The Scarlet Claw swells and Rathbone's voice drops, but he continues to speak several more words which are not heard, but lip movement indicates that he says, "God bless him." The Scarlet Claw The Scarlet Claw is a 1944 Sherlock Holmes film directed by Roy William Neill and starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. It is the eighth film of the Rathbone/Bruce series. David Stuart Davies notes on the film's DVD audio commentary that it's generally considered by critics and fans of the series to be the best of the twelve Holmes films made by Universal. Holmes and Watson are in Canada attending
Sherlock Holmes novel "Psmith, Journalist" (neither spoken by Holmes). The exact phrase "Elementary, my dear Watson" is used by protagonist Tom Beresford in Agatha Christie's 1922 novel "The Secret Adversary". It also appears at the end of the 1929 film "The Return of Sherlock Holmes", the first Holmes sound film. The phrase became familiar with the American public in part due to its use in The Rathbone-Bruce series of films from 1939 to 1946. Conan Doyle's 56 short stories and four novels are known as the "canon" by Holmes aficionados. Early canonical scholars included Ronald Knox in Britain and Christopher Morley in