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,
Golden Age of Radio There were also many dramatizations of Sherlock Holmes stories on radio without Rathbone and Bruce. During the latter part of his career, celebrated actor John Barrymore starred in a radio program, "Streamlined Shakespeare", which featured him in a series of one-hour adaptations of Shakespeare plays, many of which Barrymore never appeared in either on stage or in films, such as "Twelfth Night" (in which he played both Malvolio and Sir Toby Belch), and "Macbeth". "Lux Radio Theatre" and "The Screen Guild Theater" presented adaptations of Hollywood movies, performed before a live audience, usually with cast members from the original films.