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 novel "Psmith, Journalist" (neither spoken by Holmes). The exact phrase "Elementary, my dear Watson" is used by protagonist Tom Beresford in Agatha Christie's 1922 novel "The Secret Adversary". It also appears at the end of the 1929 film "The Return of Sherlock Holmes", the first Holmes sound film. The phrase became familiar with the American public in part due to its use in The Rathbone-Bruce series of films from 1939 to 1946. Conan Doyle's 56 short stories and four novels are known as the "canon" by Holmes aficionados. Early canonical scholars included Ronald Knox in Britain and Christopher Morley in