Basil Rathbone

IN AND OUT OF CHARACTER PB

Basil Rathbone is synonymous with Sherlock Holmes. He played the Victorian sleuth in the fourteen Fox/Universal films of the 1930s and ’40s, as well as on stage and radio. For many people, he is the Holmes. Basil Rathbone grew to hate Sherlock Holmes. The character placed restrictions on his career: before Holmes he was an esteemed theatre actor, appearing in Broadway plays such as The Captive and The Swan, the latter of which became his launchpad to greater stardom. But he never, ever escaped his most famous role. Basil Rathbone was not Sherlock Holmes. In The Curse of Sherlock Holmes, celebrated biographer David Clayton looks at the behind-the-camera life of a remarkable man who deserved so much more than to be relegated to just one role.

For more than 100 years, the character of Sherlock Holmes has appeared in scores of films, as well as in a number of television series. For many people, the films made between 1939 and 1946, starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes, with Nigel Bruce as his companion Dr. Watson, remain the most popular. My own introduction to these films began as a small boy, viewing them on television with my father, who had himself seen them all as a boy or very young adult. Rathbone’s portrayal of Holmes seems to me the most accurate, in the regard of following the way Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote the character, and each of the fourteen films he made playing Holmes have many charming characters and great dialogue. Most of the stories have some elements of Doyle’s written works; even the “updating” where Holmes fights the Nazis, for example, is still great entertainment. Although there are a number of Sherlock Holmes film books, there has never been one devoted to the Rathbone series, in detail. In this book you will find complete cast lists for each film, along with a story synopsis and photographs. There have been so many other film and TV adaptations of Sherlock Holmes adventures that I feel it necessary to include a number of others as well, even though the emphasis of the book is still on the Rathbone series. I have included several films from the thirties, i.e. four films starring Arthur Wontner as Holmes (The 1932 film The Missing Rembrandt appears to be a lost film) and also the 1931 Raymond Massey The Speckled Band, along with the 1932 Sherlock Holmes with Clive Brook, and the 1933 film A Study in Scarlet starring Reginald Owen. Following the Rathbone films a number of other actors have played Holmes, most notably Peter Cushing in the 1959 film Hound of the Baskervilles and a 1968 TV series. I have included one film each from the 1954-55 series starring Ronald Howard, one from the 1968 Cushing series and one from the series starring Jeremy Brett. Other notable films include The 1965 A Study in Terror and the 1979 Murder By Decree, both pitting Holmes against Jack the Ripper. I have included five or six others at random, starring actors like Stewart Granger, Ian Richardson, Charlton Heston, Roger Moore and Christopher Lee. There is also a section at the back with a photo from films made beginning in 1899.

From 1939 to 1946, Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce starred in a fourteen-film franchise that would define Sherlock Holmes and his biographer John Watson for generations of movie-goers. The Pipes of Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes offers an informal, guided tour of the pipes smoked by Rathbone, Bruce and a host of foes, packed with film stills from each of the films and sure to delight pipemen and devotees of the Great Detective.

Though Basil Rathbone had a long and distinguished acting career, it was as Sherlock Holmes that he achieved worldwide fame. This long overdue biography discusses how, appearing in 14 Holmes films, Rathbone made the role his own, and every actor who has since played the ingenious detective has been compared to him--almost always failing to live up to Rathbone's legacy. He continued his career in Hollywood, appearing in numerous roles, but he found it difficult to free himself of Holmes, eventually accepting he never would. The book spans Rathbone's journey from the trenches of World War I, when he was awarded a Military Cross for bravery, through to a Hollywood career that earned him three Walk of Fame stars. It also takes in his life away from the silver screen, which included his lifelong friendship with Nigel Bruce, his trusty sidekick Dr. Watson in all the Sherlock Holmes films.

To the average moviegoer, the name of Basil Rathbone conjures up an image of fiction s most famous detective Sherlock Holmes. Certainly, of all the actors who have played the Baker Street sleuth, his interpretation was definitive. Yet, for cinema aficionados, the actor was much more than the personification of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle s character. He began his film career in 1921 in Innocent, which was one of several silent films in which he appeared. He was also Mr. Murdstone in David Copperfield, Richard III in Tower of London, Louis XI in If I Were King, Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet, Captain Estaban Pasquale in The Mark of Zorro, Sir Guy of Gisbourne in The Adventures of Robin Hood, and Baron Wolf von Frankenstein in Son of Frankenstein. For most of his years in motion pictures, Rathbone was the victim of type casting. During the 1930s, he was known as the screen s ultimate villain, constantly in demand by producers to carry out dastardly deeds against such heroes as Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power, Ronald Colman, Gary Cooper, and Leslie Howard. He also appeared opposite such leading ladies as Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, Loretta Young, Olivia de Havilland, and Joan Crawford. 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). He portrayed Sherlock Holmes in fourteen Hollywood films made between 1939 and 1946 and in an Old Time Radio series. His later career included roles on Broadway, as well as television work. He received a Tony Award in 1948 as Best Actor in a Play. Through the 1950s and 1960s, he appeared on television as a panelist on the game show The Name's the Same (in 1954), and he also took roles in cheap film thrillers of far lesser quality, such as The Black Sleep (1956), Queen of Blood (1966), The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966), Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967, also featuring Lon Chaney Jr and John Carradine.), and his last film, a low-budget, Mexican horror film called Autopsy of a Ghost (1968). He is also known for his spoken word recordings, including his interpretation of Clement C. Moore's "The Night Before Christmas." Rathbone's readings of the stories and poems of Edgar Allan Poe are collected together with readings by Vincent Price in Caedmon Audio's The Edgar Allan Poe Audio Collection on CD. Rathbone also made many other recordings, of everything from a dramatised version of Oliver Twist to a recording of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf (with Leopold Stokowski conducting) to a dramatised version of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. On television he appeared in two musical versions of Dickens's A Christmas Carol: one in 1954, in which he played Marley's Ghost opposite Fredric March's Scrooge, and the original 1956 live-action version of The Stingiest Man In Town, in which he starred as a singing Ebenezer Scrooge. In the 1960s, he also toured with a one-man show titled (like his autobiography) In and Out of Character. In this show, he recited poetry and Shakespeare, as well as reminisced about his life and career. He appeared with Vincent Price and Boris Karloff, in Tower of London (1939) and The Comedy of Terrors (1964). The latter was the only film to feature the "Big Four" of American International Pictures' horror films: Out-of-print for over thirty-five years, Michael B. Druxman s Basil Rathbone: His Life and His Films is a carefully researched work that thoroughly examines the life and professional career of one of Hollywood s most respected character actors. This new edition includes an Introduction by the author, a Biography, Filmography, and more than 250 rare photographs.

This book chronicles the radio appearances of all prominent classic horror movie stars--Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Peter Lorre, Vincent Price, and two dozen more, including "scream queens" like Fay Wray. It contains script excerpts from radio shows as well as material from narrated albums and music singles. Each star's appearances are listed by show and air date, with descriptions of the subject matter.