Three Titles for One Sherlock Holmes Movie

            

Ann and I recently watched the Basil Rathbone – Nigel Bruce film Sherlock Holmes: Prelude to Murder. What – you’ve never heard of that one? Neither had I! 

That’s the title under which Amazon Prime serves up Dressed to Kill, the last of the 14 Rathbone-Bruce film outings as the immortal duo. And it’s colourized! Purists may hate the tampering with the original black and white, but I enjoyed it. It was a different experience, and a good one for me. The costumes and sets really popped out because of the color contrast. 

Once we started watching the movie, the Dressed to Kill title came up. Apparently, that refers to Mrs. Hilda Courtney (what was Mr. Courtney like?), who has some great wardrobe changes and what Roger Johnson calls “the most bizarre hat in the entire series.” The lovely Patricia Morison, who played the part, died in 2018 at the age of 103. 

Roger’s 48-page review of the 12 Universal Studios Holmes films, “Ready When You Are, Mr. Rathbone,” was published by the Northern Musgraves Sherlock Holmes Society as Musgrave Monograph Number Three in 1992. In it, Roger notes that “Dressed to Kill was released in Britain under the rather banal title of Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Code.” 

Banal it may be, but that title strikes me as the most fitting of the three in terms of the plot. To refresh your memory, this is the one with the musical boxes. 

Roger sums up the movie rather nicely when he says, “Dressed to Kill is by no means top rank Sherlock Holmes, but (adaptor) Frank Gruber and (screenwriter) Leonard Lee have devised a clever plot which really stretches Holmes’s capabilities.” 

The number of dedicated Sherlockians worldwide whose first exposure to Holmes came from the Rathbone-Bruce series must number in the hundreds or thousands. My experience was different. I’d already read much of the Canon and may have even owned my first Complete Sherlock Holmes before I saw any of these movies. It took me a long time to get over the buffoonish Watson, the uncanonical plots, and the 1940s setting. 

But I thought from the first time I saw him in the part, as I think now, that Basil Rathbone is a marvelous Sherlock Holmes.

The Many Watsons

No, you have not stumbled onto Kieran McMullen's excellent blog by mistake. I have simply borrowed his title for this blog post.

My point here is that every narrator-assistant in detective fiction right up to Jeff Cody in my forthcoming No Police Like Holmes traces back to the original Watson, Dr. John H.

Poe never even gave the narrator of his Dupin tales a name, much less a personality. Only in John H. Watson, M.D., did the Great Detective’s less perceptive narrator become a real person with virtues (incredible loyalty in the face of often shabby treatment by his friend) and vices (he gambles too much).

Hence, a “Watson” has become to mystery writers and critics a generic name for the first-person narrator of a mystery who is not the sleuth.

The Watson device was used by a legion of nineteenth and twentieth century detective story writers, including Agatha Christie, R. Austin Freeman, S.S. Van Dine, Sax Rohmer in his Fu Manchu stories, and Erle Stanley Gardner in his Bertha Cool novels written under the name A.A. Fair. Perhaps the most successful Watson – after the original, of course – is Archie Goodwin in the Nero Wolfe stories by Rex Stout.

Stout, a member of the Baker Street Irregulars, once wrote an essay on “What to Do About a Watson.” In it he quoted this exchange from “The Red-Headed League”:

“Evidently,” said I, “Mr. Wilson’s assistant counts for a good deal in this mystery of the Red-headed League. I am sure that you inquired your way merely in order that you might see him.”
“Not him.”
“What then?”
“The knees of his trousers.”
“And what did you see?”
“What I expected to see.”
“Why did you beat the pavement?”
“My dear doctor, this is a time for observation, not for talk.”

Stout added: “That’s the way to do it!”

Quintessential Quote #11

"Good old Watson! You are the one fixed point in a changing age."
-- Sherlock Holmes, "His Last Bow"

Isn't that the way we all think of John H. Watson, M.D. -- solid as a rock, dependable, faithful?

When Holmes wrote in "The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier" that Watson had at that time left him for a wife, he called it "the only selfish action which I can recall in our association." I leave it to you to judge who was really the selfish one in that situation!

This may be the Holmes quote that I actually use most often, applying it many times over the years to my friend Steve Winter. I even dedicated Baker Street Beat to him as "the one fixed point." But really I should apply that title to my long-suffering wife Ann. Leaving theological considerations aside and sticking to the human dimension, she is my polar star.

Who is your one fixed point?

Being Watson

Consider this a kind of post-script for Monday's post about Dr. Watson.

Recently I've discovered and enjoyed the mystery novels of the American writer Michael Connelly. In the book The Overlook (2006), I read the following passage over the weekend:

"See anything yet, Sherlock?" Ferras asked.

Bosch looked up at him. His partner was smiling. Bosch didn't smile back, deciding that now he couldn't even use the magnifying glass in front of his own partner without getting ripped.

"Not yet, Watson," he said.

He thought that might keep Ferras quiet. Nobody wanted to be Watson.

I beg to differ! I would love to be Watson. I know that I could never be Holmes, but how wonderful it would be to be at his side as his loyal friend. In fact, the desire to do so is what led me to write my radio play, "The Wrong Cab," which is included in Baker Street Beat.

Would you like to be Dr. Watson?

Quintessential Quote #6

“I am lost without my Boswell.”
– Sherlock Holmes, “A Scandal in Bohemia”

Right you are, Holmes!

It is almost universally agreed that the two adventures written by Holmes himself, “The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier” and “The Adventure of the Lion’s Mane,” show why he needed a Boswell.

Also agreed is that “The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone,” related by an unknown third person, ranks as one of the weakest stories in the canon – somewhere around 60th out of 60.

Of the four adventures in the canon not narrated by Watson, only “His Last Bow” is top-quality work, a well-written and moving story worthy of its subtitle, “An Epilogue of Sherlock Holmes.”

Not only does Holmes have a Boswell, he has the perfect one – stout-hearted, loyal, brave, dependable and intelligent John H. Watson, M.D. No wonder so many of us share the affection that Kieran McMullan, author of Watson’s Afghan Adventure and a blog on Dr. Watson, has for the good doctor.

In a beautiful introduction, mystery writer Loren D. Estleman referred to him as “John H. Watson: medical man, late British Army surgeon, raconteur, journalist, connoisseur of women, Knight of the Battered Tin Dispatch Box, valiant and loyal friend.”

That is a great and accurate description, and the way I often think of him. We would all be lost without this Boswell.