Sherlock Holmes (1939 film series)

A series of fourteen films based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories were released between 1939 and 1946; the British actors Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce played Holmes and Dr. John Watson, respectively. The first two films in the series were produced by 20th Century Fox and released in 1939. The studio stopped making the films after these, but Universal Studios acquired the rights from the Doyle estate and produced a further twelve films.

Although the films from 20th Century Fox had large budgets, high production values and were set in the Victorian era, Universal Studios updated the films to have Holmes fighting the Nazis, and produced them as B pictures with lower budgets. Both Rathbone and Bruce continued their roles when the series changed studios, as did Mary Gordon, who played the recurring character Mrs. Hudson.

In the 1970s four of the Universal-produced films fell into the public domain when their copyright was not renewed. These four films were restored and colourised. Some of the films in the series had become degraded over time, with some of the original negatives lost and others suffering from nitrate deterioration because of the unstable cellulose nitrate film. The UCLA Film and Television Archive restored the series, putting the films onto modern polyester film, in a process that was jointly paid for by UCLA, Warner Bros. and Hugh Hefner.

In 1938 Basil Rathbone was cast as Sherlock Holmes for the 20th Century Fox adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles; Nigel Bruce was chosen to play Dr. John Watson.Darryl F. Zanuck, Gregory Ratoff and Gene Markey made the choice of Rathbone as Holmes during a conversation at a party in Hollywood. Filming began on 29 December 1938 under the direction of Sidney Lanfield and the film was released on 31 March 1939. Later that year a second film, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, followed, which was based on Sherlock Holmes, an 1899 stage play written by William Gillette. Although 20th Century Fox planned to make further Holmes films with Rathbone and Bruce, complications in negotiations between the company and the estate of the character's creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, brought a premature end to the studio's involvement; their decision to withdraw from further productions was also because the Second World War meant that "foreign agents and spies were much more typical and topical than the antiquated criminal activities of Moriarty and the like". On 2 October 1939, a month after the release of Adventures, Rathbone and Bruce resumed their roles on radio, in The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, with episodes written by Dennis Green and Anthony Boucher. Rathbone left the series in May 1946, while Bruce remained until 1947, with Tom Conway replacing Rathbone.

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