Sherlock Holmes Baffled
"Sherlock Holmes Baffled" marks the first in an observable trend of early film-makers to show the character as a figure of fun; in this case the somewhat louchely dressed Holmes is left "baffled" by a burglar, in contrast with the detective prowess displayed by his literary namesake. William K. Everson in his book "The Detective in Film" noted that "Sherlock Holmes Baffled", in common with all other silent detective films "labored under the difficulty of not being able to conduct prolonged interrogations or oral deductions ... the stress was on mystery or physical action rather than on literary-derived sleuthings." It was only in 1916 that William Gillette's "Sherlock Holmes" attempted a serious adaptation of Conan Doyle's character. Michael Pointer has suggested that the appearance and costume of the anonymous actor in "Sherlock Holmes Baffled" is an imitation of Gillette's stage portrayal of Holmes. Gillette's play "Sherlock Holmes" had made its Broadway debut at the Garrick Theater on November 6, 1899.
Sherlock Holmes
William Gillette's 1899 play "Sherlock Holmes, or The Strange Case of Miss Faulkner" was a synthesis of several Conan Doyle stories. In addition to its popularity, the play is significant because it, rather than the original stories, introduced one of the key visual qualities commonly associated with Holmes today: his calabash pipe. The play also formed the basis for the Gillette's 1916 film, "Sherlock Holmes". In his lifetime, Gillette performed as Holmes some 1,300 times. In the early 1900s, H. A. Saintsbury took over the role from Gillette for a tour of the play. Between this play and Conan Doyle's own stage adaptation of "The Adventure of the Speckled Band", Saintsbury portrayed Holmes over 1,000 times.
Basil Rathbone played Holmes and Nigel Bruce played Watson in fourteen U.S. films (two for 20th Century Fox and a dozen for Universal Pictures) from 1939 to 1946, and in "The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" on the Mutual radio network from 1939 to 1946 (before the role of Holmes passed to Tom Conway). While the Fox films were period pieces, the Universal films abandoned Victorian Britain and moved to a then-contemporary setting in which Holmes occasionally battled Nazis.