Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s detective genius, Sherlock Holmes, came to NBC radio in 1930 with Richard Gordon playing the legendary sleuth. By 1939 Basil Rathbone was heard as Holmes, with Nigel Bruce as Doctor Watson. The duo was simultaneously starring in a popular series of Sherlock Holmes features for Twentieth Century Fox and later for Universal Studios. By the end of the mid-1940s, Rathbone was eager to separate himself from the radio show to avoid being typecast. Though the show’s sponsor offered him generous pay to continue, he decided to move on.
Tom Conway then took over the role, with Nigel Bruce continuing as Watson. Conway and Bruce were replaced in 1947 by John Stanley and Alfred Shirley. Others to portray Holmes and Watson during the radio program’s run were George Shelton and Ian Martin and Ben Wright and Eric Snowden. In 1955 NBC signed heavyweights John Gielgud and Sir Ralph Richardson to star as Holmes and Watson, but with radio quickly giving way to television, it lasted only one season. This collection contains twelve amazing Sherlock Holmes adventures, starring Tom Conway and Nigel Bruce.
Episodes include “The Clue of the Hungry Cat,” “The Adventure of the Original Hamlet,” “The Singular Affair of the Dying Schoolboys,” “The Adventure of the Genuine Guarnarius,” “The Adventure of the Sally Martin,” “The Strange Death of Mrs. Abernetty,” “The Adventure of the Half-Eaten Apple, the Coptic Compass, and the Unclothed Corpse,” “The Adventure of the Elusive Emerald,” “The Adventure of the Grand Old Man,” “The Singular Affair of the White Cockerel,” “The Darlington Substitution Case,” and “The Singular Affair of the Babbling Butler.”