Dr. Watson If you won't, I will for you". Holmes suavely responds: "You may do what you like, Doctor". Therefore, the story is presented as "a reprint from the reminiscences of John H. Watson", and most other stories of the series share this by implication. In the first chapter of "The Sign of Four", Holmes comments on Watson's first effort as a biographer: "I glanced over it. Honestly, I cannot congratulate you upon it. Detection is, or ought to be, an exact science and should be treated in the same cold and unemotional manner. You have attempted to tinge it with romanticism...
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