Sherlock Holmes became such a quick fixture in motion pictures that it is possible to write studies on the various movies and actors centered on that character.

This particular film was an early Hollywood take on Holmes in the sound period. It is interesting to note that it came out only three years after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle died in 1930. By the time this had come out Hollywood had done silent and sound films about Holmes with William Gillette, John Barrymore, and (more recently) Clive Brooks. But the three best Holmes' of the sound period were still to come along: Arthur Wontner in Great Britain, Basil Rathbone in Hollywood, and Jeremy Brett (on television). Holmes in this version was Reginald Owen, best remembered for his "Ebenezer Scrooge" in the 1938 version of "A Christmas Carol". Owen was a very good character actor (villainous in films like "The Call Of The Wild", but funny as anything in "The Good Fairy"). He had played Watson already, so he was one of the few actors to essay both friends parts. But he seemed too laid back to be a good Holmes.

"A Study In Scarlet" appeared in December 1887 in "Beeton's Christmas Annual", a long forgotten magazine in Great Britain, which is only now recalled because of Conan Doyle's novella. If you are lucky enough to stumble onto the Beeton's of that month and year (and it is the original) than hold onto it - it's worth many thousands of dollars.

It's in two parts. The first half is "The Lauriston Gardens Mystery", wherein Dr. John H. Watson (our narrator) introduces us to his friend and roommate Sherlock Holmes, and then to the adventure (set in April 1881) where he first became aware that Holmes was a consulting detective, and was consulted by Scotland Yard's Detectives Tobias Gregson and "G." (no further name ever given) Lestrade (not "Lastrade" as the movie's cast of characters named him). Lestrade would be the best known of the detectives in the saga who would consult Holmes (and would be most memorably played by Dennis Hoey in the Rathbone films). Here he's played by Alan Mowbray - not badly but with little electricity.

The plot of the first portion of the novella is about the murder of two men, one by poison and one by a knife wound in the heart. Holmes traces the story back to the old west, where in the second half (entitled "The Country of the Saints") it is linked to the Mormons in Utah.

Most (if not all) was jettisoned, into a story about murder for insurance, centering around Anna May Wong and Alan Dinehart. Dinehart's character Thaddeus Merrydew, is based on a single line of writing in the four novels and fifty six short stories that were written by Conan Doyle. In "The Adventure of the Empty House", when reading a list of people with "M" in their name (he is searching for the biography of Colonel Sebastian Moran),he finds a reference to "Merrydew of abominable memory." That's it! No "Thaddeus Merrydew", just "Merrydew". Somebody concocting the script remembered that one reference. I may add, this was also the last time in movies there was any villain named Merrydew against Mr. Sherlock Holmes.

As an early talkie film about Holmes, it is worth seeing - but it is not among the best Holmes movies.

By 1932, the California Tiffany studios had been hard-hit by the depression's increasing damper on the motion picture industry, and had most recently been taken over by the troika of Burt Kelly, Sam Bischoff and William Saal, producing under the achronym K.B.S.

One of the talented individuals attracted to K.B.S. during this turbulent period was Robert Florey, who had directed THE COCOANUTS, in which the Marx Brothers made their film debut, and co-authored the script of FRANKENSTEIN, then adapting and directing MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE.

A STUDY IN SCARLET was Florey's third project at Tiffany, and he was again scheduled to both write and direct--his preferred mode of working. While producer Bischoff had purchased the motion picture rights to the title of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novel for only a small sum, Florey was told to compose a new scenario to co-star Anna May Wong opposite Sherlock Holmes.

A cause for the alteration of the original plot is that producers may have felt the title exceeded the worth of the actual story. Conan Doyle's original, written in 1887, was a vehicle for a denunciation of the contemporary Mormon practice of polygamy, which for American movie makers may have aroused concerns of censorship and regional distribution difficulties--just the type of difficulty a small, independent company like K.B.S. could not afford to risk. As well, half the narrative consisted of a lengthy confession, with Holmes only present in the prelude, which would have surely disappointed most filmgoers. While A Study in Scarlet was the first Holmes mystery Conan Doyle wrote, it had been filmed only twice before, with an English feature and an American short both appearing in 1914. Not until 1968 was the subject tackled again, this time by the BBC in a fifty-minute television presentation.

Given a week to come up with a narrative to fit the picture's title and Wong's presence, Florey collaborated with his friend Reginald Owen, who had been chosen to portray Holmes, and split the $1,000 script payment. They collaborated on the continuity in consultation with Art Director Ralph DeLacy in order to utilize as many standing sets as possible, economies always being especially important at a studio like Tiffany, even on as significant a project as A STUDY IN SCARLET.

At this point Florey left, having received the offer of a long-term contract from Warner Bros. on condition that he leave immediately to direct their comedic mystery GIRL MISSING. Bischoff allowed Florey to leave, with both agreeing that his replacement as director on A STUDY IN SCARLET should be Edwin L. Marin. Marin, age 33, previously had helmed only one movie on his own, a low budget item entitled THE DEATH KISS (1932). At K.B.S. he had just finished assisting Florey on THE MAN CALLED BACK and THOSE WE LOVE, "waiting for such a break."

Although the Florey-Owen script contained no similarities to the novel, their plot did demonstrate a familiarity with the world Conan Doyle created for Sherlock Holmes. Elements are present from other Holmes stories, especially The Sign of Four, "The Red-Headed League" and "The Five Orange Pips." There are many of the typical clues, devices, and mannerisms.

The title is incorporated to refer to a very exclusive organization called "the Scarlet Ring," a group of eccentric and highly ambiguous characters so suspicious of one another that they are afraid to even walk together. Upon the death of any member, his property is divided among the remaining survivors; suddenly they begin to die at an alarming pace under strange circumstances. This group of individuals were personified by an unusual group of actors, including J.M. Kerrigan, Halliwell Hobbes, Wyndham Standing, Tetsu Komai, and Cecil Reynolds.

Some critics have pointed out the movie's similarity to And Then There Were None / Ten Little Indians, with suspects killed one by one and their murder announced by a nursery rhyme. But if anything, the influence was the other way around, since Agatha Christie's novel was not published until 1939.

The script of A STUDY IN SCARLET was extremely polished and well-constructed, developing at just the right pace while carefully building the appropriate mood and environment. The movie breathes life into the classically eerie atmosphere of the British mystery, creating a pervasive feeling of fear in the fog-bound studio streets of the Limehouse section of London. Strange gatherings, arranged by secret codes, take place in abandoned, out-of-the-way buildings; dark and oppressive dead-end streets are places of isolation and terror; fog and shadows hide murderers and their victims.

Suspense is heightened by a number of devices. For instance, the killer is kept unseen, while at the same time menace is suggested by having the crimes viewed through the murderer's eyes using a subjective camera. The silhouette of a giant shadow appears on a wall as the victim stares at the audience and screams "It can't be you," followed by a close-up of a hand checking off the name of one more member of the Scarlet Ring who has been killed. The climax of this technique comes in a long-take with the still-unknown murderer visiting the crooked lawyer played by Alan Dinehart: the camera completely adopts the viewpoint of the killer as Dinehart opens the door and the unknown individual is offered a cigarette, puffs of smoke ascending in front of the lens.

The sense of locale was enhanced by the use of a nearly all-British cast, something unusual for a Hollywood-made Sherlock Holmes picture. Reginald Owen in particular was given the necessary latitude to offer a different interpretation of the Holmes personality. Owen portrays a much more human, less remote man, more akin to the personification offered by William Gillette in his stage play, to whom Owen even bore a certain physical resemblance.

By the time A STUDY IN SCARLET was released, in mid-1933, K.B.S. and World-Wide had folded, with Fox handling the distribution. The picture opened to an excellent critical reception.

I had never seen Reginald Owen in anything but a somewhat weak Christmas Carol. He plays a larger, more imposing Sherlock Holmes. Holmes' appearance is usually rather striking, so actors play on his idiosyncrasies. In this movie, he sort of blends in. The story has nothing to do with the story. It will probably never be produced as written because of it's religious issues. This is an attempt to apprehend the big cheese in a series of murders involving the "Scarlet Circle." Men are dying according to the same poem used in Christie's Ten Little Indians (And Then There Were None). Holmes is aware of what is going on, but can't really strike quickly. This results in deaths not being prevented. While there is a seriousness to this film, there is a lot of humor as well. The characters are rich and interesting and the acting is pretty good. See it for another angle on the Holmes canon.