Holmes on screen part 1

The stories of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were very popular as adaptations for the stage, and later film, and still later television.

It has been estimated that Sherlock Holmes is the most prolific screen character in the history of cinema. Sherlock Holmes Baffled is a very short American silent film created in 1900 with cinematography by Arthur Marvin and the first ever holmes film.

This was followed by a 1905 Vitagraph film Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; or, Held for Ransom, featuring Maurice Costello as Holmes. The film is now lost. 

Many similar films were made in the early years of the twentieth century, most notably the 13 one- and two-reel films produced by the Danish Nordisk Film Company between 1908 and 1911. The only non-lost film is Sherlock Holmes i Bondefangerkløer, produced in 1910. Holmes was originally played by Viggo Larsen. Other actors who played Holmes in those films were Otto Lagoni, Einar Zangenberg, Lauritz Olsen and Alwin Neuss. In 1911 the American Biograph company produced a series of 11 short comedies based on the Holmes character with Mack Sennett in the title role. 

By 1916, Harry Arthur Saintsbury, who had played Holmes on stage hundreds of times in Gillette’s play, reprised the role in the 1916 film The Valley of Fear. Even this is lost. Here is the poster of the play on which the lost film Sherlock Holmes (1916):-