Quotes

I am in no way a distinguished man, but if I died tomorrow, I can honestly claim to have been what few men can call themselves - a really happy one. For 26 years I have been blessed with the love and friendship of a very wonderful woman. I have two attractive and splendid daughters of whom I am very proud, and my two sons-in-law I respect and like enormously. Except for a groggy leg I have been given excellent health, and all through my life I have had the friendship of many attractive and worthwhile people, for all this I am very grateful. I have made a few enemies and for their opinions I care not a fig. I may be broke or ill again, but as long as I have Bunny beside me I shall be happy, and I can only hope that our two daughters will enjoy their lives as much as their father has enjoyed every minute of his. (1947)

The stories we did were modernised but the characters of the famous detective and his biographer were kept more or less as originally written by Conan Doyle. Watson, however, in the films was made much more of a 'comic' character than he ever was in the books. This was with the object of introducing a little light relief. The doctor, as I played him, was a complete stooge for his brilliant friend and one whose intelligence was almost negligible. Many of the lovers of Conan Doyle must have been shocked, not by this caricature of the famous doctor but by seeing the great detective alighting from an aeroplane and the good doctor listening to his radio. To begin with, Basil and I were much opposed to the modernising of these stories but the producer, Howard Benedict, pointed out to us that the majority of youngsters who would see our pictures were accustomed to the fast-moving action of gangster pictures, and that expecting machine guns, police sirens, cars travelling at 80 miles an hour and dialogue such as 'Put em up bud', they would be bored with the magnifying glass, the hansom cabs, the cobblestones and the slow tempo of an era they never knew and a way of life with which they were completely unfamiliar.

The telegram was from Basil Rathbone who said: 'Do come back to Hollywood, Willie, dear boy, and play Doctor Watson to my Sherlock Holmes. We'll have great fun together.' Basil can never realize how much that telegram cheered me up, as when I received it, I was in the mood to put my head in a gas oven.