The brilliance of Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes

In 1939, Fox Studio’s attempt to bring Conan Doyle’s Victorian superhero to the silver screen proved successful. The inspired casting of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson delivered a definitive rendition of The Hound of the Baskervilles in their first foray as the crime-fighting duo.

A second film under the management of Fox was also a success but the studio ran into negotiating trouble with the Conan Doyle estate and the approach of war made the possession of protagonists from a bygone era less appealing. Universal took up the project and decided to update the stories to the modern day. This provoked protest from their lead actors, but they soon relented and realised the extraordinary opportunity they were given.

From 1939 to 1946, Rathbone and Bruce monopolised the most iconic pairing in all of crime fiction, entertaining an international audience through fourteen films as well as numerous radio plays. As the war escalated and British cinema became an essential cog in the propaganda machine, Holmes’s status as the imaginary embodiment of English intelligence was confirmed and utilised. Instead of Cockney pickpockets and Baronets cheating at baccarat, Holmes and Watson chased Nazis spies and thwarted their traditional adversaries like Professor Moriarty, from providing Britain’s real life enemies with valuable information. In that respect, Rathbone’s Holmes became the fictional World War paragon of persistence and perseverance, galvanising moviegoers into thinking a native ability in the British mind always overcomes insurmountable odds. Only Rathbone, aided by Bruce’s bumbling avuncular, could have created such a distinct version of our favourite detective, one divorced from the canonical literature yet entirely true to the original spirit of Conan Doyle’s creation.

Rathbone was born in South Africa in 1892, Bruce in Mexico in 1895. Both excelled athletically at British boarding schools and led distinguished military careers during the First World War, with Rathbone receiving a Military Cross and Bruce returning to service after suffering a serious leg injury. They were already friends by the time of their appointment as 221B Baker Street’s famous occupants and brought that natural affection for one another to their performance.

Rathbone benefitted from not only resembling Sidney Paget’s illustrations of Holmes, but from being brilliantly equipped to fulfil the stranger obligations of the role. His versatile talent allowed him to seamlessly adopt a myriad of disguises more convincingly than any of his predecessors or successors. His experience of fight scene choreography made any occasion for physical exertion plausible, forceful and graceful. His urbane elocution and precise pronunciation added an authoritative air to the master sleuth’s inevitably satisfying elucidations. He was, for many generations, at least until Brett’s execution of the character in the 1980s, the ultimate onscreen Holmes. Bruce’s companionship further enhanced the effectiveness of this franchise.

There are few sidekicks as famous as Dr Watson. Performances of Sherlock’s best friend have created a strange mantle, one that is quietly handed down from actor to actor, from era to era. Martin Freeman’s lachrymose foil to Cumberbatch’s risible Holmes quibbles like a mournful drama queen. In accordance with the audience’s feelings, Edward Hardwicke echoed David Burke’s awe-struck innocence and humbly worshipped his colleague’s incredible genius. But the best of a good bunch is unquestionably Rathbone’s aide-de-chum. Critics have called Bruce’s Watson an inaccurate rendering of the book original and have found his child-like fumbling and floundering unfitting. But Bruce’s Colonel Blimp style of Holmes’s closest companion is likely the most endearing bit of acting in all of British cinema. He shakes his walrus moustache in times of acute embarrassment, is rash in his deductions, blushes in the presence of beautiful women but most importantly, shows loyalty to his legendary friend with the ingenuous charm of a younger sibling.

Rathbone and Bruce were not confined to the puritanical parameters an adaptation of a literary classic often requires. Disturbing events in the real world drew these adroit actors away from the comfort of simply redoing the books and into a situation where they had to inspire their viewers on a civic level. Holmes for example regularly quotes Churchill at the end of the Universal films and eloquently reminds Watson of the enviable virtues of liberty and democracy. In the opening titles of Rathbone’s Holmes, when the character is transported to the 1940s, the studio explains this embellishment by saying that Holmes is “ageless, invincible and unchanging”, and is therefore capable of “solving significant problems of the present day”. It is a precedent that has made less faithful but more fruitful productions of Holmes and Watson not only possible but desirable.

It would be pushing it to say Rathbone is the greatest Holmes ever (that accolade is arguably Jeremy Brett’s), but his rendition enriches the tradition of Holmes on television and in film and sets a professional standard all newcomers to the role must strive to match.