indelibly established cinematic character we've never quite been able to shake, no matter how many fine actors have tried to redefine him.

The first two of Rathbone and Bruce's outings, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), were produced by Hollywood's Twentieth-Century Fox studio. Oddly, these are the only two in the series that take place in Victorian times.

The first film may be the most famous Hound of the Baskervilles yet produced, known for its atmosphere of danger and mystery on the moors. It still thrills.


Scenes from The Hound of the Baskervilles with Rathbone and Bruce.

Rathbone is masterful, beginning his long association with the character that some consider the greatest ever. And Bruce is not as bumbling or comical a Watson as he is to come.

Relatively true to the novel, with only a few liberties taken to make the experience more cinematic, their Hound is also the best of the Rathbone-Bruce series—very good for its time and still holding up today.

— Eric

 

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