Peter Cushing

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia
Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes in movie The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)
Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes in TV episode The Sign of Four (1968)
Peter Cushing as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in TV movie The Great Houdini (1976)
Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes in TV movie The Masks of Death (1984)

Peter Cushing (26 may 1913 - 11 august 1994) was a British actor who played Sherlock Holmes 3 times. In 1959, he began his career in the movie The Hound of the Baskervilles by Terence Fisher with Christopher Lee as Sir Henry Baskerville. The actor has to smoke a pipe, but he did not like it. He always had a glass of milk handy to remove the taste of tobacco after each shot. Hammer had planned to shoot several adventures of the detective with Peter Cushing, but abandoned the idea because his fans wanted to see monsters instead.

In 1968, Peter Cushing played Sherlock Holmes again in the British television series Sherlock Holmes, succeeding to Douglas Wilmer as the detective with Nigel Stock as Watson. Also, he took the role of an elderly Holmes in a TV movie The Masks of Death in 1984. This TV movie should have a sequel, entitled The Abbot's Cry, unfortunately the health of Peter Cushing (70 years old) prevented the realization of this project.

In 1976, he played the role of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in the TV movie The Great Houdini with Paul Michael Glaser (Starsky of the Starsky & Hutch TV series) in the title role.


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