The actor who played Holmes in the 1939 film The Hound of the Baskervilles was Basil Rathbone. He starred opposite Nigel Bruce, who played Dr. John Watson, in the first of their fourteen Sherlock Holmes films together.
Directed by Sidney Lanfield and released by 20th Century Fox, the film adapted Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1902 novel. Rathbone’s performance helped establish the sharp-featured, energetic screen image that became closely associated with Holmes, although the film altered several plot details from the book.
The 1939 production is especially notable because it was set in the Victorian period of the original stories. Many earlier Holmes films had updated the detective to a contemporary setting. Rathbone and Bruce made a second Fox film later that year, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, before Universal continued the series from 1942 to 1946.
Peter Cushing, Robert Downey Jr., and Jeremy Brett also played Holmes in other adaptations, but none played him in this 1939 film.