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,
Adaptations of Sherlock Holmes and boredom", this friend being an opium-addicted and increasingly weak Sherlock Holmes. Rupert Everett plays the Great Detective. 2002 also saw the made for television cable movie, "Case of Evil", about a 20-something Sherlock Holmes (James D'Arcy) and a Doctor Watson who worked as an early practitioner of autopsies, on the trail of Holmes' archenemy, Professor Moriarty (Vincent D'Onofrio). An adaptation of "The Speckled Band" aired on the early TV anthology series "Your Show Time", and starred Alan Napier as Holmes and Melville Cooper as Watson. John Cleese played Holmes in a 1973 episode of "Comedy Playhouse": "Elementary My Dear