Sherlock Holmes series
Critique • At the movies
Arthur Wontner, right, is Holmes in five 1930s films, four times with Ian Fleming as Watson.
Iconic Sherlock
The Sleeping Cardinal (1931): Also knonw as Sherlock Holmes' Fatal Hour; film, 84 minutes; director Leslie S. Hiscott; writers Hiscott, H. Fowler Mear and Cyril Twyford; featuring Arthur Wontner, Ian Fleming, Philip Hewland, Minnie Rayner, Norman McKinnel, Jane Welsh
The Missing Rembrandt (1932): Film, 84 minutes; director Leslie S. Hiscott; writers Hiscott, H. Fowler Mear and Cyril Twyford; featuring Arthur Wontner, Ian Fleming, Philip Hewland, Minnie Rayner, Miles Manning, Herbert Lomas
The Sign of Four: Sherlock Holmes' Greatest Case (1932): Film series, 75 minutes; director Graham Cutts; writer W.P. Lipscomb; featuring Arthur Wontner, Ian Hunter, Isla Bevan, Herbert Lomas, Miles Malleson, Clare Greet
The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes (1935): Film, 94 minutes; director Leslie S. Hiscott; writers H. Fowler Mear and Cyril Twyford; featuring Arthur Wontner, Ian Fleming, Minnie Rayner, Lyn Harding, Charles Mortimer, Wilfrid Caithness, Leslie Perrins
Silver Blaze (1937): Also known as Murder at the Baskervilles; film, 71 minutes; featuring Arthur Wontner, Ian Fleming, Minnie Rayner, Lyn Harding, John Turnbull, Arthur Goullet
The first widely acclaimed Holmes of the talking-picture age was Arthur Wontner, who was in late middle-age when he began a series of five films in the 1930s.
Wontner's Holmes is a gentlemanly figure of the contemporary period, offset by a bon vivant Watson, played four times by the smooth Ian Fleming (sometimes credited as Jan Fleming and, no, not the James Bond author). The other time Watson was played by the stiffer Ian Hunter.
The relatively short feature films were shot by American studio Warner Brothers in England with British actors, the plots taken from Doyle's stories and novels, as well as incorporating entirely new material.
Recently discovered origins
The first, The Sleeping Cardinal (1931), combines some elements from two middle-period Arthur Conan Doyle stories, "The Empty House" and "The Final Problem", with additional original material.
The film was thought to have been lost but a print of the film has recently been discovered. You may find it on classic streaming services under the Americanized name, Sherlock Holmes' Fatal Hour.
Today's viewers may find The Sleeping Cardinal slow and ponderous, with a too obvious conclusion, but for its time it must have been enthralling. And perhaps Holmes is too kindly, too soft-spoken, for the solitary, eccentric genius we've come to know and love.
But Wontner created in this film the look and manner of the intelligent screen character that future actors would try to match. And Fleming is a capable, if dapper, partner in detection.
Case of the missing Sherlock
Next up in the Wontner series should be The Missing Rembrandt, partly adapted from Doyle's story "The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" and starring the same lead actors as in The Sleeping Cardinal. But you might never get a chance to see this possible masterpiece as its prints are truly lost.
Novel treatment
This was followed a few months later by The Sign of Four. It contains the basic elements of Doyle's identically named novel, though told in a different order. While the novel starts with our detecting duo entertaining the fatherless young woman with a note promising her riches, the screenplay first gives us the background tale of the men, including her father, who find a treasure and fall out over it with deadly consequences—which removes (for the viewer) some of the need for Holmes's detection.
The movie Watson, played this once by Hunter, does however fall in love and proposes marriage in the end, as the book Watson does. When Holmes is perplexed by this eventuality, Watson gets to return, "Elementary, my dear Holmes, elementary," putting a twist on the phrase he's put up with a couple of times already.
Again the film is somewhat leisurely and melodramatic for a modern audience, and the sound—at least on one version I found—is horrid. But it does open up the action a bit, including some chase and fight scenes, as well as some delightful episodes with a disguised Holmes that might still surprise you.
The villain makes the hero
The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes (1935) is adapted from Doyle's novel The Valley of Fear, which takes place mainly in the United States and in which Holmes appears only about a third of the time. But the film pretty well sticks with him in Britain.
Wontner set the image of Holmes.
The American story here is told by a main character (not Watson) and dramatized as a flashback about halfway through the story.
This adaptation also drags in Holmes's arch-nemesis Professor Moriarty, who is not in Doyle's book, in the person of the veteran Welsh actor Lyn Harding (who'd been a different villain in 1931's The Speckled Band). This actually appears grafted on, as even some of the other characters comment that the mystery seems to have nothing to do with Moriarty.
But in this version of Valley of Fear Holmes is, of course, proven right about the professor's involvement.
And, truth be told, Harding plays a great villain and adds some drama to the flick.
Going out in a blaze of mediocrity
The last film in the series, orwiginally named Silver Blaze (1937), is partly adapted from the lead story of the same title in Doyle's second Holmes collection. But after Basil Rathbone's The Hound of the Baskervilles became a big hit, the name of Wontner's film was changed to Murder at the Baskervilles when it was released four years later in the AMerican maket to capitalize on the connection.
The Silver Blaze story is changed drastically from the book, bringing in elements of Doyle's novel The Hound of the Baskervilles. The story supposedly takes place twenty years after the Hound case and Sir Henry Baskerville has invited Holmes and Watson for a return visit. While there, the duo find themselves involved in the racehorse-stealing affair outlined in "Silver Blaze".
Once again, Lyn Harding is imported into the story as Moriarty, the brains behind the crime. This confuses the storyline even further for fans of Doyle's writing since the arch-villain Moriarty has already been eliminated at this stage of the books and, in any case, it's hard to imagine what Moriarty could have to do with the largely American-based events.
This most widely available of the Wontner films may not be the best Holmes vehicle for him to go out on. However, despite the frustrating plot for Sherlockian purists, Murder at the Baskervilles is worth viewing to see how he laid down the template for all would-be Holmeses to follow.
Scenes from Arthur Wontner's Murder at the Baskervilles in 1937.
This and other available Wontner films are in generally poor condition, with sound especially deteriorated. The mysteries are rather slow moving and the production stagy, as might be expected in such early movies. But many consider Wontner the Holmes who comes closest to Doyle's conception in the black-and-white days of movie-making.
After Wontner's reign, Rathbone developed the character in a different direction and became a more contemporary Holmes in the public mind.
But, speaking of Wontner and Rathbone, here's an interesting tidbit for film fans: did you know the two had once acted together on stage? And been arrested together?
In 1926 they had both appeared in New York in The Captive, a play that touched on lesbianism. After running for seventeen weeks, the production became the target of a local politician and the cast were arrested for immorality. Charges were dropped after theatre management agreed to shut down the play.
Taught them a lesson, I suppose, as they both turned to roles as defenders of the law.
— Eric
