Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes.Mike Scott, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune Dec 23, 2009 ...

Basil Rathbone had already played Holmes in reasonably faithful period adaptations of Doyle’s stories, such as The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939), but this was the first of several pictures ...

The film stars Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. John Watson. It was the first of fourteen Sherlock Holmes movies in the early 1900s starring Rathbone and Bruce.

(Image credit: 20th Century Fox) Sherlock Holmes Film Series (1939-1946) In the early days of film, one of the first notable portrayals of Sherlock Holmes came from British actor Basil Rathbone.