Basil Rathbone

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Philip St. John Basil Rathbone (born June 13, 1892 in Johannesburg , South African Republic , † July 21, 1967 in New York City , New York , United States ) was a British actor . He became world famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes , whom he embodied in a total of 14 crime films between 1939 and 1946. To this day, he is one of the most popular and influential actors of the master detective. Otherwise, Rathbone usually embodied the "elegant villain" in numerous adventure films, literary adaptations and horror strips. Rathbone was also successful as a stage actor, receiving the Tony Award for Best Actor. He has been nominated twice for an Oscar and three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame bear his name.

Life

Basil Rathbone was born in Johannesburg on June 13, 1892 under the name Philip St. John Basil Rathbone to British parents. His mother Anna Babera George was a violinist, his father Edgar Philip Rathbone was a mining engineer and a member of the famous Rathbone Family from Liverpool . The Rathbones from Liverpool were considered a non-conformist , but at the same time publicly committed family. The politician Eleanor Rathbone is related to Basil Rathbone, as is the US Civil War General Henry Rathbone , who sat next to Abraham Lincoln when he was murdered . The actor Jackson Rathbone also stated that he was largely related to Basil Rathbone. Basil Rathbone had two older half-brothers, Harold and Horace, and two younger siblings, Beatrice and John.

When Basil was three years old, he and his family fled from South Africa to Great Britain because his father was accused by the Boers of being a British spy. Rathbone later said that he didn't know if his father was a spy or not because he never asked him about it. Basil Rathbone attended the prestigious Repton School at Repton , Derbyshire . Here he also discovered his passion for the theater. In 1914 he married the actress Ethel Marion Foreman, with whom he had a son named Rodion Rathbone (1915-1996), who tried himself for a short time as an actor and played next to his father in 1939 in The Executioner of London .

From 1916 Rathbone served during the First World War in the London Scottish Regiment , which also included other actors such as Claude Rains . By the end of the war he had attained the rank of officer and was awarded the Military Cross . His younger brother John was killed in the war. After Basil and Ethel were divorced in 1926, he married the screenwriter and actress Ouida Bergère (1886–1974) a year later . The couple adopted a daughter named Cynthia (1939–1969). Rathbone also moved the center of his life to the United States at this point. The actor is also said to have had a love story with the otherwise lesbian theater star Eva Le Gallienne .

Rathbone remained married to Ouida for over 41 years until his death, and the marriage was considered one of Hollywood's most exemplary . The couple held glamorous celebrations on their property in California, which was once inhabited by Jack Dempsey . This even led Bob Hope to comment in the comedy The Ghost Breakers (1940), when a violent storm was passing by, that Basil Rathbone was probably throwing a party. In contrast to many of his movie characters, Rathbone was considered a friendly person who at times kept up to six dogs, was a member of the cricket club founded by C. Aubrey Smith in Hollywood and was good with children. Rathbone and his wife were also welcome guests at celebrations of celebrities such as William Randolph Hearst .

Basil Rathbone died of a heart attack in his New York apartment on July 21, 1967 at the age of 75 . He was buried in the Ferncliff Cemetery and Mausoleum ( Shrine of Memories , Unit 1, Section K, Crypt 117) in Hartsdale, a suburb of New York City .

Career

1911–1935: appearances at the theater

After working for a short time as an insurance salesman , 19-year-old Rathbone made his acting debut at the Ipswich Theater in 1911 with a performance of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew . In 1912 he traveled to the United States with Frank Benson's drama company. In the early years he played mainly in Shakespeare plays; for example as Paris in Romeo and Juliet , Fenton in The Merry Wives of Windsor , Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream and Silvius in As You Like It . Rathbone made his first appearance in London in July 1914 at the Savoy Theater .

After serving in World War I , his career continued successfully. In 1921 he finally had his first film appearance in the silent films Innocent and The Fruitful Wine . Many more, now almost unknown, silent films followed. However, his focus was still on theater work, in the 1920s he made numerous appearances on Broadway . Throughout his career he remained connected to the theater and preferred it to the film business in many respects. He made the transition to sound film without any problems. In 1929 he starred alongside Norma Shearer in the comedy The Last of Mrs. Cheyney , the first film adaptation of Frederick Lonsdale 's play of the same name. In 1930 he was Leading Man on the side of Billie Dove and Kay Francis ( A Notorious Affair ), Ruth Chatterton ( The Lady of Scandal ) and Constance Bennett ( Sin Takes a Holiday ). In 1932 he was used as a lover in Pola Negri's A Woman Commands . In 1933 Rathbone withdrew from Hollywood, where he was increasingly offered less attractive roles. He returned to the UK for the film Loyalities , in which he played a Jew who was only accepted by society for his money.

1935–1939: Breakthrough as a villain actor

Rathbone returned to Hollywood in 1935 after a theater engagement, where he had his final breakthrough with his first film. In David Copperfield , a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Charles Dickens , he played the cruel stepfather of the title character alongside stars such as WC Fields and Lionel Barrymore , who raised the boy using questionable methods. In the same year he acted as the ruthless Marquis St. Evremonde fleeing Paris in another Dickens film adaptation, and he also appeared on the side of Greta Garbo and Fredric March in Anna Karenina , a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Lev Tolstoy . Rathbone played Prince Alexei Karenin, Anna Karenina's boring and jealous husband. In the following years he embodied other villains from classical literature and was considered the ideal of the "elegant villain". Most of his characters were ruthless and brutal, but at the same time often had charisma and intelligence.

Among other things, he was seen alongside Kay Francis as an evil seducer in Confession and embodied Pontius Pilate in The Last Days of Pompeii . He was also known for his portrayal of cloak-and-sword villains in adventure films, for example alongside Gary Cooper in The Adventures of Marco Polo from 1938 and in his film roles alongside Errol Flynn : In Unter Piratenflagge (1935) he was a pirate captain, and in Robin Hood, King of the Vagabonds he was seen as Sir Guy of Gisbourne. Both films are now considered adventure classics, and in both films, Rathbone's character is killed in a fencing duel by Flynn at the end. Ironically, he was the best fencer in Hollywood and gave his "opponents" lessons so they could beat him. The only fencing match of his entire film career that he was allowed to win was as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (1936). For his appearance as Tybalt he was nominated for an Oscar in 1937 , also in 1939 for his King Ludwig XI. in If I Were King . Both times, however, he was defeated by Walter Brennan .

Rathbone also played good-natured roles less often: in the film musical Make a Wish (1937) he played a composer who was looking for inspiration for his new piece, and in the war film The Dawn Patrol (1938) he played the honorable commander of Errol Flynn.

1939–1946: Career high point as Sherlock Holmes

Basil Rathbones Sherlock Holmes costume from the two films made in 1939

1939 Basil Rathbone played Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles alongside Lionel Atwill as Dr. Mortimer and John Carradine as Barryman's servants (in the novel: Barrymore). The role of Dr. John Watson embodied Nigel Bruce . The success of the film led to another Sherlock Holmes flick in the same year with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce as Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson and George Zucco as Professor Moriarty under the title The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes . It is based on a play by the actor William Gillette (1853-1937), which had already been filmed several times, including with Gillette himself in the role of Sherlock Holmes. The Hound of Baskerville and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes both played in England in the time of Queen Victoria .

The success of the two films meant that between 1942 and 1946 twelve more Sherlock Holmes films with Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce were made. However, 20th Century Fox no longer took over production, but Universal Pictures . Roy William Neill directed eleven of these twelve Universal films . The films are based in part on stories by Arthur Conan Doyle , but the plot was moved from Victorian England to the time the films were made, i.e. to the 1930s and 1940s, because of the Second World War. In addition, the films at Universal were increasingly cheaper and shot with less well-known co-actors, which did not affect the success of the series. At the same time, a series of created radio - radio plays with Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. Rathbone had originally been happy to shed his rogue image, but in 1946 he had both series discontinued to escape the role. Nonetheless, in the 1960s he reread Sherlock Holmes' stories for a record series, in which, strictly speaking, he was Dr. Watson and not Sherlock Holmes.

Basil Rathbone made his first horror film just before The Hound of the Baskervilles . In Frankenstein's son he embodies Wolf von Frankenstein, whose father Victor von Frankenstein once created the monster. When he returns to his parents' castle, Wolf von Frankenstein is forced by Ygor to revive the monster. Boris Karloff as Monster, Bela Lugosi as Ygor and Lionel Atwill as Inspector Krogh can also be seen in other roles . With Boris Karloff, Basil Rathbone also shot The Executioner of London , in which he played the power-obsessed King Richard III. and Boris Karloff plays his bald executioner. Every time Richard kills one of his rivals, he removes figures from the dollhouse that are supposed to represent the throne room. He later made the horror films The Black Cat and The Chamber of Horrors with Bela Lugosi. Thosti .

1946–1967: Late career

After the Sherlock Holmes series ended, Rathbone retired from the film business for a few years. In 1947 he was awarded the Tony Award for best actor in a play for the play The Heiress . For the filming The Heiress , however, Ralph Richardson was hired in his place , which hurt Rathbone very much. The disadvantage of his late film career was often that he was almost exclusively identified with this role because of his popularity as Sherlock Holmes, and producers shy away from casting him in other roles. In 1953, Rathbones wife Ouida wrote a play called Sherlock Holmes , which ran on Broadway , but the play received poor reviews and was canceled after a short time. From the 1950s he worked regularly as an actor on the emerging US television, for example in two television adaptations of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Story alongside Fredric March in the 1950s : In 1954 March made the Ebeneezer Scrooge and Rathbone played his late business partner Jacob Marley , in the 1959 version, March did the narration and Rathbone played Scrooge.

After nearly a decade of infrequent film appearances, the comedy We Are Not Angels (1955) revived Rathbone's film career. At the side of Peter Ustinov and Humphrey Bogart , he played a stingy uncle, who wants to take their shop away from his lovable relatives, but is bitten to death by a snake during the course of the film. This was the beginning of Rathbone's last phase of his career, in which he often parodied his famous villain roles, including in the Robin Hood essay The Court Jester (1955), in which he, as the scheming advisor to the king, Lord Ravenhurst, forms the counterpart to Danny Kaye . In John Ford's drama The Last Hurray (1958) he brings down Spencer Tracy's veteran politician in the role of a relentless banker.

In the 1960s, Basil Rathbone shot, among other things, the horror film The Horrible Mr. X , an Edgar Allan Poe film adaptation with Vincent Price and Peter Lorre directed by Roger Corman , and the horror comedy Ruhe Sanft GmbH with Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff. The character actor was active as an actor until his death, although his films rarely achieved the earlier quality. His last films were the Mexican low-budget production Autopsia de un fantasma and the third-rate music film Hillbillys in a Haunted House , both times with John Carradine . At the same time he financed his own, much more demanding theater programs with these performances, with which he toured the United States. In 1962, Rathbone published his biography In and Out of Character .

In honor of Rathbone, there are three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame - one each for film, television and radio. The first name of the main character in the Disney cartoon Basil, the great mouse detective, is dedicated to Rathbone. In a scene in which the shadow of Sherlock Holmes is cast on the wall, the voice of Basil Rathbone from old recordings can also be heard in the original. In the last scene of the fourth season of the television series Sherlock , a sign saying " Rathbone Place " can be seen.

Filmography

Films as Sherlock Holmes

More movies

(TV appearances not counted)

German voice

Although the Sherlock Holmes series was dubbed several times over a long period of time, Walter Niklaus can be heard as the German voice of Basil Rathbone in all 14 films .

Awards

Autobiography

  • In and Out of Character. Limelight Editions, New York 1997, ISBN 0-87910-119-9 . (Original edition 1960)

Literature (selection)

  • Rainer Dick: Basil Rathbone. The aristocratic villain. In: Rainer Dick: The stars of the horror film. Tilsner, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-910079-63-6 , pp. 129-137.
  • Michael B. Druxman: Basil Rathbone. His Life and His Films. Barnes, South Brunswick 1976, ISBN 0-498-01471-1 .

Web links

Commons : Basil Rathbone  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The grave of Basil Rathbone. In: findagrave.com. Accessed April 28, 2019 .
  2. ^ Basil Rathbone at the Internet Broadway Database
  3. ↑ A Christmas Carol. Retrieved October 6, 2018 .
  4. ↑ A Christmas Carol. Retrieved October 6, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Rathbone, Basil
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rathbone, Philip St. John Basil (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-American actor
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Johannesburg , South African Republic
DATE OF DEATH July 21, 1967
Place of death New York City , New York, United States