Basil Rathbone Collection

Basil Rathbone
(1892 – 1967)

One of the best and most versatile actors in Hollywood's Golden Age, swashbuckling Basil Rathbone became forever associated with Sherlock Holmes after playing the detective in more than a dozen films and for seven years on the Radio.

Just how harmful to a Hollywood career could typecasting really be? It usually came down to the individual actor, the type he was cast in, and the ambitions he held for his career. For a supporting character actor, developing into a type means steady work, so long as the type is essential to the stories moviemakers want to tell. For a seriously trained and ambitious leading man, being typecast means that casting directors and producers may have a hard time seeing you in a part outside of type.

To Basil Rathbone's credit, he seemed to take his typecasting as the world's most famous detective with a sense of humor. As well he should, Sherlock Holmes is one of the greatest characters in literature, and Rathbone himself had an appreciation, "... of his mastery in all things, both material and mystical…he was a sort of god in his own way, seated on some Anglo-Saxon Olympus of his own design and making! Yes, there was no question about it, Holmes had given me an acute inferiority complex!" Indeed, many of the most memorable Holmesian icons, the Inverness cape, the deerstalker cap, and the calabash pipe, came from Rathbone's portrayal rather than Arthur Conan Doyle's writing.

Rathbone played Holmes in sixteen films, each co-starring Nigel Bruce as his companion Dr. Watson. When producer Gene Markey pitched the treatment for The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) to Daryl Zanuck, he was asked who he wanted to play Holmes. Markey exclaimed that Rathbone was the obvious choice, but it may not have seemed so obvious to others at that point.

Born Philip St. John Basil Rathbone in Johannesburg, South Africa, 1892, his father was a mining engineer from Liverpool. After an incident known as the Jameson Raid (which would lead to the Second Boer War), Basil's father was accused of being a British spy, and the family was forced to flee to England. Basil excelled at sports while attending the Repton School, especially fencing. He also got his first taste of acting while a student and wanted to make the theater a career. This notion horrified his father who made his son promise to give a conventional job a chance for one year after graduating in 1910. Dutifully, he gained a position with the Liverpool and Globe Insurance Companies, but almost exactly a year later he convinced his cousin, Sir Frank Benson, director of the Stratford-on-Avon Shakespearean Festival, to hire him. Benson's condition was that his cousin would go through a regular acting apprenticeship, and Basil began performing supporting roles in Benson's Number 2 company, but by 1913 he was performing juvenile leads with the Number 1 company.

When the Great War broke out, Basil was called up for service with the London Scottish Regiment in 1915 (Claude Rains, Herbert Marshall, and Ronald Colman all served in the Regiment) as a private. Upon completing his training, he applied for a commission and was sent to Officer Candidate School. He was commissioned a Second Lieutenant with the Liverpool Scottish, Second Battalion, which the War Office held in England for several months. 

In February of that year, he contracted the measles and after a week in a military hospital was sent home to recover. His younger brother, John, who had been appointed a Captain with the Dorset Regiment, had been shot through the chest during the Battle of the Somme and was also at home recovering. On May 23, 1917, 2nd Lt Basil Rathbone joined his unit in the trenches of France. Brother John was not well enough to rejoin his unit until 1918, but when he did the Dorset's were happily stationed near the Liverpool regiment, allowing the brothers a reunion. The happiness was short-lived, however, as Capt. John Rathbone was killed in action on June 4, 1918. As Patrols Officer, Basil was tasked with approaching the German lines under the cover of night to gather intelligence. Perhaps grieving the loss of his brother, he convinced his superiors to allow a daytime patrol camouflaged as trees. The valuable intelligence (and prisoners) he brought back were enough that he was awarded the Military Cross for Bravery.

Rathbone resumed his acting career at Stratford-on-Avon but struggled financially. In 1923, he appeared in New York in The Swan and became a star on Broadway. He also met and fell in love with scriptwriter Ouida Bergère, whom he would marry in 1927. Ouida began serving as Basil's business manager, and in 1930 they settled (with their seven dogs) in Hollywood. Rathbone played Philo Vance in The Bishop Murder Case (1930) and went on to make a name for himself in period pictures and swashbucklers, usually as a suave villain. These films include David Copperfield (1935), Anna Karenina (1935), The Last Days of Pompeii (1935), The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938), and his best-known swashbuckler, The Adventures of Robin Hood (1939). Despite being one of the best swordsmen in Hollywood, he only won two swordfights on screen, against John Barrymore in Romeo and Juliet (1936) and Eugene Pallette in The Mark of Zorro (1940).

When England declared War on Nazi Germany in 1939, Rathbone quickly volunteered to serve his country, but the War Office declared that at 47 he was too old. Instead, he headed the Los Angeles chapter of British War Relief and the War Chest Executive Committee. The 1939 release of The Hound of the Baskervilles was so well received that the studio immediately called for a sequel and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was released before the end of the year. After completing the second film, Rathbone and Bruce agreed to appear on the Blue Network's The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. The series moved to Mutual in 1943 under the sponsorship of Petri Wines, but Rathbone would leave in 1946, trying to distance himself from the role.

With no film or radio obligations, Rathbone wanted to return to stage work and he and Ouida moved to New York. His association with the Holmes films did hamper his casting, but he eventually appeared in Obsession (1946, 31 performances), The Heiress (1947, 410 performances), and Julius Caesar (1950, 31 performances). He decided to capitalize on his Sherlock Holmes fame and worked with Ouida on a script for a stage version. Nigel Bruce declined to participate because of health issues and passed away while the show was in rehearsal. It opened at the New Century Theatre over Halloween 1953 but depressed over the loss of his friend Nigel Bruce, Rathbone allowed it to close after just three performances.

By the 1960s, Rathbone was probably ready to enter a dignified retirement, but Ouida's extravagant tastes (the Rathbone's had a reputation for staging elaborate parties) kept him working. He made 10 films in that decade, most of questionable quality, and appeared in a number of dignified TV anthology dramas. Basil Rathbone died suddenly after suffering a heart attack in his New York apartment on July 21, 1967. He was 75. Three Stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame honor Basil Rathbone, one at 6569 Hollywood Blvd for Motion Pictures, a Star for Television at 6809 Hollywood Blvd, and for contributions to Radio at 6312 Hollywood Blvd.