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Sunday, July 4th, 2021

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IMDb Refuses to Allow a Change to a Manifestly Wrong Title of Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942)

For years IMDb had the correct title of the 1942 Universal film, "Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon".  This is the title of the film in the credits, and in every single ad in every US newspaper in 1942 and 1943.  (Look it up on Newspapers. com if you want confirmation.)  Recently some uninformed IMDb fan changed the title to "The Tobel Bombsight".  The film was *never* called this.  Not even in the tentative planning stages was it ever called this, though it was called "Sherlock Holmes Fights Back" (See AFI entry at https://catalog.afi.com/Film/662-SHERLOCK-HOLMESANDTHESECRETWEAPON?sid=07f64cbe-3339-4360-840d-391fb66aa1e0&sr=15.310922&cp=1&pos=0).  IMDb, in the "Also Known As" section, claims that the film was called "The Tobel Bombsight" in Canada -- but who cares what it was called in Canada?  The IMDb rule is stated on the IMDb:  "IMDb uses the original title as it appears in the opening credits of the title in its original country of origin."  But the country of origin is the USA, and the title in the USA was never anything but "Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon".  Why, then, did the IMDb staff allow some misguided IMDb user to put in an alternate title used only in Canada as the main title of the film?  I have tried twice now to fix this, but when I try to make the change, I am told that the title is already "Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon" and therefore no change is needed.  But the IMDb does *not* list it under that title; it is listed under "The Tobel Bombsight".  All anyone has to do is look up Basil Rathbone's filmography on the IMDb, and there, "Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon" does not appear, but "The Tobel Bombsight" does.  The IMDb apparently thinks that its database has one title, when it fact it has another.  It is very frustrating trying to make corrections when the interface for making corrections does not allow for proper communication between knowledgeable people and the IMDb.

I have had a similar frustration lately trying to make a simple grammatical correction to a title.  For years, the 1947 film directed by Clarence Day, and starring William Powell, was called by its proper title, "Life with Father".  But lately, someone at the IMDb decided, for reasons that make no sense, that the film's actual title was "Clarence Day's Life with Father".  (That would be like retitling "Citizen Kane" to "Orson Welles's Citizen Kane" or retitling "Casablanca" to "Michael Curtiz's Casablanca".)  But OK, let's go with the retitling suggested; at least the person who made the change should learn to use English grammar.  Right now it reads "Clarence's Day Life with Father".  Duuuhhh!  Is the teaching of English in American schools so bad that *no one at the IMDb* is capable of seeing the grammatical error there?  It has to be "Clarence Day's Life with Father".  The possessive is put on the wrong word!  But the software will not let me correct this simple grammatical error.  I put the correction in weeks ago, and still it has neither been accepted or rejected.  And in fact I put it in previously, some months ago, and it was ignored.  It should be a one-second change for a clerk at the IMDb to change the position of an apostrophe-s!  What is the problem here?

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4 years ago

The original title is currently listed as "Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon". "The Tobel Bombsight" is only listed as a Canadian title. If you are seeing the Canadian title displayed, IMDb may think you are in Canada.

"Clarence's Day Life with Father" is also listed as a Canadian title. It is the alternative title that needs editing, not the primary title. Apart from the apparent typo, I doubt the author name should be included.

You can edit your title display settings here:

https://www.imdb.com/preferences/general

To always see the primary title, choose "Original".

25 Messages

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424 Points

4 years ago

Wow!  Thanks very much for this quick and useful response!  Yes, I'm in Canada, though why that should have caused the problem I don't know, since these weird alternate titles never showed up before, even though I've always logged in from Canada.  It's only recently that I've seen them.  I infer that something in the IMDb software changed over the past few months that automatically switched Canadian users to Canadian forms of titles.  Anyhow, I used the link you provided to get to the preferences, and switched to US title preference, and now both problems are solved.  The titles are now the correct and original titles on my screen!  I'll remember that trick in case it ever happens again.

Champion

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15.7K Messages

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Maybe the change could just be that more Canadian titles have been added. And wrong titles would attract more attention.

"Life with Father" looks correct now. I can't find any support for "The Tobel Bombsight" being used as a title either, so I think I will try to correct that, too.