Sherlock Holmes early 1900s, H. A. Saintsbury took over the role from Gillette for a tour of the play. Between this play and Conan Doyle's own stage adaptation of "The Adventure of the Speckled Band", Saintsbury portrayed Holmes over 1,000 times. Basil Rathbone played Holmes and Nigel Bruce played Watson in fourteen U.S. films (two for 20th Century Fox and a dozen for Universal Pictures) from 1939 to 1946, and in "The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" on the Mutual radio network from 1939 to 1946 (before the role of Holmes passed to Tom Conway). While the Fox films were period pieces,
Dr. Watson Alan Cox played a teenage Watson in the 1985 film "Young Sherlock Holmes", narrated by Michael Hordern as an older Watson. Ian Hart portrayed a young, capable, and fit Watson twice for BBC Television, once opposite Richard Roxburgh as Holmes (in a 2002 adaptation of "The Hound of the Baskervilles") and for a second time opposite Rupert Everett as the Great Detective in the new story "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silk Stocking" (2004). In the Soviet Sherlock Holmes film series, directed by Igor Maslennikov, Dr Watson was played by Vitaly Solomin. He is portrayed as a brave