England’s Secret Weapon

291 Pages·11.722 MB·English

by  Amanda J. FIELD

Contents
Front Matter .....................................................3
Title Page .....................................................3
Publisher Information ...................................4
List of Illustrations ........................................5
Acknowledgements ........................................8
England’s Secret Weapon ...................................9
Introduction .................................................9
The Game’s Afoot ........................................32
‘Watson - The Needle!’ .................................75
This Blessed Plot, This England ..................119
A Mythical Kingdom ................................161
Feline, Not Canine ...................................204
Conclusion ...............................................245
End Matter....................................................252
Bibliography Of Works Cited .....................252
Books ...................................................252
Periodicals ............................................261
Websites ...............................................265
Unpublished Sources .............................266
Filmography .............................................275
Also Available ...........................................289
ENGLAND’S SECRET
WEAPON
The Wartime Films of Sherlock
Holmes
Amanda J. Field
Publisher Information
First published in 2009 by Middlesex University Press
Fenella Building
The Burroughs
Hendon
London NW4 4BT
www.mupress.co.uk
Digital Edition converted and distributed in 2012 by
Andrews UK Limited
www.andrewsuk.com
Copyright ©2009, 2012 Amanda J. Field
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic,mechanical,photocopying, recording or
otherwise,without the prior written permission of the copyright
holder for which application should be addressed in the first
instance to the publishers.No liability shall be attached to the
author, the copyright holder or the publishers for loss or damage
of any nature suffered as a result of reliance on the reproduction of
any of the contents of this publication or any errors or omissions in
its contents.
List of Illustrations
Fig. 1: Frederic Dorr Steele illustration for Collier’s magazine (1903)
Fig. 2: William Gillette as Holmes
Fig. 3: Eille Norwood as Holmes (1920s)
Fig. 4: Clive Brook as Holmes (1929)
Fig. 5: Arthur Wontner as Holmes (1930s)
Fig. 6: The Hound of the Baskervilles poster (1939)
Fig. 7: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes poster (1939)
Fig. 8: Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror poster (1942)
Fig. 9: Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon poster (1942)
Fig. 10: Sherlock Holmes in Washington poster (1943)
Fig. 11: The Scarlet Claw poster (1944)
Fig. 12: The House of Fear poster (1945)
Fig. 13: Spider Woman poster (1944)
Fig. 14: The Pearl of Death poster (1944)
Fig. 15: The Woman in Green poster (1946)
Fig. 16: Terror by Night poster (1946)
Fig. 17: Dressed to Kill poster (1946)
Fig. 18: A distinctive profile: Rathbone in The Hound of the
Baskervilles
Fig. 19: Graveyard in The Hound of the Baskervilles
Fig. 20: Staircase to 221B Baker Street in The Adventures of
Sherlock Holmes
Fig. 21: Filming The Hound of the Baskervilles on the cyclorama
sound stage
Fig. 22: Lamplighter in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Fig. 23: Victorian city-wear in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Fig. 24: Dr Mortimer meeting Sir Henry off the ship in The Hound
of the Baskervilles
Fig. 25: ‘Wasp waist’ costume in The Hound of the Baskervilles
Fig. 26: Ann Brandon’s ‘arrow’ hat in The Adventures of Sherlock
Holmes
Fig. 27: Mediaeval dress in The Hound of the Baskervilles
Fig. 28: Needle cartoon from The Hound of the Baskervilles
pressbook
Fig. 29: Denis Conan Doyle letter from Sherlock Holmes and the
Voice of Terror pressbook
Fig. 30: ‘East Wind’ setting in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of
Terror
Fig. 31: Newsreel-style opening to Sherlock Holmes and the Voice
of Terror
Fig. 32: Swiss bierkeller in Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon
Fig. 33: Interior of 221B Baker St in Sherlock Holmes and the
Voice of Terror
Fig. 34: Typical modern art deco room of the 1940s
Fig. 35: Men from the ministry in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice
of Terror
Fig. 36: Soundwave monitor in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of
Terror
Fig. 37: Watson in hallway in Sherlock Holmes Faces Death
Fig. 38: ‘VR’ bullet-holes in Sherlock Holmes Faces Death
Fig. 39: ‘The Creeper’ in The Pearl of Death
Fig. 40: Spanish lobby card for The House of Fear
Fig. 41: Firelit café in The Scarlet Claw
Fig. 42: Inside the church, from The Scarlet Claw
Fig. 43: Shipboard scene in The Pearl of Death
Fig. 44: Nightclub in The Woman in Green
Fig. 45: Sari costume in Spider Woman
Fig. 46: Clawlike dress in Spider Woman
Fig. 47: Phallic hat in Spider Woman
Fig. 48: Interior of Adrea Spedding’s apartment in Spider Woman
Fig. 49: Actress Evelyn Ankers in pressbook for The Pearl of Death
Fig. 50: Vivian Vedder in Terror by Night
Fig. 51: Booth’s Gin advertisement with Basil Rathbone
Illustration sources and copyright acknowledgements
The Arthur Conan Doyle Collection, Richard Lancelyn Green
Bequest, generously made the following photographs from their
collection available: Figs 1-2, 5-13, 15, 21, 23, 25, 27-28, 35-36,
46-47 and 50. A number of illustrations are screenshots (Figs 18-20,
22, 24, 26, 30-33, 37-39 and 41-43) taken by the author; all others
not listed above are from the author’s own collection.
All images from The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures
of Sherlock Holmes are the copyright of Twentieth Century-Fox.
All images from the other 12 films in the Holmes series are the
copyright of Universal. The art deco room (Fig 34) is the copyright
of the Geffrye Museum and the Booth’s Gin advertisement (Fig. 51)
is the copyright of Booth’s Gin.
Cover image: publicity photo of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as
Sherlock Holmes and DrWatson in the 1942–1946 series of films
from Universal. British Film Institute: Stills, Posters and Designs.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Portsmouth City Museum for the opportunity to
work on the Arthur Conan Doyle Collection, Richard Lancelyn
Green Bequest, from the initial receipt of the boxes through to final
cataloguing, enabling me to have early access to many documents;
and in particular to Sarah Speller for permission to use some of the
stills in the Collection. Also to Ned Comstock at the University of
Southern California for making the Universal production files for the
films available; Lauren Buisson at UCLA for access to the Twentieth
Century-Fox legal files; the Margaret Herrick Library for Production
Code Administration files; the British Film Institute library for
access to trade and consumer magazines; and Catherine Cooke at
Westminster Libraries for access to books in the Sherlock Holmes
Collection. Lastly, without the encouragement and enthusiasm of
Dr Michael Williams of the University of Southampton, and the
willingness of my husband John Bull to watch the Holmes series
with me over and over again, this book would certainly not have
come to fruition.
Introduction
‘Though the world explode, these two survive And it is
always eighteen ninety five’
Vincent Starrett1
It is midnight. Clouds scud across the face of the Houses of
Parliament as Big Ben begins its familiar chime. The chime continues
while the scene fades out to reveal a Baker Street road-sign lit by a
gas flare: as the camera pans along a brick wall, the flare makes dimly
visible ‘221B’ elegantly sign-written on the entrance door below.
The scene cuts to a close-up of an article in The Times, about the
arrival from Canada of Sir Henry Baskerville, heir to the Baskerville
estate. In a midshot, we see Dr Watson seated comfortably at a
library-table, scissors in hand, preparing to clip the item out of the
paper. He complains to a pacing, dressing-gowned Holmes that he
can’t understand why Holmes wants all the clippings about ‘this
Baskerville fellow’. ‘My conjecture’, replies Holmes, as the camera
cuts to his face in profile, ‘is that he’ll be murdered’. ‘Murdered?’
echoes a baffled Watson. ‘It will be very interesting to see if my
deductions are accurate’, replies Holmes, sucking contemplatively
on his calabash pipe. After some showy deductions about a walking
stick, left behind earlier that evening (Watson confidently getting it
all wrong, and Holmes affectionately putting him right), the door
opens and Mrs Hudson ushers in the stick’s owner, Dr Mortimer.
‘Mr Holmes’, the man says in an urgent tone, ‘you’re the one man in
all England who can help me’.
This scene, from The Hound of the Baskervilles, a Twentieth
Century-Fox film released in 1939, contains the first glimpse of Basil
Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson in what would
become a long-running series spanning the years of war in Europe.
It introduced viewers to a new interpretation of Sherlock Holmes,
a character with whom they probably already had considerable
[1] Starrett (1942) unpaginated.
familiarity gained through the Doyle stories, previous film and stage
‘incarnations’, radio series, comic strips, parodies, or a combination
of all these. Holmes had been a transmedia figure for more than
40 years when this film was released: in terms of cinema alone,
this was his 100th appearance and Basil Rathbone was the 23rd
actor to play the character. This meant that audiences would have
certain preconceptions of how Holmes should look and behave, and
would judge this new interpretation as to whether it represented
the ‘real’ Holmes. Which particular point of origin they would
use as a yardstick is, however, debatable: Christopher Frayling has
pointed out just how far from the literary ‘original’ these perceived
constructs can stray:
Frankenstein has become confused with his own
creation....Dracula has become an attractive lounge
lizard in evening dress; Mr Hyde has become a simian
creature who haunts the rookeries of Whitechapel in East
London; and Sherlock Holmes, dressed in his obligatory
deerstalker and smoking a meerschaum pipe, says
‘elementary my dear Watson’ whenever he exercises his
powers of deduction. Not one of these re-creations came
directly from the original stories on which they were
based: successive publics have re-written them - filling in
the gaps, re-directing their purposes, making them easier
to remember and more obviously dramatic - to ‘fit’ the
modern experience.2
Although Frayling’s comments were written from the perspective of
the 1990s, they are equally applicable to the representation of these
characters in 1939. Holmes’ evolution had been gradual, involving
layers of accretions that had built onto the original Doyle creation,
such as the deerstalker hat, drawn on the character by Sidney Paget
in his illustration of ‘The Boscombe Valley Mystery’ for The Strand
[2] Frayling (1996) p.13. Thomas Leitch makes similar observations about the
accrual of characteristics (Leitch 2007:209).