Once upon a time, there was a silent 1916 Sherlock Holmes movie, starring William Gillette, the founder of all modern schools of acting and the originator of the role of Sherlock Holmes. He played Holmes in the theater over 1300 times, and Doyle loved it. (Loved the royalties, too.) The movie of the play was wildly popular, but every single copy was lost.
Until now.
Early in 2014, the Cinematheque Francaise found a duplicate copy with French title cards and color annotation, to be used in making French distribution copies. The find was announced back in October, although I didn’t hear about it. (Sob!)
In a partnership with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the movie has now been restored and certain scenes have been colored as directed. The movie has its restoration premiere in Paris, and will receive its US restoration premiere on Memorial Day Weekend, 2015, in San Francisco at the film festival.
And the BBC story includes a clip! SEE Holmes, Watson, Billy… and a certain dangerous caller!
Holy cow, this is so exciting! What a great thing to happen!
Aliens in This World 
Reblogged this on Aquila et Infans and commented:
Other fans of Sherlock Holmes will find this very interesting. We can soon watch the actor whom Sir Arthur Conan Doyle watched play Sherlock Holmes.
Klasse!