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 (1939 film series)
The two 20th Century Fox films—"The Hound of the Baskervilles" and "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes"—had survived complete and in good condition, but those in the Universal series suffered badly over the years, as they passed through the hands of different copyright owners. In 1993 the UCLA Film and Television Archive started a restoration project on the series after the unstable cellulose nitrate film was found to be suffering from deterioration. Restoration on the first six films—"The Woman in Green", "The Pearl of Death", "Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon", "The Scarlet Claw", "Terror by Night" and "The Spider Woman"—took four years from 1993; the costs for the restoration were met by UCLA and Hugh Hefner, who was a fan of the Rathbone-Holmes series. From 1998 Warner Bros. matched Hefner's funding and the remaining six films—"Dressed to Kill", "Pursuit to Algiers", "Sherlock Holmes Faces Death", "The House of Fear", "Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror" and "Sherlock Holmes in Washington"—were then restored, a process that was completed in 2001.