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Quick, Watson — the Needle!
Radio's favorite sleuth Sherlock Holmes, portrayed by Basil Rathbone. RADIO VARIETIES — DECEMBER
TF sir Arthur Conan Doyle were writing today, he would have an easier job describing Sherlock Holmes to his readers than he did at the turn of the century. Instead of a careful inventory of Holmes' physical characteristics, ne could have passed the description off v/ith a single sentence.
"Sherlock Holmes", he might have said, "was a tall, spare man with piercing eyes, a resonant voice, a vibrant personality — in short a Basil Rathbone with a flair for criminology".
Dr. Watson would be easier. "Picture Nigel Bruce", our present-day Doyle would say. "Give him a battered doctor's bag, and dull his sense of humor, and you Vv'ould see Dr. Watson as he was when he shared rooms at 221 Baker street with Mr. Sherlock Holmes."
The physical resemblance between Basil Rathbone and Sherlock Holmes, and betweeii Nigel Bruce and Dr. Watson startled even Denis Conan Doyle, son of the famous writer of the Sherlock Holmes stories, when he visited NBC's Hollywood Radio City recently and saw a radio performance of one of his father's mystery thrillers for the first time. "Admirable, absolutely admirable", Conan Doyle commentated as he watched Rathbone and Bruce in action. "I have never seen a better portrayal of Holmes — and I have seen many. Bruce and Rathbone resemble almost to perfection my father's conception of the characters."
There is more than physical similarity between the NBC actors and their fictional counterparts. Holmes absorbed Sherlock Holmes during his childhood and youth in England, and he knows the people Holmes knew, and the country where many of the cases described in Conan Doyle's books were set. He has wandered London's back streets, the Down country, and the bleak moors where Holmes and Watson tracked down "The Hound of the Baskervilles."
As for Nigel Bruce, his Scottish ancestry and his English education combine to give an authentic (Continued on pcge 20)
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