Nigel Bruce
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William Nigel Ernle Bruce (September 4, 1895 – October 8, 1953), usually credited as Nigel Bruce, was a British character actor, best known as Dr. Watson in a series of films and a radioseries starring Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes.
The son of a baronet, he was born in Ensenada, Mexico on 14 February 1895, where his parents were on vacation.
He was severely wounded in World War I and spent most of the war in a wheelchair.
In 1920 he began his career on stage and eight years later started working in silent films. In 1934 he moved to Hollywood. During his career he worked on 78 movies, including Treasure Island, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Lassie Come Home, The Corn is Green, and Bwana Devil. He also appeared in the Alfred Hitchcock films Rebecca and Suspicion''.
He played buffoonish, fuzzy-minded gentlemen and his signature role was that of Dr. Watson in the Sherlock Holmes series beginning in 1939 with his good friend Basil Rathbone. Holmes purists objected that Watson in the books was an intelligent and capable person, just not a super detective, and that the Bruce portrayal made him seem dimmer and more bumbling than he was. Some purists nicknamed him Bobous Britannicus. But for millions of fans, Bruce was the definitive Watson. There were 14 films made and over 200 radio programs. Although he appears to be elderly in these films, he was actually three years younger than Basil Rathbone.
Nigel Bruce, known as Willy to his friends, was a leading member of the British movie colony in Los Angeles. He remained British through and though and, unlike some of his contemporaries, did not change his nationality.
Bruce died from a heart attack in Santa Monica, California in 1953, aged 58. He was cremated, and his ashes stored in the vault at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles.
He wrote an autobiography called Games Gossip and Greasepaint which has never been published. However excerpts can be read at [link]
His last movie, World for Ransom, was released posthumously in 1954.
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