Have you ever experienced the joys of Jawohl, meine Herr’n? If not I strongly advise an appointment with YouTube. The song features in the 1954 film Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war (‘The Man who was Sherlock Holmes’), and is performed by Hans Albers and Heinz Ruhmann, mainly while soaping themselves in the bath (one each – it’s not that kind of film). Albers and Ruhmann do not, as you might expect, play Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson, but rather men pretending to be Holmes and Watson in order to solve a crime. At one point they’re prosecuted for the impersonation, with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (an actor, not the real one) appearing in court to claim the characters as his own. All in all it’s the perfect example of just how far a literary creation can travel from his original form, in terms both of geography and lunacy.
A poster for the film features in Sherlock Holmes: The Man Who Never Lived and Will Never Die, an exhibition that’s just opened at the Museum of London.
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