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
Basil Rathbone produced by Fox in 1939), were set in the late Victorian times of the original stories. The later installments, produced by Universal, beginning with "Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror" (1942), were set in contemporary times. The first three had World War II-related plots. Concurrent with the films, Rathbone and Bruce reprised their film roles in a radio series, "The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", which began in October 1939. Rathbone appeared in the radio series as long as the film series was active, but after the films lapsed in 1946, Rathbone ceded his radio part to Tom Conway.