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,
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (film) in which Holmes is played by Robert Downey, Jr.. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (film) The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (released theatrically as Sherlock Holmes in the United Kingdom) is a 1939 mystery-adventure film released by Twentieth Century Fox. It is a pastiche featuring the characters of the Sherlock Holmes series of books written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The film is an adaptation of the 1899 play "Sherlock Holmes" by William Gillette, though there is little resemblance in the plots. The picture is the second installment to the series of fourteen "Sherlock Holmes" film series released between 1939 and