Capturing A Moment No One Else Did

Russell Merritt Collars a Bone-Chilling Hound in 1959

If challenged to name a healthy addiction, I submit … Sherlock Holmes. Is there another fictional character to demand such fan devotion for over a hundred years? Surely it gratifies Robert Downey, Jr. more to play Holmes than Iron Man. I watch Rathbone/Holmes when I’m not in the mood for anything else, which is often. There are those who have duplicated 221-B Baker Street in their home, exact to a last fleck of dust. Retrieval of thought-lost Holmes films has been a last couple year’s detective story, so far yielding William Gillette in a 1915 feature, then a German-made Hound Of The Baskervilles (Der Hund von Baskerville) that never played theatres in America and wasn’t expected to surface again. A lead rescuer was writer/historian Russell Merritt, an avid Sherlockian who contributes interview insights plus a booklet essay to Flicker Alley’s just-out Blu-Ray. The climb toward restoration was steep: a nitrate source here, surviving 9.5 footage there, and stills to bridge a minor gap in the second reel. Result is an impossible dream of Holmes devotees fully realized. Extras include an even earlier Hound brought up from depths. It’s an extraordinary package for mystery mavens.

And speaking to extraordinary, here are highlights I am privileged to share from scrapbooks maintained by Russell Merritt when he was a teenager living in New Jersey. Priding myself for clipping ads from early-on childhood, imagine humbling sight of all-encompassing save that Russell made of Gotham’s first-run of Hammer’s Hound of the Baskervilles in summer 1959. He didn’t preserve one ad from the Victoria Theatre’s Broadway open --- he got them all --- each different, of course, with the group a summation of how Hound was promoted for NY premiere play. Kept too was press coverage, reviews, publicity plants, a trade ad, and get this for remarkable: young Mr. Merritt, age sixteen, took his camera to the Victoria and photographed the marquee and entrance. I don’t believe such images exist elsewhere. Certainly they were not to be had ten years ago when I searched trades for NY marquee shots to illustrate a Greenbriar Hammer Hound post. What Russell Merritt captured in 7/59 was unique and remains so. This is scholarship with sleeves rolled up, and done in the field. Precocious on one hand (how many teens carried cameras with them to movies?), far-sighted beyond what any other fan would attempt on the other, let alone sixty years ago when films were figured disposable at best by most.

I’ve pondered these images a lot since Russell sent them. Note the Astor next door with The Horse Soldiers. A massive billboard heralds the playdate for John Ford’s Civil War saga starring John Wayne and William Holden. Both it and Baskervilles hailed from distributor United Artists. UA bet more of ad/pub on The Horse Soldiers, figuring a wider public would embrace the starry cast and setting over a UK import with less certain prospects. In fact, the Ford film fell down wickets-wise, despite the massive push, big spending not returned by a less enthused attendance. The Victoria hangs key art of Baskerville’s Hound on their marquee, plus banners ringing the theatre front. UA was committed to a “Horror-Phonic” sell from the start. You’d not know from advertising that Sherlock Holmes was even involved in this venture. Did the “Howl-and-Horror” campaign help or hurt receipts? A disappointing domestic outcome suggests the latter, but how else to exploit Hound Of The Baskervilles but on shocker terms? Baskervilles is Broadway-dwarfed by The Horse Soldiers, but we can be grateful that Russell Merritt chose Holmes/Hammer for his scrapbook and photog emphasis, his a most complete record by far of how this Hound howled in 1959 Gotham. Much thanks then, for his sharing these marvelous images with us.