Sherlock Holmes on Film

The world's most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes was created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1887.  Since then, Holmes has been featured in countless films, novels, short stories, plays and television series.  I wanted to do a brief run through of Sherlock on film and his corresponding music.

Holmes appeared in silent film shorts starting with Sherlock Holmes Baffled (1900).  He appeared in several silent films including the French-British produced Éclair shorts (1912-1913), the British Stoll Pictures starring prolific Eille Norwood (1921-1923) and Arthur Wontner portrayed the detective in a series of films in the 1930s.  

Starting in 1939, the series of films starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson have become the US standard for Holmes on film.  They made 14 films together, for both 20th Century Fox and Universal Pictures, with Universal moving the films from the Victorian to modern era with several scripts based very loosely on Conan Doyle's stories.  With these popular films, several Holmes tropes like the deerstalker hat and "elementary, my dear Watson" started getting cemented into popular culture.  Their Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) is still one of best film adaptations.       

For music in the Rathbone era, the Fox films used studio composer Cyril J. Mockridge as music director along with uncredited music by David Buttolph and David Raksin among a few others.  The Universal Studios films used studio composer Frank Skinner, know for his scores to the classic monster films.  Another monster composer, Hans J. Salter was music director for the next two Holmes films, using new compositions and stock music.  Later Universal films used re-worked music and stock music.       

Meanwhile, 1965 saw Holmes meet Jack the Ripper in A Study in Terror with music by John Scott.  The 1970s saw many iterations of the great detective. Director Billy Wilder took a turn in The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970) and reunited with composer Miklos Rozsa.  Holmes met with Sigmund Freud in The Seven-Per-Cent Solution (1976) scored by John Addison.  There were also interesting takes on the character like in They Might Be Giants (1971) scored by John Barry and Gene Wilder's comedy The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother (1975) with music by John Morris.

The 1980s saw Holmes as a young adventurer in Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) with music by Bruce Broughton.  Many of Sherlock's trademarks were used in Disney's animated The Great Mouse Detective (1986) with music by Henry Mancini.  Mancini also scored the comedy Without a Clue (1988).  Holmes would appear in several television movies and series all through this time and into the 1990s.     

Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes (2009) brought back Holmes into theaters with a big splash starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law, with a score by Hans Zimmer.  They would return for a sequel in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (2011) with another score by Zimmer.  Sherlock's film success brought him to prominent TV series and future film adaptations. BBC had the 2010-2017 Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock series and the CBS 2012-2019 procedural Elementary.  Later theatrical takes on the character were in Mr. Holmes (2015), the animated Sherlock Gnomes (2018), buddy comedy Holmes & Watson (2018), and spin-off Enola Holmes (2020).  Music was supplied by Carter Burwell, Chris Bacon, Mark Mothersbaugh and Daniel Pemberton, respectively.     

Musically, Sherlock Holmes is all over the map.  In all the various adaptations, the score often reflects the film's choices - Victorian over modern era, mystery adventure over horror, serious over tongue-in-cheek.  It has taken quite a long time to get many of the aforementioned scores released.  In 1996, Varese Sarabande did release a compilation titled Sherlock Holmes: Classic Themes From 221B Baker Street featuring cues from the various films.