Adaptations of Sherlock Holmes
It has been estimated that Sherlock Holmes is the most prolific screen character in the history of cinema. The first known film featuring Holmes is "Sherlock Holmes Baffled", a one-reel film running less than a minute, made by the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in 1900. This was followed by a 1905 Vitagraph film "Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; or, Held for Ransom", with H. Kyrle Bellew and J. Barney Sherry in unlisted roles. It was long believed that the film starred Maurice Costello as Sherlock Holmes, but 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
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Irene Adler, who is in the first short story, "A Scandal in Bohemia", is prominent in many modern adaptations, despite only appearing in one story. Often in modern adaptations, she is portrayed as a love interest for Holmes, as in Robert Doherty's "Elementary" and the BBC's "Sherlock", even though in the story itself, the narration claims: "It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler." In his "Sherlock Holmes Handbook", Christopher Redmond notes "the Canon provides little basis for either sentimental or prurient speculation about a Holmes-Adler connection."