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 1976 "The Return of the World's Greatest Detective" policemen Sherman Holmes suffers from a blow to the head resulting in him thinking he is Sherlock Holmes. John Cleese starred as Holmes' grandson - Arthur Sherlock Holmes - in the comic TV special "The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It" (1977). Arthur Lowe played Dr. William Watson, the original doctor's grandson. Between 1979 and 1986, Soviet television produced a series of five television films at the Lenfilm movie studio, "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson". The series were split into eleven episodes and starred