Theatre in
Katharine Cornell's 1933–1934 touring production of
The Barretts of Wimpole Street During the Summer Festival of 1919, he appeared at
Stratford-upon-Avon with the New Shakespeare Company playing Romeo, Cassius, Ferdinand in
The Tempest and Florizel in ''
The Winter's Tale''; 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 British stage. He began to travel and appeared at the
Cort Theatre, New York City, in October 1923 in a production of
Molnár's play
The Swan opposite
Eva Le Gallienne, which made him a star on Broadway. He 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 again in 1931, when he appeared on stage with
Ethel Barrymore. He continued his stage career in Britain,
returning late in 1934 to the US, where he appeared with
Katharine Cornell in several plays. Rathbone was once arrested in 1926 along with every other member of the cast of
The Captive, a play in which his character's wife left him for another woman. Though the charges were eventually dropped, Rathbone was very angry about the censorship because he believed that homosexuality needed to be brought into the open. and
Leslie Howard in
Romeo and Juliet, 1936
Film He commenced his film career in Hollywood in 1921 in silent movies and appeared in 1923's
The School for Scandal, and in
The Masked Bride, plus a few other silents. His sound debut was in the first screen adaptation of
Frederick Lonsdale's play opposite
Norma Shearer, which was his last appearance as a romantic leading man. He portrayed detective
Philo Vance in the 1930 film
The Bishop Murder Case, based on the best-selling novel. In the film, there is a coincidental reference to Sherlock Holmes. 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 as the abusive stepfather Mr. Murdstone; as her distant husband, Karenin; as
Pontius Pilate; ; , as the 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 as Captain Esteban Pasquale. He also appeared in several early horror films: , as
Richard III, and
Son of Frankenstein (1939), portraying the dedicated surgeon
Baron Wolf von Frankenstein, son of
the monster's creator, and, in 1949, was also the narrator for the segment "The Wind in the Willows" in the Disney animated feature,
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. He was admired for his athletic swordsmanship. (He listed
fencing among his favourite recreations.) His character lost to
Errol Flynn twice: in a duel on the beach in
Captain Blood and in an elaborate fight sequence in
The Adventures of Robin Hood. He was also involved in noteworthy sword fights in
Tower of London,
The Mark of Zorro, and
The Court Jester. 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 , he played one of his few heroic roles in the 1930s, as a
Royal Flying Corps (RFC) squadron commander brought to the brink of a
nervous breakdown by the strain and guilt of sending his battle-weary pilots off to near-certain death in the skies of 1915 France. Errol Flynn, Rathbone's perennial foe, starred in the film as his successor when Rathbone's character is promoted. According to Hollywood legend, Rathbone was
Margaret Mitchell's first choice to play
Rhett Butler in the film version of her novel
Gone with the Wind. Rathbone actively campaigned for the role. Despite his film success, Rathbone always insisted that he wished to be remembered for his stage career. He said that his favourite role was Romeo.
The Sherlock Holmes films Rathbone is most widely recognised for his many portrayals of
Sherlock Holmes. In a radio interview, Rathbone recalled that
Twentieth Century-Fox producer and director
Gene Markey, lunching with producer-director-actor
Gregory Ratoff and 20th Century-Fox mogul
Daryl Zanuck at Lucey's Restaurant in Hollywood, proposed a film version of
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's
The Hound of the Baskervilles. When asked who could possibly play Holmes, Markey incredulously replied, "Who?! Basil Rathbone!" The film was so successful that Fox produced a sequel that appeared later in 1939. Interest in Holmes cooled at Fox, but
Universal Pictures picked up the character, and produced 12 Holmes features from 1942 to 1946. All of the Fox and Universal features co-starred
Nigel Bruce as
Dr. Watson. The first two films,
The Hound of the Baskervilles and
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (both produced by Fox in 1939), were set in the late
Victorian times of the original stories. The later instalments, produced by Universal, beginning with
Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942), were set in contemporary times, with the first three having World War II-related plots. Concurrent with the films, 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 active, but, after the films lapsed in 1946, Rathbone ceded his radio part to
Tom Conway. Conway and Bruce carried on with the series for two seasons, until both dropped out in July 1947. The many Holmes sequels typecast Rathbone, and he was unable to free himself from the shadow of the Great Detective, despite appearing in other film roles. Resenting the typecasting, Rathbone refused to renew his contract at
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and returned to Broadway. 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. In the 1960s, dressed as Holmes, he appeared in a series of TV commercials for Getz Exterminators ("Getz gets 'em, since 1888!'"). In 1953, Rathbone played the detective in
The Adventure of the Black Baronet, an episode of the anthology television series
Suspense. Later that year, he 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
Professor Moriarty. Nigel Bruce was slated to portray Dr Watson once more but became too ill and the part was played by character actor
Jack Raine. Bruce's absence depressed Rathbone, particularly after Bruce died on 8 October 1953, while the play was in rehearsals. The play ran for only three performances.
Later career In the 1950s, Rathbone appeared 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 continued to appear in major films, including the
Humphrey Bogart comedy and
John Ford's political drama . Rathbone also appeared on Broadway numerous times in this period. In 1948, he shared the
Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance as the unyielding Dr. Austin Sloper in the original production of
The Heiress and with
Henry Fonda in
Mister Roberts and
Paul Kelly in
Command Decision. He also received accolades for his performance in
Archibald Macleish's
J.B., a modernisation of the Biblical trials of
Job. Through the 1950s and 1960s, he continued to appear in several dignified anthology programmes on television. To support his second wife's lavish tastes, he appeared as a panellist on the television game show ''
The Name's the Same (in 1954), and 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, wherein the character 'Eric Von Zipper' played by
Harvey Lembeck jokes, "That guy looks like Sherlock Holmes"),
Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967, also featuring
Lon Chaney Jr and
John Carradine), and his last film, a low-budget, 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. In four Caedmon albums, Rathbone revisited his characterisation of Sherlock Holmes. The first, "The Speckled Band" (Caedmon Records TC 1172, recorded in 1963), is a straight narration of the tale. In the rest, he changes his voice for each character, including a rendition of Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. Rathbone also made many other recordings, including
Oliver Twist,
Prokofiev's
Peter and the Wolf (with
Leopold Stokowski conducting), and
Charles Dickens's
A Christmas Carol. Basil Rathbone has three stars on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame: one for films at 6549 Hollywood Boulevard; one for radio at 6300 Hollywood Boulevard; and one for television at 6915 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. ==Personal life==