Dr. Watson Four" in which he was played by Ian Hunter. Athole Stewart played Watson in the 1931 film "The Speckled Band" Reginald Owen played Watson in the 1932 film "Sherlock Holmes" Warburton Gamble played Watson in the 1933 film "A Study in Scarlet" The series of Sherlock Holmes films with Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Watson portrayed the doctor as a lovable but incompetent assistant. Some later treatments have presented a more competent Watson. Watson was played by actor André Morell in the 1959 film version of "The Hound of the Baskervilles", wherein Morell preferred that his version
Sherlock Holmes the Universal films abandoned Victorian Britain and moved to a then-contemporary setting in which Holmes occasionally battled Nazis. The 1984-85 Italian/Japanese anime series "Sherlock Hound" adapted the Holmes stories for children, with its characters being anthropomorphic dogs. The series was co-directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Between 1979 and 1986, Soviet television produced a series of five television films, "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson". The series were split into eleven episodes and starred Vasily Livanov as Holmes and Vitaly Solomin as Watson. Livanov was appointed an Honorary Member of the Order of the British Empire for a performance ambassador