Sherlock Holmes | |
---|---|
Based on | Characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle |
Directed by | Steve Previn Sheldon Reynolds Jack Gage |
Starring |
Ronald Howard Howard Marion Crawford Archie Duncan |
Composer(s) | Paul Durand |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language(s) | English |
No. of seasons | 1 |
No. of episodes | 39 Episode list |
Production | |
Producer(s) |
Sheldon Reynolds Nicole Milinaire (associate producer) |
Location(s) | France Epinay-sur-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, France Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, Westminster, London, England, UK Victoria Embankment, Westminster, London, England, UK |
Cinematography | Raymond Clunie |
Editor(s) | George Gale Françoise Javet |
Running time | 30 min. |
Production company(s) | Guild Films |
Distributor | Alpha Video Distributors Madacy Entertainment Motion Pictures for Television Reel Media International Timeless Video |
Release | |
Original network | First-run syndication |
Original release | October 18, 1954 – October 17, 1955 |
Sherlock Holmes was a detective television series aired in syndication in the fall of 1954, based on the Sherlock Holmes stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. The 39 half-hour mostly original stories were produced by Sheldon Reynolds and filmed in France by Guild Films, starring Ronald Howard (son of Leslie Howard) as Holmes and Howard Marion Crawford as Watson. Archie Duncan appeared in many episodes as Inspector Lestrade (and in a few as other characters). Richard Larke, billed as Kenneth Richards, played Sgt. Wilkins in about fifteen episodes. The series' associate producer, Nicole Milinaire, was one of the first women to attain a senior production role in a television series.
The series was the first American television adaptation of Doyle's stories, and the only such version until 2012's Elementary.
Sheldon Reynolds had been successful with his 1951 European-made series Foreign Intrigue (in 1956 he directed a movie with the same title starring Robert Mitchum) and decided a Sherlock Holmes series made in France for the American syndication market might also be successful.
Reynolds contacted the Doyle family and began his research into producing a Holmesian television series.
Reynolds desired to present the Holmes of A Study in Scarlet.
I was suddenly stuck by the difference between the character in that book and that of the stage and screen. Here, Holmes was a young man in his thirties, human, gifted, and of a philosophic and scholastic bent, but subject to fateful mistakes which stemmed from his overeagerness and lack of experience.