MOVIES, SHERLOCK HOLMES, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), VIDEO
Published on October 8, 2012
Comments 72

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, photo montage

written by
Hally, one of our readers, made this lovely montage of the captures from The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), which I’m hosting on my Youtube account for her. No credit to me please, all to her! Isn’t it gorgeous.

72 Comments

    • NeveR says

      Thanks! I almost hate to say “he wasn’t actually Sir Basil” – but sadly…he wasn’t actually Sir Basil. He was never knighted. That was just something that kicked in on Wiki and then spread all over the web. Shame though. He ought to have been knighted.

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      • How do you know all these things you claim? says

        I don’t understand. The Wiki article gave details so him having a knighthood.

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        • Marcia Jessen says

          Anybody can write anything on wikipedia, so it’s not exactly a reliable source of information. People are supposed to cite sources for their information, but no source was cited for the claim that Basil was knighted. Anna, Neve and I did independent research and found that there’s no notice in the London Gazette about Basil being knighted, and he’s not listed in Burke’s Peerage. Anna wrote to The Imperial Society of Knights Bachelor, and that organization confirmed that Basil Rathbone was neither a Knight Bachelor nor a KBE.

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  9. Halloween Lady says

    I love the chemistry between Holmes and the damsels in distress. You can tell what a charmer he was

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  11. Hannah says

    This is a really wonderful recording of one of Baz’s favourite songs ‘Annie Laurie’

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  12. Valerie Hanzner says

    Oh, Basil, why weren’t you born sixty or seventy years later! If you were forty or fifty now you’d be just perfect and I could dream about one day meeting you!

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    • Peg says

      I know what you mean. It’s really sad to think we can’t ever even meet him like a fan, let alone have any chance of the fantasies coming true. Oh so many fantasies!I’m not the only one am I?

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      • Nanny says

        No you are not the only one. Maybe we should tell our favoirite Basil fantasies! Mine involves him dressed as Levasseur the pirate 😉

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        • Fancy Pants Mare says

          Ok, here’s mine. It’s the 1940s (I have a time machine or something ok, never mind), and I’m walking along Sunset Boulevard late at night when some drunk decides to hit on me. And as I’m fending him off, a car pulls up and Basil’s driving and he asks if I’m ok, and I say “err not really,” so he offers me a lift back to wherever I’m staying (I haven’t filled in a lot of details yet). Thing is the inside of the car bit is ver detailed and actually comes from a dream that was so vivid I could smell the leather interiors and see all these details of the old fashioned dashboard which was like wooden in places.

          Anyhow he drives me back to where I’m staying , only when we get there it’s all locked up and he says, “oh well, I can find you a room for the night.” So we like drive up to his house, which in my fantasy is really up in the hills overlooking Hollywood, and it’s huge, taken from the photos on the basilrathbone website. So, we drive through these big gates and all these dogs run out to greet him, and he takes me into a big entrance hall, and in the light is when I realize for the first time who he is. And he looks just oh so gorgeous like he does in the forties when I think he was in his prime, and just so sexy and manly. And there’s a butler who takes me up to the room I’m going to stay in.

          Oh but it’s such a long story, involving being given a job there and everything. Suffice to say, Ouida doesn’t like me much 😉

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          • Carolinapantherfan says

            I want to read this fic – and then watch the R-rated movie! My fantasy atm is him as Holmes – especially that scene where’s he’s in the bar talking to Kitty. His face especially in that scene, but really in all his Sherlock films from the early and middle forties is just about perfect. So handsome and experienced looking, and just a tad world-weary and with hidden sadness, like he understands about life and pain and love and things. I think Sherlock at this time has known love and great loss somewhere and knows what Kitty is going through. His face is so full of gentle empathy and unspoken pain. So my fantasy is to be whoever Sherlock has loved and lost! He never talks about her of course, probably Watson knows. but would never talk to him about it or tell anyone. Who she is I don’t know, I just fantasize being her and being loved by this gorgeous gentle man with the most brilliant mind in the world!

            *dies*

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        • Juanita says

          Oh I LOVE him as Levasseur. I read somewhere Daphne DuMaurier based the French pirate in Frennchman’s Creek on Basil as Levasseur. She jad a huge crush on him when she was a teenager.

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        • Granny Gingrich says

          I’m afraid most of my fantasies are Holmes-related. For example, I’m often Ann Brandon on The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and we have a few little near-miss moments before I go off to marry my fiance and quietly break his heart! That bit where he carries her in to Lady Thingy’s house was the trigger. Oh so romantic. Oh, so envy the actress. Imagine, she must have spent the best part of a day being carried by Basil while they shot different takes. I hope she enjoyed it a much as his fangirls would!

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        • Gaynor says

          Well, my grandmother met him when she worked at Universal Studios as a receptionist. This was in the 1940’s. She told me he was one of the nicest and least starry of the actors working there but he used to have a hard time remembering his lines and you could see him pacing up and down outside, chain smoking and mumbling to himself, running over the script and trying to remember his lines. – Sorry, LOL, this isn’t a fantasy, but I really was super jealous of my granma!

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        • Wanda says

          OMFG, Levasseur is so unbelievably hot! He’s almost hotter than Errol Flynn in that movie.

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  13. Hally says

    I found this on Youtube, Baz being himself, and so funny and charming. I love his boyish smile!

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  14. Hally says

    Thanks for liking it! I’m going to start a Youtube and Tumblr for my Basil and Sherlock Holmes fan vids!

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  16. Chris says

    Who is the gent who turns up just after the shot of Watson lying in the road?

    BTW – Bath won on Uni Challenge! Were you watching?

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    • Remy says

      That’s the man who offers to help Watson when he finds him lying in the road. It’s LOL funny!

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  17. Marcia Jessen says

    A friend of mine was singing the praises of Ronald Howard (son of Leslie Howard) as Sherlock Holmes in the 1950s. I haven’t seen them. Does anyone here have any thoughts on Ronald Howard as Sherlock Holmes?

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    • Margaret G says

      I saw him a while back, and wasn’t overly impressed, but my mother was a very big fan

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      • Thomas Dekker says

        I got all bewlidered around about the point where I thought Holmes said “He had a large anchor tied to the back of his head which was visible from our window” 🙂

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      • Marcia Jessen says

        Thank you, Ken! Well, he’s no Basil Rathbone, but he was a good Holmes! I can see why my friend likes him. He looks a lot like his father, too.

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      • roesbette says

        No, son of Leslie Howard, British film actor of the 1930s who was killed in a tragic plane crash around 1941-42. Ronald is a dead ringer for him.

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    • Denis says

      He’s ok. But rather ordinary. He’s intelligent, but you don’t get the feeling of terrific nervous energy you get from both Rathbone and Brett. But I’d put him ahead of most of the rest of the “gang” except possibly Cumberbatch, who is impressive.

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  18. Jenny says

    I really like the delicate sepia tones in the beginning and end, and the music is beautiful. Elegiac, as someone said.

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  19. Helen says

    He was by far the most romantic and beautiful and canonical – in looks – Sherlock Holmes

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  20. Kendrick says

    This is beautifully done. Thanks to Hally! It’s nice to see something respectful to Rathbone’s talent and not carving up his private life

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    • Barb Edwards says

      I don’t think that’s fair. His personal life is still part of his life, and what a blog like this is about. And I don’t think people have been doing anything unreasonable. We’re just interested in knowing more about the man he was, and you can’t do that without knowing about his personal life to an extent

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  21. Margaret G says

    Combined with the music it’s very poignant and elegiac. It actually amde me a little teary! Dear, lovely Basil

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