Basil Rathbone

At 75 years old, Basil Rathbone has this physical status:

Basil Rathbone MC (13 June 1892 – July 1967) was an English actor.

He rose to fame in the United Kingdom as a Shakespearean stage actor and went on to appear in more than 70 films, primarily costume dramas, swashbucklers, and, occasionally, horror films. In The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Rathbone regularly depicted sue villains or morally ambiguous characters, such as Mr. Murdstone in David Copperfield (1935) and Sir Guy of Gisbourne (1938).

Sherlock Holmes appeared in fourteen Hollywood films made between 1939 and 1946, as well as in a radio series.

His later career included appearances on Broadway, as well as self-ironic film and television roles.

In 1948, he received the Best Actor in a Play.

He was also nominated for two Academy Awards and was lauded with three actors on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Early life

Rathbone was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, to British parents. Anna Barbara (née George), a violinist and scion of the Liverpool Rathbone family, was his father, Edgar Philip Rathbone. Harold and Horace, as well as two younger siblings, Beatrice and John, were among his two older half-brothers. Basil was the great-grandson of William Rathbone V, a noted Victorian philanthropist and also a descendant of William Rathbone II.

Basil was three years old when the Boers accused him of being a spy following the Jameson Raid. Rathbone attended Repton School in Derbyshire from 1906 to 1910, where he excelled at sports and was given the nickname "Ratters" by schoolmates. He was briefly employed by the Liverpool and Globe Insurance Companies as an insurance clerk to defuse his father's desire for him to work in a traditional manner.

Rathbone made his first appearance on stage at the Theatre Royal, Ipswich, Suffolk, on April 22nd, 1911, as Hortensio in The Taming of the Shrew, alongside his cousin Sir Frank Benson's No. 2 Company was established under Henry Herbert's leadership. He went to the United States with Benson's firm in October 1912, appearing in performances including Paris in Romeo and Juliet, Fenton in The Merry Wives of Windsor, and As You Like It. He made his first appearance in London on July 9th as Finch in The Sin of David, and he was returning to Britain. He appeared in Henry V. in December and September as the Dauphin in Henry V.

Personal life

Ethel Marion Foreman, a young actress who appeared in 1914, married in Rathbone. They had one son, Rodion Rathbone (1915–1996), who had a brief Hollywood career under the name John Rodion. In 1926, the couple divorced. He married writer Ouida Bergère in the same year; the couple adopted Cynthia Rathbone (1939-1989), which was their first child. Their baby by birth had died some 11 years earlier. Jackson Rathbone, an American actor, is a distant cousin.

Basil Rathbone was a first cousin of British campaigning independent MP Eleanor Rathbone. He was the cousin of actor Frank Benson, to whom he bore a strong resemblance.

Ouida Rathbone, husband's business manager, established a reputation for staging elaborate and expensive parties in their house, with many well-known and influential people on the guest lists during Rathbone's career. This trend led to a parody in The Ghost Breakers (1940), a film in which Rathbone does not appear: "Basil Rathbone must be throwing a party," says Bob Hope during a heavy thunderstorm in New York City. Rathbone was described by actress Mrs Patrick Campbell as "two profiles pasted together." Mrs Campbell later referred to him as "a folded umbrella receiving elocution lessons," as cited in the same autobiography.

He was both a member of the Episcopal Actors Guild and a devout Episcopalian.

Source

Career

He appeared in The Tempest and Florizel at Stratford-Avon in 1919, playing Romeo, Cassius, Ferdinand; in October he was at The Queen's Theatre in London as the aide de camp in Napoleon; in February 1920, he appeared in Peter Ibbetson's title role.

Rathbone appeared onstage and in other roles on the British stage during the 1920s and elsewhere. In October 1923, he began to travel and appeared in Cort Theatre, New York, opposite Eva Le Gallienne in a revival of Molnár's "The Swan," which made him a Broadway actor. He appeared in San Francisco in May and the Lyceum Theatre, New York in October, and in New York in October. He appeared on stage with Ethel Barrymore in 1927 and 1930, as well as in 1931. He continued his stage career in the United Kingdom, returning from 1934 to the United States, where he appeared with Katharine Cornell in several productions.

Rathbone appeared in 1926 alongside every other cast member of The Captive, a play in which his character's wife left him for another woman. Although the charges were eventually dismissed, Rathbone was extremely upset about the censorship because he felt that homosexuality must be brought into the open.

He began his film career in 1921 in silent films and appeared in 1923's "School for Scandal" and in The Masked Bride, as well as several other silents. In the 1930 film The Bishop Murder Case, which was based on the best-selling novel, he portrayed detective Philo Vance. Sherlock Holmes is a coincidental reference in the film. In the 1930s, Rathbone made a name for himself in costume dramas and swashbucklers, including David Copperfield (1935) as the abused stepfather in murder stories and swashbucklers, including Peter Antonie (1935) as the Marquis Stone; Captain Esteban Pasquale (1940) as Captain Esteban Pasquale; a tale of Two Cities (1935) as Captain Robert Harne; The Adventures of George Sanders (1938) as a Richard III, and Son of Frankenstein (1939), portraying the devoted surgeon Baron Wolf von Frankenstein, the son of the monster's maker, and John Watson, who appeared in several early horror films, including "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1939).

He was known for his athletic cinema swordsmanship (he listed fencing as one of his favorite recreations). In Captain Blood and an intricate battle sequence in The Adventures of Robin Hood, he battled and lost to Errol Flynn in a duel on the beach and in an intricate combat sequence. He was also involved in memorable sword fights in Tower of London, The Mark of Zorro, and The Court Jester (1956). Rathbone won only twice on film against John Barrymore in Romeo and Juliet (1936) and against Eugene Pallette in The Mark of Zorro (1940). In If I Were King (1938), Rathbone received Academy Award nominations for Best Actor in a Supporting Role (1936) and as King Louis XI (1938), a truly moving, comedic performance as the wily king. In The Dawn Patrol (1938), he was one of his few heroic roles in the 1930s as a Royal Flying Corps (RFC) squadron commander brought to a nervous breakdown by the strain and guilt of sending his war-weary pilots off to near-certain death in 1915 France. When Rathbone's character was introduced, Errol Flynn, Rathbone's perennial rival, starred in the film as his replacement.

Rathbone was Margaret Mitchell's first choice to portray Rhett Butler in her film version of her book Gone with the Wind, according to a Hollywood legend. However, the story's credibility may be suspect, as Mitchell selected Groucho Marx for the role on another occasion, evidently in jeopardy. Rathbone campaigned for the position.

Despite his film success, Rathbone has always said that he wanted to be remembered for his stage work. Romeo was his favorite part, according to him.

Rathbone is best known for his numerous portrayals of Sherlock Holmes. In a radio interview, Rathbone remembered that Twentieth Century-Fox producer and director Gene Markey, lunching with producer-director Gregory Ratoff and 20th Century-Fox mogul Daryl Zanuck at Lucey's Restaurant in Hollywood, suggested a film adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Hound of the Baskervilles. When asked who might play Holmes, Markey remarkingly said, "Who?!!

Basil Rathbone!"

The film was so popular that Fox produced a sequel that appeared later in 1939. Holmes' interest in Holmes slowed at Fox, but Universal Pictures picked up the style, and 12 feature films were released between 1941 and 1947, none of which co-starred Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson.

The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes were two of the first two films, both directed by Fox in 1939, and set in the late Victorian days of the original tales. The later instalments, which started with Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942), were set in modern times, with three of them having World War II-related plots.

Rathbone and Bruce reprised their film roles in the radio series The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which began in October 1939. Rathbone appeared in the radio series as long as the film series was on full throttle, but Rathbone relinquished his radio appearance to Tom Conway in 1946. Conway and Bruce appeared on the series for two seasons before they were canceled in 1947.

Several Holmes sequels typecast Rathbone, but he was unable to escape the Great Detective's shadow despite appearing in other film roles. Rathbone, a typecaster, refused to renew his Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract and returned to Broadway. Rathbone readily contributed to the Holmes family in later years, as in a television sketch with Milton Berle in which he wore the deerstalker cap and Inverness cape in the early 1950s. In the 1960s, dressed as Holmes, he appeared in a string of television commercials for Getz Exterminators ("Getz gets 'em since 1888!" "" is the way you say it."

Holmes was also brought to the stage in a play performed by his wife Ouida. Professor Moriarty played Thomas Gomez, who had appeared as a Nazi ringleader in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror. Once more, Nigel Bruce was supposed to portray Dr Watson, but the role was played by character actor Jack Raine. Bruce's absence stunned Rathbone, particularly after Bruce died on October 8, 1953, when the performance was in rehearsals. There were only three performances in the play.

Rathbone appeared in two parodys of his earlier swashbuckling villains in the 1950s: Casanova's Big Night (1954) opposite Bob Hope and The Court Jester (1956) with Danny Kaye. He appeared on television game shows often and continued to appear in major films, including the Humphrey Bogart comedy We're No Angels (1955) and John Ford's political drama The Last Hurrah (1958).

Rathbone has appeared on Broadway several times. In 1948, he received a Tony Award for his role as the unyielding Dr. Austin Sloper in the original production of The Heiress, which featured Wendy Hiller as his timid, spinster daughter. He has also been recognized for his work in Archibald Macleish's J.B., a modernization of Job's Biblical trials.

He appeared on television in numerous dignified anthology series from the 1950s to the 1960s. He appeared on television game shows The Name of a People (1954), The Black Sleep (1956), King of Blood (1966), and Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967), a low-budget horror film called Autopsy of a Ghost (1968), to promote his second wife's lavish tastes.

He is also known for his spoken word recordings, as well as his interpretation of Clement C. Moore's "The Night Before Christmas." Edgar Allan Poe's stories and poems are collected together with Caedmon Audio's The Edgar Allan Poe Audio Collection on CD, with readings by Vincent Price.

Rathbone revisited his Sherlock Holmes characterization in four Caedmon albums. The first book, "The Speckle Band," was released in 1963, and it is a straightforward retelling of the tale. In the rest, he varies his voice for each character, including a rendition of Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson.

In addition, Rathbone's Oliver Twist, Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf (with Leopold Stokowski conducting), and Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol were among Robert Smith's many other recordings.

He appeared in two musical adaptations of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, one in 1954, in which he appeared in Marley's Ghost opposite Fredric March's Scrooge, and the other in 1956, in which he appeared as a singing Ebenezer Scrooge.

In the 1960s, he toured with the theme In and Out of Character (much as his autobiography) In and Out of Character. He read poetry and Shakespeare in this exhibition as well as providing reminisces from his life and career (e.g., the satissive, "I could have killed Errol Flynn any time I wanted to!" He quoted "221B," a poem by writer-critic Vincent Startt, one of the most influential members of the Baker Street Irregulars who was held in high esteem by Rathbone.

In Tower of London (1939) and The Comedy of Terrors (1963), Vincent Price and Rathbone appeared together, as well as Boris Karloff. The latter was the first film to feature the "Big Four" of American International Pictures' horror films: Price, Rathbone, Karloff, and Peter Lorre were the only ones to include them in the film. In the final segment of Roger Corman's 1962 anthology film Tales of Terror, a loosening of Poe's "The Truth in the Case of M. Valdemar," Rathbone appeared with Price.

Basil Rathbone Selects Strange Tales, a collection of horror stories by Poe, Hawthorne, Bulwer-Lytton, Charles Dickens, Allston Collins, Le Fanu, and Wilkie Collins, 1965. The volume includes a front page portrait of Rathbone; however, Lyle Kenyon Engel's back cover says that the anthology was not edited by Rathbone. Boris Karloff, the Canadian editor and book collector, also distributed shows and magazines for other horror actors, including Boris Karloff.

Basil Rathbone has three actors on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: one for films on 649 Hollywood Boulevard; one for radio at 6300 Hollywood Boulevard; and one for television at 6500 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.

Source