DRESSED TO KILL (1946) THREE (3) ORIGINAL Sherlock Holmes "FILE" SCRIPTS

Description

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A. Conan Doyle. DRESSED TO KILL [here bearing the initial, later discarded, title "Prelude To Murder"]. Los Angeles: Universal Studios, 1946. This unique film studio screenplay archive consists of THREE original screenplays.
1. A "First Revised Draft" dated January 3rd, 1946, the screenwriter's original carbon copy typescript, unannotated, consisting of 94pp of onion-skin paper. Brad-bound in original drab brown Universal Studios covers which are a little brittle and chipped else Very Good, bearing the stamped production number 7337.
2. Complete 78pp brad-bound shooting script consisting of a mix of original ribbon-copy typescript and studio-mimeographed white pages, dated January 16th, 1946 with production number 7337 stamped on the cover. This remarkable writer's draft contains extensive author-revised annotations, emendations, revisions and additions throughout. This is accomplished via a cut-and-paste, the insertion of additional leaves, and new dialogue and description scrawled on the versos, an exceptional artifact which boldly captures the revision process of this last entry in the Sherlock Holmes' Universal Studios film series. The front cover has been neatly reinforced with tape and bears the original penciled filing notation indicating that this particular script is the copy from which the final draft was produced.
3. Dated April 25th, 1946, the complete original studio-mimeographed self-wrapper final post-production dialogue continuity script, bound with two brads at the top. In Very Good condition.
The title, DRESSED TO KILL, refers to the film's wily femme fatale Hilda Courtney (played by Patricia Morison), an homage to Irene Adler from "A Scandal In Bohemia" complete with a familiar misdirection trick which Hilda uses to fool Watson into revealing a hidden location. The plot is an amalgam of several Holmes stories but also draws from other plots in the Universal Sherlock film canon: a convicted thief in Dartmoor Prison hides stolen Bank of England printing plates inside three music boxes -- leading to the murder or attempted murder of their owners, using the central device of a secret code which, of course, only Holmes can brilliantly break.