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 characterisation of Holmes, "with all his little foibles", while in contrast the "Cheltenham Looker-On" described Holmes as "rather a bore sometimes", noting that descriptions of his foibles "grows wearisome". The correspondent for "Hampshire Telegraph" lamented the fact that Doyle's more thoughtful writing, such as "Micah Clarke", was not so popular as the Holmes stories, concluding that an author "who wishes to make literature pay must write what his readers want". Sherlock Holmes has been adapted numerous times for both films and plays, and the character has been played by over 70 different actors in more than 200 films. A number