Sherlock Holmes

H Cooper Cliffe – Starred in the 1914 American touring
production of Doyle’s play The Speckled Band.
Tom Conway – British light leading actor who took over
from Basil Rathbone in the American radio series. The New
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was broadcast on WJZ-ABC from
12 October 1946 to 7 July 1947 (39 stories). Nigel Bruce
continued as Watson.
Peter Cook – British humorist who played Holmes in an
embarrassingly awful 1977 film spoof of The Hound of the
Baskervilles (Hemdale/Michael White). His  comedy  partner
Dudley Moore was Watson.
Harry H Corbett – Comedy actor who played the delusional
Justin Playfair in James Goldman’s stage play They Might Be
Giants (Theatre Royal, Stratford, from 28 June 1961), filmed
ten years later with George C Scott.
Maurice Costello – A well-known American stage actor,
later to become a cinema matinée idol. His claim to fame is that
he is the first (named) actor to have played Holmes. (A 49-
second 1900 film called Sherlock Holmes Baffled was Holmes’
first celluloid excursion, but the actor playing him is
unknown.) Costello’s attempt, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
(also known in the UK as Sherlock Holmes or Held to Ransom) ran
for 12 minutes and was loosely based on The Sign of Four. It was
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produced by the Vitagraph Company in 1903 and directed by
Sheffield-born film pioneer J Stuart Blackton.