![\"Basil](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/calverosdepot.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/11\/rathboneandbruce.jpg?resize=258%2C203\" "\\"Holmes")
Basil Rathbone (left) and Nigel Bruce play the crime fighting duo<\/p><\/div>\n
We were reading Hound of the Baskervilles (considered by many fans to be the best of the Holmes stories) and watched the 1939 film version starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce\u00a0 it in class.\u00a0 We had an assignment of pretending to be a news reporter covering the murder. I’ve never cared too much for mysteries. It was usually someone gets killed (kind of a downer). Detective investigates and usually solves case. Killer is usually hateful\/jealous\/mean streaked.\u00a0 Then justice is done. But the characters of Holmes and Watson really got my curiosity.\u00a0 Holmes was stand-offish and not social. He could tell you where you came from and what you do for a living within the first second of meeting you.\u00a0 But he was not a romantic, but rather preferred facts when dealing with people… or rather, people’s cases.\u00a0 Along with his cocaine addictions, violin playing, and pipe smoking. Watson was loyal.\u00a0 Ready to help his friend when needed. And wrote about the cases that he and Holmes took on.\u00a0 Handy with a revolver.\u00a0 If Holmes asked him to go off and do something, Watson went without question. I happened to mention about the story to my mom, telling her that I thought it was really interesting and not hard to follow the decades old story.\u00a0 So when I graduated the grade, my parents gave me a book that had several stories in it (most of the Holmes stories were short stories), including Hound.\u00a0 The book had the original illustrations by Sidney Paget, which were originally with the stories when they were originally published.\u00a0 Considered to have cemented the “look” of Holmes to the public. I read those stories. Inhaled them is a better way of putting it.\u00a0 The stories were also out of the ordinary.\u00a0 Some were murders, though the cause of death no always easy: an animal in self defense or the victim died out of terror or a guilty conscious.\u00a0 Or perhaps faked their own death.\u00a0 Or something was stolen.\u00a0 In addition to that,\u00a0 I watched more of the Rathbone\/Bruce movies on the local tv channel. I believe it was every Sunday afternoon.\u00a0 Rathbone was my Holmes. Until…<\/p>\n
![\"Jeremy](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/calverosdepot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/Holmes-Hudson-Watson-150x150.jpg?resize=150%2C150\" "\\"Sherlock")
Jeremy Brett as Holmes (left) , Rosalie Williams as Mrs. Hudson (center) and David Burke as Watson standing in front of the infamous 221B residence<\/p><\/div>\n
I saw Jeremy Brett and David Burke. Oh. My. Gosh!!! (that’s right, I said gosh. Deal with it! \ud83d\ude09 ) The performances of those two men really shot the characters out of a canon and onto the small screen.\u00a0 Brett’s portrayal was spot on. He set a very high standard of how someone should play Holmes. And Burke’s Watson as well as Edward Hardwicke’s Watson was much more faithful to the Watson that Conan Doyle wrote about.\u00a0 And the rest of the cast: Rosalie Williams who played their landlady Mrs. Hudson, Colin Jeavons as Inspector Lestrade, and a bunch of others who appeared looking like what I had pictured in my head when I first read the stories. And shooting it out of a canon can be taken another way… it was almost 100% Canon (canon – meaning the original stories).\u00a0 The stories were as close to word-for-word as one could fit into less than a 60 minute program.\u00a0 Costumes were beautiful. Sets were marvelous.\u00a0 The Baker Street residence was not too ornate.\u00a0 Everything was so… well…. perfect! (Except for the last few episodes. Production got lazy, and Brett’s health got worse and passed away in September 1995 :'( ). Even when I watch them now, they do not look like they are 25 years old.\u00a0 I<\/p>\n
![\"Brett](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/calverosdepot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/10\/sh_brett_hardwicke-150x150.jpg?resize=150%2C150\" "\\"Jeremy")
Brett again as Holmes, and Edward Hardwicke picking up the role of Watson<\/p><\/div>\n
am picky when it comes to period films and if there is too much 1980s in something that is supposed to be 1880s, then I’m not happy.\u00a0 But this was, as I already said, perfect. A few years later I became a huge fan of Charlie Chaplin.\u00a0 And to my delight, one of Chaplin’s early acting childhood gigs was that of Billy the Pageboy in the Sherlock Holmes play written by William Gillette.\u00a0 There were two men who played Holmes for the play, Gillette and H A Saintsbury, and Chaplin worked with both of them, commenting in “My Autobiography” that he thought Saintsbury was the better Holmes.\u00a0 Many years later when he was making Limelight, he brought on Nigel Bruce to play Mr Postant, largely due to his Watson role.\u00a0 Which is another reason why I have kept the name Calvero for so many years… it connects some of my favorites together :). And speaking of the Holmes\/Chaplin crossover, there is the “Sherlock Holmes” movie to be released later this year starring Robert Downey, Jr. who playrf Charlie in the 1992 film “Chaplin”.\u00a0 Loved him in that!\u00a0 And now he’s playing Holmes.\u00a0 While I can’t think of anyone better to play Chaplin than him, it will be real tough to even equal Brett’s Holmes.\u00a0 But he can do a very good British accent (he did a couple different ones in Chaplin).\u00a0 Jude Law has a very very good look for Watson (He also had a small part in the Granada series, “The Disappearance of Lady Carfax”). The trailer looks good: