Basil Rathbone
Basil Rathbone | |
|---|---|
 from the trailer for the film Tovarich (1937) |
Basil Rathbone MC, (13 June, 1892 – 21 July, 1967), was a British actor most famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes and of suave villains in such swashbuckler films as The Mark of Zorro, Captain Blood, and The Adventures of Robin Hood.
Early life
He was born Philip St. John Basil Rathbone in Johannesburg, South Africa, to English parents Edgar Philip Rathbone and Anna Barbara née George. A younger sister and brother, Beatrice and John, constituted the rest of the family. The Rathbones fled to England when Basil was three years of age after his father was accused by the Boers of being a British spy near the onset of the Second Boer War.
Basil was educated at Repton School and was engaged with the Liverpool and Globe Insurance Companies. In 1916, he enlisted for the duration of The Great War, joining the London Scottish Regiment ([1]) as a private, serving alongside Claude Rains, Herbert Marshall and Ronald Colman. He later transferred with a commission as a lieutenant to the Liverpool Scottish. In September 1918, he was awarded the Military Cross.
Acting career
On April 22, 1911, he made his first appearance on stage at the Theatre Royal, Ipswich, as Hortensio in The Taming of the Shrew, with Sir Frank Benson's No. 2 Company, under the direction of Henry Herbert. In October 1912, he went to America with Benson's company, playing such parts as Paris in Romeo and Juliet, Fenton in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Silvius in As You Like It, etc. Returning to England, he made his first appearance in London at the Savoy Theatre on July 9, 1914, as Finch in The Sin of David. In December that year, he appeared at the Shaftesbury Theatre as the Dauphin in Shakespeare's Henry V. During 1915, he toured with Benson and appeared with him at London's Court Theatre in December as Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream.
During the Summer Festival of 1919, he appeared at Stratford-upon-Avon with the New Shakespeare Company playing Romeo, Cassius, Ferdinand in The Tempest, Florizel in The Winter's Tale etc; in October he was at London's Queen's Theatre as the Aide-de-Camp in Napoleon, and in February 1920, he was at the Savoy Theatre in the title role in Peter Ibbetson with huge success.
During the 1920s, Rathbone appeared regularly in Shakespearean and other roles on the English stage. He began to travel and appeared at the Cort Theatre, New York in October 1923, and toured in the United States in 1925, appearing in San Francisco in May and the Lyceum Theatre, New York in October. He was in the US again in 1927 and 1930, and in 1931 when he appeared on stage with Ethel Barrymore. He continued his stage career in England, returning to the US late in 1934 where he appeared with Katharine Cornell in several plays.
He commenced his film career in 1925 in The Masked Bride, appeared in a few silent movies, and played the detective Philo Vance in the 1930 movie The Bishop Murder Case, based on the best-selling novel. Like George Sanders and Vincent Price after him, Rathbone made a name for himself in the 1930s by playing suave villains in costume dramas and swashbucklers, including David Copperfield (1935) as the cruel stepfather Mr. Murdstone, Anna Karenina (1935) as her distant husband, Karenin, The Last Days of Pompeii (1935) portraying a surprisingly sympathetic Pontius Pilate, Captain Blood (1935), A Tale of Two Cities (1935), as the sneering Marquis St. Evremonde, The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) playing his best remembered villain, Sir Guy of Gisbourne, The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938), and The Mark of Zorro (1940) as Captain Esteban Pasquale. He also appeared in several early horror films: Tower of London (1939) and Son of Frankenstein (1939), portraying Baron Wolf von Frankenstein, the son of Dr. Frankenstein.
He was admired for his athletic cinema swordsmanship (he listed fencing amongst his favourite recreations). He fought and lost to Errol Flynn in a duel on the beach in Captain Blood and in an elaborate fight sequence in The Adventures of Robin Hood. He was involved in noteworthy sword fights in Tower of London; The Mark of Zorro and The Court Jester (1956). Despite his real-life skill, Rathbone only won once onscreen, in Romeo and Juliet (1936). Rathbone earned Academy Award nominations for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performances as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (1936), and as King Louis XI in If I Were King (1938). In "The Dawn Patrol" (1938), about the Royal Flying Corps in France in 1915, he gave an outstanding performance (one of his few good-guy roles in the 30s) as a squadron commander brought to the brink of a mental breakdown by the strain and guilt of sending his battle-weary pilots off to near-certain death. Errol Flynn, Rathbone's perennial foe, starred in the film as his successor when Rathbone's character is promoted.
A Hollywood legend is that Rathbone was Margaret Mitchell's first choice to play Rhett Butler in the film version of her novel Gone with the Wind. The reliability of this story may be suspect, however, as on another occasion, Mitchell chose Groucho Marx for the role, apparently in jest.
Despite his film success, Rathbone always insisted that he wished to be remembered for his stage career, which was also legendary. He said that his favorite role was that of Romeo.
The Sherlock Holmes Years
Rathbone is most widely recognized for his starring role as Sherlock Holmes in fourteen movies between 1939 and 1946, all of which co-starred Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. The first two films, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Hound of the Baskervilles (both 1939) were set in the late-Victorian times of the original stories. Both of these were made by Twentieth Century Fox. Later installments, made at Universal Studios, beginning with Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942), were set in contemporary times, and some had World War II-related plots. Rathbone and Bruce also reprised their film roles in a radio series, The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939 - 1946).
Despite the questionable quality of some of the later Holmes films, Rathbone has a strong claim to being the definitive Sherlock Holmes. Indeed, Rathbone bore a striking resemblance to Sidney Paget's conception in the original Strand Magazine illustrations for the Holmes stories. (By contrast, Nigel Bruce's portrayal of Watson as a doddering old fool was far from Conan Doyle's original.)
The many sequels typecast Rathbone, and he was unable to remove himself completely from the shadow of Holmes. However, in later years, Rathbone willingly made the Holmes association, as in a TV sketch with Milton Berle in the early 1950s, in which he donned the deerstalker cap and Inverness cape. Rathbone also brought Holmes to the stage in a play written by his wife Ouida. Thomas Gomez, who had appeared as a Nazi ringleader in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror, played the villainous Dr. Moriarty. Nigel Bruce was too ill to take the part of Dr. Watson, and it was played by Jack Raine. Bruce's absence depressed Rathbone, particularly after Bruce died -- on 8 October 1953 -- while the play was in rehearsals. The play ran only three performances.
Later career
In the 1950s, Rathbone excelled in two spoofs of his earlier swashbuckling villains: Casanova's Big Night (1954) opposite Bob Hope and The Court Jester (1956), with Danny Kaye. He appeared frequently on TV game shows, and had a substantive role in John Ford's political drama The Last Hurrah (1958).
Rathbone also acted on Broadway numerous times. In 1948, he won a Tony Award for Best Actor for his performance as the unyielding Dr. Austin Sloper in the original production of The Heiress, which featured Wendy Hiller as his timid, spinster daughter. He also received accolades for his performance in Archibald Macleish's J.B., a modernization of the Biblical trials of Job.
Through the 1950s and 1960s, he continued to appear in several dignified anthology programs on television. To support his second wife's lavish tastes, he also took roles in films of far lesser quality, such as The Black Sleep (1956), Queen of Blood (1966), Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966) with comic Harvey Lembeck joking "That guy looks like Sherlock Holmes," Hillbillies in a Haunted House (1967, also featuring Lon Chaney Jr.), and his last film, a Mexican low-budget horror picture called Autopsy of a Ghost (1968).
He is also known for his readings of the stories and poems of Edgar Allan Poe, which are collected together with readings by Vincent Price. Especially powerful and striking is his reading of Poe's "The Raven." Price and Rathbone appeared together, along with Boris Karloff, in Tower of London (1939) and Comedy of Terrors (1964). Rathbone also appeared with Price in the final segment of Roger Corman's 1962 anthology film Tales of Terror, a loose dramatization of Edgar Allan Poe's "Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar."
Basil Rathbone has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; one for motion pictures at 6549 Hollywood Boulevard; one for radio at 6300 Hollywood Boulevard; and one for television at 6915 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.
Personal life
Rathbone married actress Ethel Marion Foreman in 1914. They had one son, Rodion Rathbone (1915-1996), who had a brief Hollywood career under the name John Rodion. Rathbone was involved briefly with actress Eva Le Gallienne. The couple divorced in 1926. In 1927, he married writer Ouida Bergere. Basil and his second wife adopted a daughter, Cynthia Rathbone (1939-1969).
Unlike some of his British actor contemporaries in Hollywood and Broadway, Rathbone never renounced his British citizenship.
He died of a heart attack in New York City in 1967 at age 75. He is interred in a crypt in the Shrine of Memories Mausoleum at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.
In popular culture
Rathbone and his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes was the inspiration for the children's book series Basil of Baker Street and the later Disney film, The Great Mouse Detective.
Rathbone's villainous roles inspired the portrayal of the regenerated Master in the Doctor Who Virgin New Adventures novel First Frontier by David McIntee.
References
- Who's Who in the Theatre - "The Dramatic List," edited by John Parker, 10th edition revised, London, 1947, pps:1183-1184.
- In the animated Disney movie "The Great Mouse Detective," an actual audio clip of Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes, lifted from the classic 40's series, was used as the lines for the human counterpart of the great detective. Technically, it was his last film appearance--albeit a posthumous one.
External links
- Basil Rathbone at IMDb
- Biography
- As Sherlock Holmes from Nigel Bruce's memoirs [2]