Stuart Webbs (film series)
Stuart Webbs was a crime series by producers Joe May (until 1914) and Ernst Reicher , which was created between autumn 1913 and autumn 1929.
history
The role of Stuart Webbs was played by Ernst Reicher and once each by Fritz Greiner , Ralph Clancy and Karl Ludwig Diehl . Joe May directed it himself, but directors Adolf Gärtner , Johannes Guter , Max Obal , Robert Wiene , Franz Seitz senior , Lupu Pick , Rudolf Meinert and Ernst Reicher were also involved. The directors of some films are also unknown. Stuart Webbs was a gentlemanly detective modeled on Sherlock Holmesthat solved even the most difficult cases smartly and elegantly. This fictional character was popular with German cinema audiences throughout the First World War. Webbs adventures were shot regularly until 1921, and since then the individual episodes of the series, now produced by Emelka , also based in Munich , have been made at irregular intervals. In 1926 a remake of Das Panzergewölbe was made , again with Reicher in the title role. It was to be his last assignment as the smart detective. Two latecomers were the late silent films The Green Monocle with Ralph Clancy and Masken with Karl Ludwig Diehl as Webbs in 1929 .
On the genesis of the series, Oskar Kalbus wrote in 1935: “In 1913, director Joe May made a film in which a number of aspiring actors were employed. One of them was named Ernst Reicher. Reicher, who had studied the Whitechapel crime district in England and there had met a criminalist whose acumen he had to admire again and again, suggested one day that we film an adventure by that private detective. He named the hero of the film Stuart Webbs, and so the first detective film "The Mysterious Villa" came about. What nobody expected happened. This film made the biggest business ever imagined. Everywhere he appeared, at home and abroad, audiences stood in line at the box offices of cinemas. It didn't take long for the second Stuart Webbs film to be made, then the third, the fourth, the twentieth. Ernst Reicher probably made 40–50 films in which he was "Stuart Webbs", that amiable, chevaleresque, highly intellectual, well-trained detective who saw his most important task in the tireless service of justice. "
A similar film series was that with the protagonist Joe Jenkins , and there was also the film series about Holmes himself: Sherlock Holmes (film series, 1912) and Sherlock Holmes (film series, 1917) .
Movies
year | serial number | title | Director | actor |
---|---|---|---|---|
1914 | I. | The mysterious villa | Joe May | Ernst Reicher |
1914 | II. | The man in the basement | Joe May | Ernst Reicher |
1914 | III. | The haunted house of the professor | Joe May | Ernst Reicher |
1914 | - | The armored vault | Joe May | Ernst Reicher |
1915 | V. | The striped domino | Adolf Gärtner | Ernst Reicher |
1915 | VI. | The dead awaken | Adolf Gärtner | Ernst Reicher |
1915 | - | A man's shadow | Ernst Reicher | Ernst Reicher |
1915 | VII. | The midnight ship | Adolf Gärtner | Ernst Reicher |
1916 | VIII. | The letter opener | Adolf Gärtner | Ernst Reicher |
1916 | IX. | The amateur | Ernst Reicher | Ernst Reicher |
1916 | X./XI. | The cry for help | Adolf Gärtner | Ernst Reicher |
1917 | XI. | The journey to the afterlife | Adolf Gärtner | Ernst Reicher |
1916 | XIII. | Countess de Castro | Adolf Gärtner | Ernst Reicher |
1916 | XIII. | The whip | Adolf Gärtner | Ernst Reicher |
1917 | XIV. | The Senatorial Election | unknown | Ernst Reicher |
1917 | XV. | The light signal | unknown | Ernst Reicher |
1917 | XVI. | The pagoda | Ernst Reicher | Ernst Reicher |
1917 | XVII. | The floating raft | unknown | Ernst Reicher |
1917 | XVIII. | The death star | unknown | Ernst Reicher |
1917 | XIX. | The diamond foundation | Johannes Guter | Ernst Reicher |
1918 | XX. | The enigmatic look | Johannes Guter | Ernst Reicher |
1918 | XXI. | The ghost hunt | Johannes Guter | Ernst Reicher |
1918 | XXII. | The train marten | Johannes Guter | Ernst Reicher |
1918 | XXV./XXIII. | The devil's waltz | Johannes Guter | Ernst Reicher |
1918 | XXIV. | The bull of Saldanha | Johannes Guter | Ernst Reicher |
1918 | XXV. | The deputy | unknown | Ernst Reicher |
1918 | - | The mysterious letters | unknown | Ernst Reicher |
1918 | - | The stolen model | Max Obal | Ernst Reicher |
1919 | XXVI. | The whims of luck | Ernst Reicher | Ernst Reicher |
1919 | - | The brothers of Saint Parasitus | Max Obal | Ernst Reicher |
1919 | - | The castle on the slope | unknown | Ernst Reicher |
1920 | - | The gray magpie | unknown | Ernst Reicher |
1920 | - | The horror in the Ardon house | Robert Wiene | Fritz Greiner |
1920 | - | The jump into the dark | Ernst Reicher | Ernst Reicher |
1920 | - | George Bully and Stuart Webbs | Max Obal | Ernst Reicher |
1921 | - | The rat hole | Max Obal | Ernst Reicher |
1921 | - | Stuart Webb's experiences: The master detective in his adventures | - | Ernst Reicher |
1923 | - | In the last moment | Ernst Reicher | Ernst Reicher |
1924 | - | The pearls of Dr. Talmadge | Max Obal | Ernst Reicher |
1924 | - | The Malaysian jonke | Max Obal | Ernst Reicher |
1925 | - | The curse of the evil deed | Max Obal | Ernst Reicher |
1925 | - | Mrs. Worrington's perfume | Franz Seitz sr. | Ernst Reicher |
1925 | - | The shot in the pavilion | Max Obal | Ernst Reicher |
1925 | - | The secret of an hour | Max Obal | Ernst Reicher |
1926 | - | The armored vault | Lupu pick | Ernst Reicher |
1929 | - | The green monocle | Rudolf Meinert | Ralph Clancy |
1929 | - | Masks | Rudolf Meinert | Karl Ludwig Diehl |
Web links
- Stuart Webbs at The German Early Cinema Database
Remarks
- ↑ The serial numbers come from the source. The numbering is unclear.
Individual evidence
- ^ Oskar Kalbus: On the becoming of German film art. 1st part: The silent film . Berlin 1935, p. 38.