Maurice Costello
Costello was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Irish immigrants Ellen (née Fitzgerald; born 1853) and Thomas Costello (born 1852). He made his film debut in 1908, but was long believed to have debuted in "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; or, Held for Ransom" (1905), supposedly playing the lead in what is regarded as the first serious film to feature the character of Sherlock Holmes, since it was preceded only by the 30-second comedy film "Sherlock Holmes Baffled" (1900). However, Holmesian scholar Leslie S. Klinger has written that the identification of Costello in the role is flawed. Klinger states that the first identification of Costello with the role was in Michael Pointer's "Public Life of Sherlock Holmes" published in 1975 but Pointer later realized his error and wrote to Klinger stating
Harry Arthur Saintsbury
In 1910, Saintsbury played Sherlock Holmes for five months in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's own stage play "The Speckled Band". Charles Millward took over the role when the production moved to New York, but Saintsbury returned as Holmes in a West End revival of the play in 1921. Saintsbury played the role of Holmes again in a 1916 film, "The Valley of Fear", which is believed lost, opposite Booth Conway as Professor Moriarty. By the time the film was made, Saintsbury had played Holmes more than a thousand times on stage, and by 1921 he had taken this total to 1,400 performances. His interpretation of Holmes was notably restrained and made a powerful impression on the young Charlie Chaplin, who wrote of Saintsbury in 1964: