In the original novel, and in all later film versions, the butler is named Barrymore. In this version, the butler was renamed Barryman since the famous Barrymore family - Lionel Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore and John Barrymore - were still acting in films at the time.
After being out of circulation for many years, partly because of the 1959 Hammer remake (Der Hund von Baskerville (1959)) in Technicolor starring Peter Cushing, this film was restored and re-released to theaters in 1975 with great fanfare, to the point of having the national evening news do a story on it. The film was shown at its full 80-minute length, and newspaper and magazine articles commented on the fact that the line "Oh, Watson, the needle!", referring to Holmes' cocaine habit (and usually misquoted as "Quick, Watson, the needle!") was put back in after having been cut by the censors. As an added attraction, the studio added a rare sound film featurette which showed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes books, talking about his creation.
This was such a hit that Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce were hired to play Holmes and Watson on the radio series "The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes." This radio series consisted of new Sherlock Holmes stories written by Anthony Boucher and Denis Green.
The first of 14 films based on Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional consulting detective Sherlock Holmes starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Doctor Watson. The two also made a gag appearance on the Universal backlot in the 1943 Olsen and Johnson comedy Crazy House (1943).
In 1975, Film Specialties, a small but respected distribution company, acquired rights to the film and re-released it in selected cities, including Portland, Seattle, New York, and San Francisco. It was accompanied by a vintage Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Movietone interview and the Buster Keaton comedy Sherlock Holmes Jr. (1924).