Ranking the Sherlock Holmes Episodes of Rathbone & Bruce, with Notes

SPOILER ALERT: this article includes plotlines.

I see that there are other synopses, notably Wikipedia, but they don’t include descriptions of the parts that make the episodes such good watching: Holmes’ going undercover, usually in disguise, and the funny interactions with Watson. Holmes is usually digging at Watson’s density — sometimes bitterly — but in the end Dear Old Watson often ‘solves’ the case tangentially.

I also wanted to put these notes together to untangle in my own memory the various scenes that I recall, and which episodes they comprise. Every few years when I watch some of them again, I’m continually confused by a few of the titles. So here goes.

Rankings

As I’ve been compiling my write-ups, it’s clear that my criteria isn’t solely about the plot, but 1) demonstrations of Holmes unique sleuthing and brilliance, 2) the richness of the Holmes-Watson interactions… without the plot openly mocking one’s credulity. With the benefit of hindsight, now that I’ve watched them all again and collected notes, my point in ranking them is clearer. It’s to answer the question, “Which ones do I really want to watch the next time, some years from now, when I get the itch again?”

Best

• Dressed to Kill (music boxes, Hilda Courtney and her crew, Bank of London plates), my favorite for years, but the next two are just as good. I’ll have to go back and see it in color.
• In Washington (microfilm, train dining car, George Zucco as Stanley in antique store)
• Pearl of Death (six Napoleans, Giles Conniver and the Creeper)

On the Podium

• Secret Weapon (dancing men, Atwill as Moriarty)
• Spider Woman (pygmy delivers suicide-inducing spider)
• Scarlet Claw (glowing supernatural [?] killer)
• Woman in Green (hypnosis, finger murders, Daniell as Moriarty)

The Rest

• Pursuit to Algiers (ship with newly crowned king)
• Terror by Night (train ride, Star of Rhodesia)
• Faces Death (The Musgrave Ritual and chessboard)
• Adventures of (royal jewels, distraction murder, Zucco as Moriarty)
• House of Fear (orange pips, Good Comrades)
• Hound of the Baskervilles (wannabe heir’s dog is the henchman)
• Voice of Terror (finding the mole in England’s top military)

The Hound of the Baskervilles (31 March 1939)

A hidden heir to the Baskerville estate kills off those above him on the family tree, by setting a ferocious hound upon them, in hopes of inheritance. This is the first of the Rathbone-Bruce movies, produced, along with the second one (Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) by 20th Century Fox. The remaining 12 were by Universal. I find this one to be less interesting than many of the Universal ones… to me this one is basically the old equivalent of a car chase. Not much sleuthing or subtlety, and not much intricacy to the plot.

• The character development between Holmes and Watson does get firmly established upon examining a walking stick. Watson asks, “Has anything escaped me?” to which Holmes says, “Nearly everything.” (They don’t write ’em like this anymore!)

• Long, campy intro scene depicting the ancient ancestor who supposedly inspired the legend, Hugo Baskerville.

• Holmes is fully out of the story for a half-hour, re-appearing disguised as a peddler on the creepy-scary Grimpen Mire, a make-believe bog inspired by a real area in Dartmoor called Foxtor Mires.
• Holmes seems to solve most of the mystery by noticing a similarity between the criminal and a family portrait… pretty weak. There’s also the curious theft of two shoes, but one-at-a-time.
• A subplot is the housekeeper’s aiding of her derelict, convict brother.
• At the end, they make a point of Holmes remarking, “Oh Watson, the needle,” apparently for his opium hit?

Ranking? Clearly in the bottom half, for me at least. Despite its big budget and supposedly higher production values, I find the story unintriguing.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1 September 1939)

Moriarty really goes wild this time, pulling the old “distraction murder trick,” to keep Holmes occupied with a case that is so twisted up that even Holmes describes it as having “fantastic convolutions.” It’s the second and last episode from Fox. And it can be the hardest to find on Youtube, not in the playlists I rely on. And whereas the first one was a bit overly theatrical instead of sleuth-y, this one whipsaws the other way… so complicated it’s funny. The result is super Hollywood, chases and gunfights, but lots of nice touches too, that seem to be zeroing in on the methods that will make the rest of the series so endearing and enduring:

• Holmes and Moriarty exchange pleasantries, shoulder-to-shoulder. My favorite part was Moriarty saying he hopes to retire to study “abstract science.” I wondered if that was his own construct, or maybe meant mathematics… and sure enough it really is math.

• Holmes tries to find a violin frequency that will annoy not just Watson, but houseflies. And at the end of the episode Watson has his revenge and “the last word”:

• Watson being inconspicuous:

• News alert: Holmes shows Watson actual affection, twice I think:

• Watson has perhaps the best scene and line in all of — ahem — the canon. While reenacting a murder scene, a passerby asks him, “Aren’t you ill?” to which Watson replies, “Certainly not. I’m dead.”

• Holmes does one of his most elaborate impersonations, that of a song-and-dance man:

• Holmes’ little protege, Billy, “solves the case” by observing that the murderer must have been a South American:

• Moriarty’s henchman/cabby (Arthur Hohl) goes on to play Monsieur Journet in the Scarlet Claw. And the Scotland Yard inspector (E.E. Clive) was the cabby in the Hound. It looks like the little repertory company has started.

• Holmes goes on a tear, racing a horse-drawn carriage to save the crown jewels:

Ranking? Some might love this episode, but I’ll stick to my guns and say that for me it’s in the bottom half. A bit too silly with the crown jewels and the inexplicable parts of the distraction murder. (Was it a coincidence that Lady Conyngham hired the killer’s musical group???) At least now I won’t have to watch the whole episode again, to merely savor Watson’s “dead man in the gutter” portrayal.

Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (18 September 1942)

Holmes is brought in by Great Britain’s Inner Council (like the US military’s joint chiefs of staff) to figure out who is giving away inside information that becomes fodder for Nazi broadcasts. This is the most explicitly wartime episode, even Nazi uniforms at the end. Notice the time gap… between when 20th Century Fox made the first two, and when Universal took over.

• No substantive scenes of Watson’s avuncular — apparently that means uncle-like, a word made just for dear old Watson — nature.
• Harry Cording, who later plays Simpson in the House of Fear, and other roles, shows up in the bar scene, getting no credit:

• Barely any real sleuthing. There’s one scene where Holmes is studying audio patterns with an oscilloscope, observing Beethoven’s Fifth on radio but with no discernable value:

• The big scene is when Kitty exhorts the hoi polloi to find the meaning of “Christopher” but it just doesn’t come off as well as other episodes’ scenes where Holmes mixes with the riff raff:

• Holmes reveals at the end he knew the impostor wasn’t the real person. Otherwise just a few gunfight scenes without much nuance.

Ranking: Just not very interesting. Bottom half, maybe — ouch — the very bottom.

Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (12 February 1943)

Based on “The Adventure of the Dancing Men” (1903)

(WOW: This Google link is a somewhat new Google functionality to provide detailed timeline access to videos right in search results when a video has automatic or manual chapters. This enabled me to get right to a scene I wanted to find.)

Holmes starts as a disguised old book peddler, getting Swiss scientist Dr. Tobel to escape from Gestapo kidnappers and flee to England with his revolutionary bombsight. Tobel splits the bombsight into four parts and leaves a part each with four scientists in London. Shortly afterwards, he is kidnapped by Moriarty… because ‘good old’ Watson falls asleep on guard duty.

• Holmes does his second disguise, and one of his most dramatic, impersonating a cutthroat ‘tar‘ named Ramsingh (?) to walk the seedy waterfront bars in search of Moriarty.
• One of the dives he saunters in and out of has a woman singing in a guttural English accent a lilt that I often wonder “where did I hear this stupid tune that I keep repeating?” Aye, aye, up she rises, early in the morning. It comes out more like “oy, oy.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunken_Sailor) Well, now I’ll never forget where. He eventually finds a ships’ carpenter (same actor as the potter in the Pearl of Death, and others) and is temporarily kidnapped before rescue by Watson and LeStrade.
• A cipher of dancing men with the names of the scientists was left for Holmes but was taken by Moriarty. Holmes discovers tracings of the note and makes it reappear with some salts and fluorescent light. He and Moriarty decode all but the last — trickiest — name.
• Watson ‘solves’ this one saying his head is all’ twisted ‘round,’ which is all Holmes needs to realize the trick of reversing the last cipher. Moriarty does similarly by spilling water on it accidentally. Three of the scientists had already been killed. Holmes takes the place of the fourth scientist, his third disguise of the film, and allows himself to be kidnapped by Moriarty’s men.
• Watson and LeStrade trail Holmes’ path with luminous paint dripping from under the captors’ car.
• Moriarty tries to kill Holmes but Watson LeStrade break it up. Moriarty falls through a trapdoor that Holmes ‘carelessly’ left open.

Ranking: After writing this synopsis, I think this episode might be my second or third favorite after Dressed to Kill and the Pearl of Death. Lots of neat little things going on.

Sherlock Holmes in Washington (30 April 1943)

A British courier is killed in Washington before he can deliver secret war documents. This episode is all about smoking and matchbooks and has lots of nice touches. You could almost call it the cigarette episode. From recollection I hadn’t thought it a particularly strong episode, but watching it again, I realize it’s close to the top of the heap:

• Although the series as a whole has many overtly comical exchanges and lines, this episode has the only outright joke I can recall: upon Watson’s noting that 2 pages of paper would be “too dry to swallow,” Holmes adds, “especially legal documents.” (Get it, “dry” legalese? Ha, ha, ha.)
• One moment caught my eye. In the image below you can see that Holmes pretty deliberately (I presume) knocks over Watson’s egg, and they go on as if it’s scripted, but nothing comes of it.

• Holmes and Waton have their first brush with disaster when a rooftop assailant tries to squash them by dropping a huge stone on them. In fact Watson acts Watsonish many times in this episode, once almost revealing to the courier’s mother that he has been kidnapped. But the highlight for me is that Watson actually mentions my home town (with its famous humidity, no less): as they start up the stairs he says, “… very muggy, very sticky. I had a letter from Philadelphia the other day.”

• This episode has two (of the 3?) prior Moriarties, Atwill as the mastermind, and Daniell as his lieutenant.

• Overall it has a distinctly ‘campy’ feel, cinematography-wise, with the tourist shots and whatnot, but in the end that doesn’t diminish it as a whole. The passengers boarded a twin-prop plane like a DC-3, but when they show the other end of the trip — not literally implying it’s the same flight — they show more of Spruce Goose.

• In a scene demonstrating supreme Holmesiness, he examines a blanket that the FBI has already scoured with a fine-toothed comb and he finds so much it’s like he’s reading the entire history of Mankind in the fine hairs.

• Holmes reexamine the train car where the abduction occurred, and he puts Watson through a funny sequence of “sit here, no here, no here.” But the funny part is when the steward explains that the courier “said the most peculiar thing.” Holmes thinks he’s onto a big clue but the ‘peculiar thing’ was the slightly continental “Permit me,” upon lighting the young lady’s cigarette. In fact, we hear “permit me” perhaps 10 times by show’s end. And we also hear Holmes say “thank you-oo” with his characteristic emphasis several times.

• The interrogation of the steward outside the train, revealing the Naval officer and socialite engagement… and the subsequent tracking down of the party is great sleuthing.
• But he’s not done. At the party he matter-of-factly decodes an entire kidnapping by reading invisible dust footprints.

• They ‘gumshoe’ the antique district of DC, and Holmes takes on the subtle role of impersonating a finicky antique customer… the sort of nice touch missing in lesser episodes. And he almost falls for the old “Moorish scissors chest” trick.

• It’s a bit too subtle to capture well in a still photo but Holmes does a good job of turning his nose into a double-barreled chimney for all the devious banter around the matchbook.

Ranking: this episode really has a great richness all around, and depth of intrigue… action even. The focus on the matchbook is quite Hitchcockian; he called it a macguffin (which is usually trivial) but this matchbook is substantive. It’s quite an action thriller. I’d say it’s second only to Dressed to Kill.

Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (17 September 1943)

Based on “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” (1893)

The chessboard episode, to me… family murders over an inheritance hidden in the crypt.

• The creepy Musgrave Manor has family members being attacked or killed seemingly at every popcorn shoveling. It’s all about the Musgrave Ritual, which apparently is the reading of a coded measure that is actually a treasure map of sorts.
• LeStrade gets caught in secret passageways (to fulfill his bumbling quota for the episode).
• There’s a veritable “Clue” list of extra suspects, because the manor is a home for convalescing soldiers.
• Holmes offers up perhaps his snarkiest jab ever at Watson after he’d said “… so simple a child could do it”… to which Holmes almost straight-faced says “Not your child, Watson.” Ouch. But Dear old Watson segues non-stop into a tale of male promiscuity, “Did I tell you about the time I almost” got snagged into marrying a woman who hid from me that she had a 3-year-old brat no less?
• The mansion is complete with suspicious housekeeper and drunken husband/servant, the Bruntons.
• The town has a great bar, the Rat and Raven (oh I love that sign), and the mascot raven has a headline role, actually sniffing out corpse number 2.

• They play a funny game of chess, have a shootout in the crypt, and they all lived happily ever after without cashing in the inherited land grant.

Ranking: For me, this one is just not an especially enticing episode, although the chess game and board are indelible memories.

The Spider Woman (21 January 1944)

Based on elements of a few Conan Doyle stories, victims are scammed into adding the criminals as beneficiaries of their life insurance. Then spiders are magically directed to victims via an aboriginal pygmy who fits in ventilator ducts. (Would there be no TV or movie murders if ducts were all smaller?)

• Holmes goes undercover as Rajni Singh, a mark for the Spider Woman, Adrea Spedding.

• This is the one where Holmes ‘dies’ at the beginning, falling into some river that Watson pretends to be fishing in. But he comes back to life impersonating a mailman who visits Baker Street.
• There’s a memorable scene in which Watson offers LeStrade one of Holmes’ pipes… which the reincarnated Holmes generously tells LeStrade to keep.
• Watson is so duped by the mailman disguise that he later embarrasses himself by tugging on the beard of a different visitor, thinking that he too is Holmes. And it solves one of my own personal mysteries: occasionally I’ll find myself mumbling to myself, “alright, alright, alright.” (With a cockney accent it’s more like “awroit, awroit, awroit.”) But I didn’t know where it was from. Mystery solved: the mailman says it twice. It’s from the Spider Woman!

• Watson has a rare moment of non-geezerishness when he enlightens — corrects, actually — Holmes on the difference between a child’s bone structure and an adult’s, even a pygmy adult.
• They visit the spider expert who Holmes reveals as an impostor by asking about the Mendax Flagrante spider.
• The Spider Woman visits Baker street with a toddler who throws a candy wrapper in the fireplace… which in turn almost kills Holmes and Watson with poisonous smoke… from the quite fictional substance Devil’s Foot.
• Holmes must escape from being tied into a carnival sideshow’s shooting gallery, where Watson himself might unwittingly kill him. In retrospect, the images of the world’s great fascists as the targets is pretty neat. Think about it, January 1944. Wow.

Ranking? Winner’s circle, so to speak. But more importantly, this episode really typifies the essence of the series, in that it’s not a genius plot, but rather, all of the little touches and dependable character elements that make the whole more than the sum of its parts.

The Scarlet Claw (26 May 1944)

An independently crafted storyline, not based on a Conan Doyle story. An interesting plot in which an escaped prison inmate terrorizes a Quebec, Canada village… by killing his jailor, judge, and one-time lover… and has the townsfolk convinced the killing is by a glowing monster who cavorts upon the misty moors.

• Dead Lady Penrose’s husband is a repeat offender in the series, Paul Cavanagh, who also plays Doctor Merrivale in the “House of Fear” and Fenwick in “The Lady in Green.” And I think the judge is Giles Conniver from the Pearl of Death, not sure.

• One highlight is when Holmes assigns Watson the task of reconnoitering with the locals in Journet’s tavern, with the explicit instruction to be inconspicuous! Watson dives headlong into it, having a drunken committee meeting with the locals on the various moral and ethical questions of the day.
• Not many Holmes-Watson-isms throughout, just icy stares from Holmes for Watson to stop blathering out loud the facts of our case.
• There was one thing that quite literally caught my eye: at about 7 minutes in, at the seminar on the supernatural, they pan to a guy with a 1944 in-ear hearing aide??? Provocative.

• I somehow wonder if it’s a unique or distinctive episode, but it’s hard to put my finger on it. Is it that it has a lot of physical action, unique modus operandi of the antagonist, a super-dark visual presence, or something else??? The physical pratfalls of Watson? I’m wondering if it’s just as unique as all the other episodes(!), and that’s how compelling this series is.

Ranking: top half… might be in the winner’s circle (or ‘on the podium,’ if you prefer). I guess it’s up there with …Green, Spider…, and some others.

The Pearl of Death (22 September 1944)

The massive gemstone, the Borgia Pearl, is stolen then recovered, then stolen again, then recovered by Holmes who kills the Bruxton Creeper.

• Holmes opens the episode impersonating an old man on a cruise ship, prevents Naomi Drake (the partner of mastermind Giles Conover) from stealing the pearl:

• Then in the museum where the pearl was headed, Holmes demonstrates how easy it is to disable the anti-theft system, but unwittingly enables Conover to steal the pearl again. He hides the pearl but has to sneak a message out of jail to Drake:

• Watson has one of his crowning moments, reconstructing an event as Holmes would do, to find a newspaper clipping he has misplaced:

• Watson solidifies his comic role by repeatedly hiding the pearl in his mouth:

• Holmes demonstrates his encyclopedic knowledge of every tobacco brand from its ash alone… Conover’s “Bolivar, cabinet size, imported from Havana especially for connoisseurs”:

• … which in turn enables him to thwart the old “spring-loaded knife in a book” trick:

• Holmes and Watson recreate the scenario in which the pearl is hidden, in a plaster shop owned by the same guy, Harry Cording, who plays Captain Simpson in the House of Fear, and a some other roles:

• Holmes impersonates Conover’s voice to learn the owner of the last Napolean:

• Holmes does another undercover role, impersonating the owner of the last Napoleon:

Ranking? As good as they get, maybe the best, depending on your own preferences. It has it all; a great plot device, Holmes being Holmes and Watson being Watson; great antagonist; suspense and danger.

The Woman in Green (15 June 1945)

Hypnosis and the finger murders.

Perhaps the simplest of the episodes, there’s no long list of wannabe suspects, no undercover work, no creepy monster-like henchman doing the dirty work. Just the gorgeous seductress — I think I’ve underestimated how beautiful the female protagonists have been in the series all these years — and some severed fingers that convince innocent hypnosis subjects that they’ve murdered someone… and can therefore be blackmailed.

Gregson, not LeStrade in this one. And Henry Daniell’s Moriarty this time, the curly-haired, suave guy. Creepy little doctor does the finger surgery. Holmes only faces death for the last 5 minutes, on the balcony. (Oh, that’s why they showed us the loose brick early on!) Moriarty dies for perhaps the fourth time. In fact, Holmes seems to ‘solve’ this one mostly by having been lucky to have seen for himself the killer with the blackmail-ee at a restaurant… the very place on the matchbook clutched by the dying man.

• When Gregson says “Is that Fenwick’s daughter,” Holmes responds “Don’t be naive, Inspector.” And moments later, when Holmes says “I wonder where she’s taking him, Gregson touches, “Don’t be naive, Mr. Holmes.”
• And Watson is dragged out on a prank medical emergency, where he’s pestered constantly on the street by one of Moriarty’s henchmen. When he comes back Holmes explains to Watson that Moriarty was holding hostage one of Holmes’ friends… “nobody very important, just a fat lazy fellow, medical man I believe.”

• This is the episode where Watson has to investigate the house across the street, where the hypnotized soldier is found, and appears to shoot Holmes.
• I liked at the hypnosis meeting, where Holmes schmoozes the vixen for all of 5 seconds before a blunt, “Would you join me for a cocktail at Pembroke House?”
• Watson plays the fool who is easily hypnotized after dismissing the possibility.
• Combined with her similar role in the House of Fear, the award for “sternest-housekeeper-on-Earth” look is locked down by Sally Shepherd.
• There’s a colorized version, and I think this is a great one for it. The imperfection of the colorizing process is perfect for the period sense of the movie, and after all, it is “The Woman in Green”! Sadly however, she’s never shown in green. Where’s AI when you need it!

Ranking? Simple but still a good one… I’ll put it in the top half. Good enough for me to watch again, in color.

The House of Fear (16 March 1945)

Based on “The Five Orange Pips” (1891)

Simple insurance fraud by the the Good Comrades of Drearcliff House. The bodies start dropping almost hourly once Holmes and Watson arrive. But it doesn’t end up being one of the more flavorful episodes.

• Sally Shepherd cements her title of “World’s Creepiest Housekeeper,” this time with Mrs. Monteith… complete with a cleaver! And she’s quite fetching in braided pigtails. Oh look, Drearcliff has the distinctive chessboard floor of Musgrave Manor!

• Not much memorable Holmes-Watson repartee. They even had to go into town for a good conversation with a drunk at the Cat & Fiddle.

• The only Holmesian touch to the whole sordid affair is the orange pips that foretell the next victim.
• Only upon reviewing the episode more carefully did I notice how great one scene in particular is. When Holmes must confront a team of sailors… the whole composition and delivery of the scene is masterful, pure Holmesian.

• Watson achieves the Herculean accomplishment of excavating a 5-foot-deep grave in a few hours. Wow.

• Captain Simpson appears in a few other episodes. And Merrivale is Fenwick from Woman in Green.

Ranking? Bottom half despite one cinematically wonderful scene.

Pursuit to Algiers (26 October 1945)

The shipboard episode with the “Three Stooges” assailants. Holmes is engaged to shepherd a young prince back to his homeland, Rovinia (apparently a real beach in Greece) after the king’s assassination.

• Starts off with a goofy scene to snare Holmes into a secretive meeting with the Rovinian emissaries. He is proffered an unwanted newspaper and has to decode silly clues in a fish-and-chips dive.
• He fakes plane trip for the delivery and takes a ship… and lucky he did, as the plane was shot down, initially giving Watson a scare that Holmes was on the plane, while the whole time he had been on the ship.

• There’s one major plot device that I won’t give away, but otherwise, it’s a pretty weak episode, criminologically speaking… just avoiding the dimwits on the ship trying to kill Holmes or the prince. First Holmes sniffs out some poisoned coffee; then he has to foil knife-thrower Mirko; then he saves the prince from dangerous party tricks.
• One highlight is Watson singing The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond, very touching.

• The producers also must have felt the plot was lacking, so they added a silly subtext in which Holmes deduces that one of the passengers is carrying the recently stolen Duchess of Brookdale’s emeralds. But of course.

Ranking: solidly in the bottom half.

Terror by Night (1 February 1946)

Holmes is hired to ensure that a monstrous diamond, the Star of Rhodesia, isn’t stolen from its owner on a train ride home from a royal get-together.

• Everyone in the train car seems a suspect, and it’s a cute device since they’re all in their own compartments… like separate fishbowls.
• Holmes does a fake out by swapping out a fake, but as happens more than once in the series, has that plan temporarily backfire.
• There’s the poison dart gun, the false-bottom coffin; the suspicious baggage car guy; the fake Scottish police. But the whole plot relies on having drapes in every cabin so that no one sees who’s passing by.
• And there’s the action scene where Holmes must survive being pushed out of the train. That villain looks like he’s been in some other episode.
• Watson plays the fool, getting solidly upbraided by one of the suspects, a professor, and uncovering a silly theft (of a hotel teapot). But he is vindicated in the end when he’s the one who gut-punches the villain to allow his capture.

Ranking? Bottom half, but some may find it to be very enjoyable. I don’t find it very entertaining, but that’s probably because it loses more of its appeal (than other episodes) from having seen it before. The intrigue is good, but the details and fight scene are a bit silly. And it’s not very strong on the actual detective work.

Dressed to Kill (7 June 1946)

Money-printing plates from the Bank of England have been hidden somewhere public, by the thief who is still in Dartmoor Prison, where he makes music boxes for outside sale. Holmes must figure out how the boxes reveal the hiding spot before the bad guys do, outwit the beautiful antagonist and her knife-wielding thug, and survive an attempt to kill him.

• Watson’s old friend Stinky makes googly eyes at the wrong woman, Mrs. Hilda Courtney (of Park Mansions, Bryanston Square no less!):

• As usual, Watson provides the critical link in solving the case, numbering the keys as his old teacher was forced to do. (And later he wraps up the mystery by tipping Holmes to the final piece of the music box puzzle, Dr. Samuel Johnson’s house.)

• Holmes calls in an old IOU, enlisting one of his criminal friends to untangle the musical code, at a seedy bar of buskers:

• No disguises for Holmes in this episode, but Mrs. Courtney does, as the Kilgore charwoman:

• “Would you like to hear old uncle make a noise like a duck?”:

• Watson: “Do I look like a man of gossip?” Holmes: “Let’s not go into that now, old fellow, shall we?”:

• Once again the cigarettes lead to only three people on Earth. Go figure. (When there are no more cigarettes, will criminals roam the crimosphere untouched by justice?!)

• The distractingly pretty Mrs. Courtney hoodwinks Watson with a smoke bomb:

• Holmes must survive an attempt to poision him with monosulfate (?):

• I haven’t found the ending credits, but this is from the beginning. Ian Wolfe, with his narrow chin and bald pate was the police official.

• Patricia Morrison lived to 103, in 2018:

• Harry Cording (left, below) plays the villains’ driver and utility man. Frederic Worlock (right) is shown in IMDB as being in 6 episodes, but his classic English gentleman look doesn’t as easily distinguish himself. I wonder if he was the Scottish police impostor in Terror by Night.

• And poking around for bios, I see that there’s a Bellis in Dressed to Kill: Guy Bellis, if the photo below is properly attributed, played the prisoner in Dartmoor who tried to get the thief to spill the goods:

• In IMDB, I see that one can click on the “Top Cast” link within an episode, to reveal the full cast (!) for the episodes… and figure out all of the repeating cast members.

Ranking? My favorite for years, but now that I’ve completed collecting notes on all 14, Washington and Pearl of Death are just as good.

The Wikipedia Page on the “1939 Film Series”

This page describes the series as a whole and individual synopses:

Sherlock Holmes (1939 film series) - Wikipedia