The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother | |
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Directed by | Gene Wilder |
Written by | Gene Wilder |
Produced by | Richard A. Roth |
Starring | Gene Wilder Madeline Kahn Marty Feldman Dom DeLuise Leo McKern |
Cinematography | Gerry Fisher |
Edited by | Jim Clark |
Music by | John Morris |
Production company | Jouer Films |
Distributed by | 20th Century Fox |
Release date |
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Running time | 91 minutes |
Countries | United Kingdom United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $2,805,000 [1] |
Box office | $20,000,000 [2] |
The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother is a 1975 American musical comedy film with Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn, Dom DeLuise, Roy Kinnear, and Leo McKern. [3] The film was Wilder's directorial debut, from his own original script.
Douglas Wilmer and Thorley Walters appear as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, respectively. Wilmer had previously appeared as Sherlock Holmes in the 1960s BBC TV series, and Walters played Watson in three other films: Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (1962), The Best House in London (1969), and Silver Blaze (1977).
In 1891, Foreign Secretary Lord Redcliff haphazardly receives a document from Queen Victoria; the document is stolen from his safe later that night. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson discuss the case. Deciding to lie low for a while, Holmes informs Watson that he will delegate cases to his younger brother, Sigerson, who has toiled in his brother's shadow without credit for decades. At a railway station, Holmes passes the message to Scotland Yard records clerk Orville Sacker.
Arriving at Sigerson's flat, Sacker finds him practicing his fencing and swordplay. Sigerson expresses bitterness and resentment over being unable to replicate Sherlock's success, mocking his big brother as "Sheer Luck" Holmes. Arriving next is a woman claiming to be Bessie Bellwood, but who is really Jenny Hill, a music hall singer who believes she is being blackmailed by opera singer Eduardo Gambetti over a lewd letter she sent him.
Sigerson attends one of Hill's performances and twice saves her from attempts on her life. The next day, he seduces her in her dressing room. She reveals that she stole the document from Redcliff's safe and claims that Redcliff is her father. When Sigerson meets with Redcliff, he learns that Hill is in fact Redcliff's fiancée.
The trail leads to Gambetti, who has made a deal with criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty to sell him the document, which foreign powers have offered £50,000 to acquire. Moriarty pays, but the distrustful Gambetti proposes that he hand over the document during the debut of his opera so that he has time to deposit the money. Sigerson and Sacker infiltrate the opera, which soon devolves into chaos. Sigerson and Moriarty confront each other backstage and are drawn into a sword fight that corners Sigerson on an outside ledge. Under threat of death, Sigerson agrees to hand over what Moriarty thinks is the document before the chimes of Big Ben cause Moriarty to lose balance and plunge into the water below. Moriarty opens the document to reveal a game of tic-tac-toe: Sigerson had positioned the real document for Sherlock to recover.
The final scene is of Sigerson Holmes running through a park to attend Jenny and Redcliff's wedding. Sitting on a bench in the park, Jenny tells Sigerson that she has called off the wedding, as Sherlock and Watson watch in disguise. Sigerson and Jenny joyfully reconcile and dance.
Gene Wilder was having lunch with Richard Roth when it was suggested that Wilder spoof Sherlock Holmes, but Wilder expressed doubts about making fun of such an iconic character. Roth approached Wilder again a week later and inquired if Wilder had given any more thought to the idea of a Sherlock Holmes film. Wilder replied "No, but I have given a great deal of thought to Sherlock's insanely jealous brother Sigi." Wilder began writing the screenplay as production was wrapping on Young Frankenstein, writing in parts for his co-stars Madeline Kahn and Marty Feldman. Wilder's screenplay reveals a deep knowledge of Conan Doyle's characters[ citation needed ] as Marty Feldman's character, Sgt. Orville Stanley Sacker, shares a similar name with that originally applied to John Watson, Ormond Sacker. On the set of Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks warned Wilder that now that he was writing movies, he would eventually move to directing movies to protect his scripts. After Smarter Brother, Wilder went on to write, direct, and star in three more features over the next ten years ( The World's Greatest Lover in 1977, The Woman in Red in 1984 and Haunted Honeymoon in 1986). [5]
The film earned $9.4 million in rentals in North America during its theatrical release. [6]
Vincent Canby of The New York Times called the film "a charming slapstick comedy" that like Young Frankenstein "is full of affection and generous feelings for the genre it's having fun with." [7] Arthur D. Murphy of Variety wrote, "Gene Wilder now joins Brooks in that elusive pantheon of madcap humor, by virtue of Wilder's script, title characterization and directorial debut, all of which are outstanding." [8] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film two stars out of four, calling it "tedious" and Sigerson "a bland character at the center of a gimmick-filled movie" that "recalls the great detective only by name and occasional costume. There's really no story here, and certainly no mystery." [9] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times declared it "a light, easy, brisk but unforced, professional, kindly and ingratiating trip through Holmes' sweet home as it never was". [10]
Gary Arnold of The Washington Post called it "an enjoyable, encouraging beginning" to Wilder's career as a writer-director that "reveals a surprisingly inventive and conscientious comic imagination at work". [11] Pauline Kael of The New Yorker wrote that Wilder "wrote the roles for the actors but didn't write characters for them to play. He provided lots of lovely, sideswiping bits of business but no conceptions that would allow the actors to surprise us with something new or that would enable us to get involved in what's happening to them." [12] John Pym of The Monthly Film Bulletin called it "better in its parts than as a whole, and essentially a showcase for the individual performances of Wilder himself, Marty Feldman, Madeline Kahn and, particularly, the perpetually energised, rubber-faced Dom DeLuise." [13]
The film was released on DVD on April 4, 2006.
Professor James Moriarty is a fictional character and criminal mastermind created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to be a formidable enemy for the author's fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. He was created primarily as a device by which Doyle could kill Holmes and end the hero's stories. Professor Moriarty first appears in the short story "The Adventure of the Final Problem", first published in The Strand Magazine in December 1893. He also plays a role in the final Sherlock Holmes novel The Valley of Fear, but without a direct appearance. Holmes mentions Moriarty in five other stories: "The Adventure of the Empty House", "The Adventure of the Norwood Builder", "The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter", "The Adventure of the Illustrious Client", and "His Last Bow".
Mycroft Holmes is a fictional character appearing in stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle from 1893 to 1908. The elder brother of detective Sherlock Holmes, he is a government official and a founding member of the Diogenes Club. Mycroft is described as having abilities of deduction and knowledge exceeding even those of his brother, though their practical use is limited by his dislike of fieldwork.
"The Final Problem" is a short story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle featuring his detective character Sherlock Holmes. It was first published in The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom, and McClure's in the United States, under the title "The Adventure of the Final Problem" in December 1893. It appears in book form as part of the collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes.
"A Scandal in Bohemia" is the first short story, and the third overall work, featuring Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective Sherlock Holmes. It is the first of the 56 Holmes short stories written by Doyle and the first of 38 Sherlock Holmes works illustrated by Sidney Paget. The story is notable for introducing the character of Irene Adler, who is one of the most notable female characters in the Sherlock Holmes series, despite appearing in only one story. Doyle ranked "A Scandal in Bohemia" fifth in his list of his twelve favourite Holmes stories.
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution: Being a Reprint from the Reminiscences of John H. Watson, M.D. is a 1974 novel by American writer Nicholas Meyer. It is written as a pastiche of a Sherlock Holmes adventure, and was made into a film of the same name in 1976.
The Canary Trainer: From the Memoirs of John H. Watson is a 1993 Sherlock Holmes pastiche by Nicholas Meyer. Like The Seven Percent Solution and The West End Horror, The Canary Trainer was published as a "lost manuscript" of the late Dr. John H. Watson. In "The Adventure of Black Peter", an original Arthur Conan Doyle Holmes story from 1904, Watson mentions that his companion recently arrested "Wilson, the notorious canary-trainer, which removed a plague-spot from the East-End of London." This Wilson is not related to the eponymous character of Meyer's novel. Meyer's "trainer" is Erik, the principal figure of Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera. It is from this unchronicled tale that The Notorious Canary Trainers take their name.
"The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton" is one of the 56 Sherlock Holmes short stories written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It was originally published in Collier's in the United States on 26 March 1904, and in The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom in April 1904. It is one of 13 stories in the cycle collected as The Return of Sherlock Holmes (1905).
Thorley Swinstead Walters was a British actor. He is probably best remembered for his comedy film roles such as in Two-Way Stretch and Carlton-Browne of the FO.
The stories of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle have been very popular as adaptations for the stage, and later film, and still later television. The four volumes of the Universal Sherlock Holmes (1995) compiled by Ronald B. De Waal lists over 25,000 Holmes-related productions and products. They include the original writings, "together with the translations of these tales into sixty-three languages, plus Braille and shorthand, the writings about the Writings or higher criticism, writings about Sherlockians and their societies, memorials and memorabilia, games, puzzles and quizzes, phonograph records, audio and video tapes, compact discs, laser discs, ballets, films, musicals, operettas, oratorios, plays, radio and television programs, parodies and pastiches, children's books, cartoons, comics, and a multitude of other items — from advertisements to wine — that have accumulated throughout the world on the two most famous characters in literature."
Sherlock Holmes has long been a popular character for pastiche, Holmes-related work by authors and creators other than Arthur Conan Doyle. Their works can be grouped into four broad categories:
The Spider Woman is a 1943 mystery film starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, the seventh of fourteen such films the pair were involved in. As with all of the Universal Studios films in the series, the film is set in then-present day as opposed to the Victorian setting of the original stories. This film incorporates elements from the 1890 novel The Sign of the Four, as well as the short stories "The Final Problem", "The Adventure of the Empty House", "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" and makes explicit reference to "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot".
Douglas Norman Wilmer was an English actor, best known for playing Sherlock Holmes in the 1965 TV series Sherlock Holmes.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a 1939 American mystery adventure film based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes detective stories. Although claiming to be an adaptation of the 1899 play Sherlock Holmes by William Gillette, the film bears little resemblance to the play.
Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace is a 1962 mystery film directed by Terence Fisher. It is a West German-French-Italian international co-production. The film starred Christopher Lee as Sherlock Holmes and Thorley Walters as Dr. Watson. Curt Siodmak wrote the screenplay, based on characters created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The Sherlockian game is the pastime of attempting to resolve anomalies and clarify implied details about Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson from the 56 short stories and four novels that make up the Sherlock Holmes canon by Arthur Conan Doyle. It treats Holmes and Watson as real people and uses aspects of the canonical stories combined with the history of the era of the tales' settings to construct fanciful biographies of the pair.
Sherlock Holmes is a 1922 American silent mystery drama film starring John Barrymore as Sherlock Holmes, Roland Young as Dr. John Watson and Gustav von Seyffertitz as Moriarty.
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson is a 1980 Soviet film adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle's stories about Sherlock Holmes. It is the second film in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson film series directed by Igor Maslennikov.
This article describes minor characters from the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and from non-canonical derived works. The list excludes the titular character as well as Dr. Watson, Professor Moriarty, Inspector Lestrade, Mycroft Holmes, Mrs. Hudson, Irene Adler, Colonel Moran, the Baker Street Irregulars, and characters not significant enough to mention.
Sherlock Holmes and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes are two British series of Sherlock Holmes adaptations for television produced by the BBC in 1965 and 1968 respectively. The 1965 production, which followed a pilot the year before, was the second BBC series of Sherlock Holmes adaptations, after one starring Alan Wheatley in 1951. The role of Holmes was played by Douglas Wilmer in 1965, and Peter Cushing in 1968. Nigel Stock starred in both series as Dr. Watson.
Bessie Bellwood was a popular music hall performer of the Victorian era noted for her singing of 'Coster' songs, including "What Cheer 'Ria". Her onstage persona was that of an abrasive but loveable character with an ability to argue down even the toughest of hecklers.