Roy William Neill

Roy William Neill (born September 4, 1887, Dublin Harbour, Ireland—died December 14, 1946, London, England) was an Irish-born film director best known for his work with Basil Rathbone on a popular series of Sherlock Holmes movies.

Sources provide conflicting information concerning Neill’s early life. Most give his birth name as Roland de Gostrie and state that he was born on a ship—which was captained by his father—in Dublin Harbour. Others, however, claim that his birth name was Roy William Neill and that he was born in San Francisco. What is known is that by the mid-1910s he was working in the film industry in Hollywood and using the name Roy William Neill (or various versions of it). In 1917 he directed his first features, and he eventually made some 50 silent films—among them Vive la France! (1918), Radio-Mania (1922), and The Kiss Barrier (1925)—though most are lost. His early talkies are, by and large, little known today—The Good Bad Girl (1931), The Circus Queen Murder (1933), and Fury of the Jungle (1933)—although the mystery The Lone Wolf Returns (1935), with Melvyn Douglas as a suave jewel thief, stands out. Neill then moved to England, where he made 14 features between 1937 and 1940. The best of these is arguably Dr. Syn (1937), starring George Arliss (in his last film) as a mild-mannered vicar who is actually a former pirate turned smuggler.

In 1942 Neill returned to Hollywood, where he directed a string of modest but skillfully made B-films for Universal. The best-remembered are those in the Sherlock Holmes series, based on the characters created by Arthur Conan Doyle, with Basil Rathbone playing Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. Those crime mysteries included Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942); Sherlock Holmes in Washington and Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (both 1943); The Spider Woman, The Scarlet Claw, and The Pearl of Death (all 1944); The House of Fear, The Woman in Green, and Pursuit to Algiers (all 1945); and Terror by Night and Dressed to Kill (both 1946).

During that time Neill also made the cult favourite Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943) as well as Gypsy Wildcat (1944), a swashbuckler cowritten by James M. Cain. Neill’s last film was the noir Black Angel (1946), an adaptation of the Cornell Woolrich thriller; it starred Dan Duryea, Peter Lorre, and June Vincent.

Neill spent most of his later years in Hollywood, though he frequently traveled to England. He died of a heart attack in London at the age of 59.