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 Hound of London Queen of Bohemia in the film. Patrick Macnee was cast as Sherlock Holmes. Previously, Macnee had portrayed Watson three times: once to Roger Moore's Sherlock Holmes in a 1976 TV movie, "Sherlock Holmes in New York" and twice with Christopher Lee ("Incident at Victoria Falls" and "Sherlock Holmes and the Leading Lady"). This film made Macnee only the fourth actor to have played both Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, joining Reginald Owen (Watson in the 1932 film "Sherlock Holmes", and then Holmes in 1933's "A Study in Scarlet"), Jeremy Brett (Watson on stage in "The Crucifer of Blood" and Holmes