Review:Sherlock Holmes Screen and Sound Guide/Barbara Roden
This review of the book "Sherlock Holmes Screen and Sound Guide", by Gordon E. Kelley was written by Barbara Roden and published in the The Parish Magazine (No. 11, august 1994).
Review
- Sherlock Holmes Screen and Sound Guide
- by Gordon E. Kelley
- The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1994; xiv + 316pp; £37.50; ISBN 0-8108-2859-6
Reviewed by Barbara Roden
News that there is yet another book devoted to the screen and radio presentations of Sherlock Holmes is likely to be greeted by many devotees with a politely stifled yawn. A quick check of our own bookshelves reveals seven books which already cover the subject in detail, as well as several others which touch on the matter more generally and with varying effect. The question that has to be asked, therefore, is a simple one: does Mr Kelley's book tell us anything about the public life of Sherlock Holmes that we don't already know?
Well, yes and no is my somewhat fence-sitting answer. Certainly there is little that is new in the section on Holmes in film, although it's a bit jolting to see X-rated films duly listed. The main strength of this section is that it is up-to-date, listing films up to and including Without a Clue (most books about Holmes on film date from the 1970s). The information given on each film is basic: writer, director, producer, cast list and sometimes a brief synopsis, as well as the running time and year of release. The television section covers productions from Britain, America, Canada and Japan, and again gives basic programme information, although the appearance of the Granada series in both the American and British sections is confusing (the more so as the American section is first, and contains only show titles and transmission dates in the U.S. — fuller details are given in the British section). Radio broadcasts in Britain, America and Canada are given quite a large section, but again, there is little there that has not been covered equally as well, if not better, elsewhere.
Kelley freely admits that much of the information listed in his book is already available elsewhere, and he directs the reader to a bibliography at the end of the book, in which are listed most of the standard reference works which deal, in varying degrees, with Holmes in the media. A surprising omission from this list is Robert Pohle and Douglas Hart's Sherlock Holmes on the Screen, which contains the best account of the silent film career of Holmes yet written.
Where the book truly scores is in its coverage of more out-of-the-way representations of Holmes. Animated motion pictures get three pages of coverage, which may be a surprise to those who thought that the only animated Holmes film was Disney's Basil, the Great Mouse Detective. Animated television programmes get a full thirteen pages, and Kelley makes a good stab at covering the many recorded versions of the canon that have proliferated in recent years with the popularity of talking books. The book concludes with a section giving synopses of all sixty Holmes stories, which leads one to wonder who the book is being targeted at. Sherlockians will, of course, already know the tales off by heart, and hardly need potted versions: yet who else is a book dedicated to the media interpretations of Sherlock Holmes intended to appeal to?
What we are left with, then, is a book which tells us little that is new about Holmes on film, television or radio, but does give information about some of the more obscure media interpretations of the character. Whether this justifies the price of the book is up to the individual buyer, but I would suggest that Sherlock Holmes Screen and Sound Guide is likely to find most favour with those completists who cannot rest until they are sure that they have every celluloid reference to the great detective, however fleeting, indexed and/or recorded.
BR
- Article courtesy Christopher Roden, founder of The Arthur Conan Doyle Society (1989-2003).
