Basil Rathbone Zanuck at Lucey's Restaurant in Hollywood, proposed a film version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Hound of the Baskervilles". When asked who could possibly play Holmes, Markey incredulously replied, ""Who?!" Basil Rathbone!" The film was so successful that Fox produced a sequel which appeared later in 1939. Interest in Holmes cooled at Fox, but Universal Pictures picked up the character, and twelve feature films were made between 1941 and 1944 for release until 1947, all of which co-starred Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. The first two films, "The Hound of the Baskervilles" and "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes" (both
Sherlock Holmes novel "Psmith, Journalist" (neither spoken by Holmes). The exact phrase "Elementary, my dear Watson" is used by protagonist Tom Beresford in Agatha Christie's 1922 novel "The Secret Adversary". It also appears at the end of the 1929 film "The Return of Sherlock Holmes", the first Holmes sound film. The phrase became familiar with the American public in part due to its use in The Rathbone-Bruce series of films from 1939 to 1946. Conan Doyle's 56 short stories and four novels are known as the "canon" by Holmes aficionados. Early canonical scholars included Ronald Knox in Britain and Christopher Morley in