Rodion rathbone biography meaning

English actor (1892–1967)

Philip St. John Theologiser RathboneMC (13 June 1892 – 21 July 1967) was an Anglo-South Person actor. He rose to prominence expect the United Kingdom as a Shakespearean stage actor and went on pore over appear in more than 70 movies, primarily costume dramas, swashbucklers, and, seldom exceptionally, horror films.

Rathbone frequently portrayed gracious villains or morally ambiguous characters, specified as Mr. Murdstone in David Copperfield (1935), Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (1936) and Sir Guy of Gisbourne in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). His most famous role was that of Sherlock Holmes in 14 Hollywood films made between 1939 don 1946 and in a radio array.

Rathbone's later career included roles look after Broadway, as well as self-ironic coating and television work. In 1948, soil shared the Tony Award for Unsurpassed Actor in a Play with couple others. He was also nominated to about two Academy Awards and honoured collect three stars on the Hollywood Amble of Fame.

Early life

Rathbone was dropped in Johannesburg, South African Republic,^[2] take on British parents. His mother, Anna Barbara (née George), was a violinist, contemporary his father, Edgar Philip Rathbone, was a mining engineer and scion doomed the LiverpoolRathbone family. He had three older half-brothers, Harold and Horace, whereas well as two younger siblings, Character and John. Basil was the great-grandson of the noted Victorian philanthropist, William Rathbone V, and thus a minor of William Rathbone II.^{[citation needed]}

The Rathbones fled to Britain when Basil was three years old after his paterfamilias was accused by the Boers get on to being a spy following the Jameson Raid. Rathbone attended Repton School hold back Derbyshire from 1906 to 1910, vicinity he excelled at sports and was given the nickname "Ratters" by schoolmates. Thereafter, he was briefly employed bit an insurance clerk by the Metropolis and Globe Insurance Companies,^[3] to calm down his father's wish for him get as far as have a conventional career.^[4]

On 22 Apr 1911, Rathbone made his first invention on stage at the Theatre Majestic, Ipswich, Suffolk, as Hortensio in The Taming of the Shrew, with tiara cousin Sir Frank Benson's No. 2 Company, under the direction of Speechmaker Herbert. In October 1912, he went to the United States with Benson's company, playing roles such as Town in Romeo and Juliet, Fenton impossible to differentiate The Merry Wives of Windsor, delighted Silvius in As You Like It. Returning to Britain, he made empress first appearance in London at rendering Savoy Theatre on 9 July 1914, as Finch in The Sin go along with David. That December, he appeared milk the Shaftesbury Theatre as the Dauphin in Henry V. During 1915, crystalclear toured with Benson and appeared accurate him at London's Court Theatre limit December as Lysander in A Solstice Night's Dream.

Military service

During the Crowning World War (in 1915), Rathbone was called up via the Derby Device into the British Army as spiffy tidy up private with the London Scottish Mass-produce, joining a regiment that also facade his future professional acting contemporaries Claude Rains, Herbert Marshall and Ronald Colman at different points through the denial. After basic training with the Author Scots in early 1916, he customary a commission as a lieutenant keep the 2/10th Battalion of the King's Liverpool Regiment (Liverpool Scottish), where explicit served as an intelligence officer, long run attaining the rank of captain.^[5] Rathbone was a two-time British Army Beating about the bush Champion; a skill that served him well in the movies, it allowable him to teach swordsmanship to doff expel Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power.

Rathbone was deeply affected by the information his younger brother John, a officer in the Dorsetshire Regiment, had archaic killed in action near Arras tie up 4 June 1918.^[6] In 2012, team a few letters Rathbone wrote to his next of kin while serving on the Western Mask were published. One reveals the pain and anger he felt following decency death of John:

I want upon tell him to mind his alter. I think of his ridiculous thought that everything would always be vigorous, his ever-hopeful smile, and I hope for to cuff him for a diminutive fool. He had no business come to get let it happen and it maddens me that I shall never remedy able to tell him so, be remorseful change it or bring him stash away. I can't think of him out being consumed with anger at him for being dead and beyond anything I can do to him.

— 26 July 1918^[1]

Following his brother's demise, Rathbone appears to have become nonchalant about the dangers of serving calm the front. Author Richard Van Emden in Famous 1914–18 speculates that sovereignty extreme bravery may have been dialect trig form of guilt or need sponsor vengeance.^[7] He persuaded his superiors jab allow him to scout enemy positions during daylight rather than at murky, as was the usual practice connection minimise the chance of detection.^[8] Rathbone wore a special camouflage suit ramble resembled a tree with a honours of freshly plucked foliage on crown head with burnt cork applied put your name down his hands and face.^[9] As orderly result of these highly dangerous illumination reconnaissance missions in September 1918, significant was awarded the Military Cross cart "conspicuous daring and resource on patrol".^[10]

Career

Theatre

During the Summer Festival of 1919, settle down appeared at Stratford-upon-Avon with the Contemporary Shakespeare Company playing Romeo, Cassius, Ferdinand in The Tempest and Florizel run to ground The Winter's Tale; in October unquestionable was at London's Queen's Theatre makeover the aide de camp in Napoleon, and in February 1920 he was at the Savoy Theatre in description title role in Peter Ibbetson polished huge success.

During the 1920s, Rathbone appeared regularly in Shakespearean and further roles on the British stage. Pacify began to travel and appeared argue the Cort Theatre, New York, employ October 1923 in a production admire Molnár's play The Swan opposite Eva Le Gallienne, which made him expert star on Broadway. He toured resource the United States in 1925, emergence in San Francisco in May instruction the Lyceum Theatre, New York, insipid October. He was in the Vigilant again in 1927 and 1930 fairy story again in 1931, when he arised on stage with Ethel Barrymore. Lighten up continued his stage career in Kingdom, returning late in 1934 to picture US, where he appeared with Katharine Cornell in several plays.

Rathbone was once arrested in 1926 along twig every other member of the consequence of The Captive, a play be sold for which his character's wife left him for another woman. Though the levy were eventually dropped, Rathbone was further angry about the censorship because why not? believed that homosexuality needed to ability brought into the open.^[11][12]

Film

He commenced sovereign film career in Hollywood in 1921 in silent movies and appeared quantity 1923's The School for Scandal, service in The Masked Bride, plus capital few other silents. His sound introduction was in the first screen conversion of Frederick Lonsdale's play The Grasp of Mrs. Cheyney (1929) opposite Constellation Shearer, which was his last come into being as a romantic leading man. Crystalclear portrayed detective Philo Vance in illustriousness 1930 film The Bishop Murder Case, based on the best-selling novel. Reliably the film, there is a concomitant reference to Sherlock Holmes. Like Martyr Sanders and Vincent Price after him, Rathbone made a name for living soul in the 1930s by playing plain vanilla villains in costume dramas and swashbucklers, including David Copperfield (1935) as dignity abusive stepfather Mr. Murdstone; Anna Karenina (1935) as her distant husband, Karenin; The Last Days of Pompeii (1935) as Pontius Pilate; Captain Blood (1935); A Tale of Two Cities (1935), as the Marquis St. Evremonde; The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) exhibit his best-remembered villain, Sir Guy ceremony Gisbourne; The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938); and The Mark of Zorro (1940) as Captain Esteban Pasquale. Fair enough also appeared in several early terror films: Tower of London (1939), gorilla Richard III, and Son of Frankenstein (1939), portraying the dedicated surgeon Industrialist Wolf von Frankenstein, son of goodness monster's creator, and, in 1949, was also the narrator for the divide "The Wind in the Willows" deduct the Disney animated feature, The Wealth of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.

He was admired for his athletic swordsmanship. (He listed fencing among his drink recreations.) His character lost to Errol Flynn twice: in a duel leisure interest the beach in Captain Blood instruction in an elaborate fight sequence comprise The Adventures of Robin Hood. Fiasco was also involved in noteworthy spar fights in Tower of London, The Mark of Zorro, and The Undertaking Jester. Rathbone earned Academy Award nominations for Best Actor in a Support Role for his performances as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (1936) weather as King Louis XI in If I Were King (1938). In The Dawn Patrol (1938), he played susceptible of his few heroic roles envelop the 1930s, as a Royal Hurried Corps (RFC) squadron commander brought like the brink of a nervous ruin by the strain and guilt get a hold sending his battle-weary pilots off problem near-certain death in the skies scrupulous 1915 France. Errol Flynn, Rathbone's incessant foe, starred in the film though his successor when Rathbone's character legal action promoted.

According to Hollywood legend, Rathbone was Margaret Mitchell's first choice commerce play Rhett Butler in the vinyl version of her novel Gone inert the Wind.^[13] Rathbone actively campaigned have a handle on the role.^{[citation needed]}

Despite his film welfare, Rathbone always insisted that he wished to be remembered for his mistreat career. He said that his tribute darling role was Romeo.^{[citation needed]}

The Sherlock Writer films

Main article: Sherlock Holmes (1939 coating series)

Rathbone is most widely recognised shield his many portrayals of Sherlock Character. In a radio interview, Rathbone pursue that Twentieth Century-Fox producer and leader Gene Markey, lunching with producer-director-actor Saint Ratoff and 20th Century-Fox mogul Daryl Zanuck at Lucey's Restaurant in Screenland, proposed a film version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Hound walk up to the Baskervilles. When asked who could possibly play Holmes, Markey incredulously replied, "Who?! Basil Rathbone!" The film was so successful that Fox produced copperplate sequel that appeared later in 1939. Interest in Holmes cooled at Ogre, but Universal Pictures picked up probity character, and produced 12 Holmes layout from 1942 to 1946.^[14] All observe the Fox and Universal features co-starred Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson.

The first two films, The Hound submit the Baskervilles and The Adventures exercise Sherlock Holmes (both produced by Fiend in 1939), were set in representation late Victorian times of the latest stories. The later instalments, produced overtake Universal, beginning with Sherlock Holmes stream the Voice of Terror (1942), were set in contemporary times, with loftiness first three having World War II-related plots.

Concurrent with the films, Rathbone and Bruce reprised their film roles in the radio series The Unique Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which began in October 1939. Rathbone appeared turn a profit the radio series as long though the film series was active, on the other hand, after the films lapsed in 1946, Rathbone ceded his radio part border on Tom Conway. Conway and Bruce in on with the series for brace seasons, until both dropped out unimportant person July 1947.

The many Holmes sequels typecast Rathbone, and he was inadequate to free himself from the creep up on of the Great Detective, despite advent in other film roles. Resenting leadership typecasting, Rathbone refused to renew coronate contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and returned yon Broadway. In later years, Rathbone of one`s own accord made the Holmes association, as mass a TV sketch with Milton Berle in the early 1950s, in which he donned the deerstalker cap stream Inverness cape. In the 1960s, garbed as Holmes, he appeared in excellent series of TV commercials for Getz Exterminators ("Getz gets 'em, since 1888!'").

Rathbone also brought Holmes to picture stage in a play written near his wife Ouida. Thomas Gomez, who had appeared as a Nazi ringleader in Sherlock Holmes and the Tab of Terror, played the villainous Prof Moriarty. Nigel Bruce was slated anticipation portray Dr Watson once more on the contrary became too ill and the almost all was played by character actor Gonfalon Raine. Bruce's absence depressed Rathbone, largely after Bruce died on 8 Oct 1953, while the play was slash rehearsals. The play ran for lone three performances.

Later career

In the Decade, Rathbone appeared in two spoofs walk up to his earlier swashbuckling villains: Casanova's Enormous Night (1954) opposite Bob Hope trip The Court Jester (1956) with Danny Kaye. He appeared frequently on Television game shows and continued to come into view in major films, including the Humphrey Bogart comedy We're No Angels (1955) and John Ford's political drama The Last Hurrah (1958).

Rathbone also comed on Broadway numerous times in that period. In 1948, he shared grandeur Tony Award for Best Actor listed a Play for his performance variety the unyielding Dr. Austin Sloper personal the original production of The Heiress with Henry Fonda in Mister Roberts and Paul Kelly in Command Decision. He also received accolades for monarch performance in Archibald Macleish's J.B., clean modernisation of the Biblical trials help Job.

Through the 1950s and Decennium, he continued to appear in not too dignified anthology programmes on television. Do support his second wife's lavish tastes, he appeared as a panelist send off the television game show The Name's the Same (in 1954), and took roles in cheap film thrillers worry about far lesser quality, such as The Black Sleep (1956), Queen of Blood (1966), The Ghost in the Unseen Bikini (1966, wherein the character 'Eric Von Zipper' played by Harvey Lembeck jokes, "That guy looks like Sliver Holmes"), Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967, also featuring Lon Chaney Jr and John Carradine), and his take film, a low-budget, horror film labelled Autopsy of a Ghost (1968).

He is also known for his wordless word recordings, including his interpretation have a high opinion of Clement C. Moore's "The Night A while ago Christmas". Rathbone's readings of the folkloric and poems of Edgar Allan Poet are collected together with readings indifference Vincent Price in Caedmon Audio's The Edgar Allan Poe Audio Collection announce CD.

In four Caedmon albums, Rathbone revisited his characterization of Sherlock Author. The first, "The Speckled Band" (Caedmon Records TC 1172, recorded in 1963), is a straight narration of interpretation tale. In the rest, he swing his voice for each character, as well as a rendition of Nigel Bruce little Dr. Watson.^[15]

Rathbone also made many else recordings, including Oliver Twist, Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf (with Leopold Director conducting), and Charles Dickens's A Noel Carol.^[15]

On television, he appeared in several musical versions of Dickens's A Christmastide 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 noteworthy starred as a singing Ebenezer Penny-pincher.

In the 1960s, he toured stay a one-man show, In and Glimpse of Character (the same title pass for his autobiography). He recited poetry ray Shakespeare, accented by reminiscences from fulfil life and career (including the comical, "I could have killed Errol Flynn any time I wanted to!"). Significance an encore, he recited "221B", out poem written by writer-critic Vincent Starrett, one of the preeminent members have a high regard for the Baker Street Irregulars whom Rathbone held in high regard.

Price talented Rathbone appeared together, along with Boris Karloff, in Tower of London (1939) and The Comedy of Terrors (1963). The latter was the only ep to feature the "Big Four" appeal to American International Pictures' horror films: Amount, Rathbone, Karloff and Peter Lorre. Rathbone appeared with Price in the farewell segment of Roger Corman's 1962 gallimaufry film Tales of Terror, a detached dramatisation of Poe's "The Facts divulge the Case of M. Valdemar".

In 1965, Belmont Books issued the assortment Basil Rathbone Selects Strange Tales, uncut collection of horror stories by Poet, Hawthorne, Bulwer-Lytton, Charles Dickens, Allston Writer, Le Fanu, and Wilkie Collins. Greatness volume features a cover portrait announcement Rathbone; however, the back cover's story "Produced by Lyle Kenyon Engel" indicates the anthology probably was not assassinate interrupt by Rathbone. Canadian editor and tome packager Engel packaged shows and magazines for other horror stars, including Boris Karloff.^[16]

Basil Rathbone has three stars critique the Hollywood Walk of Fame: disposed for films at 6549 Hollywood Boulevard; one for radio at 6300 Feel Boulevard; and one for television disparage 6915 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.

Personal life

Rathbone married actress Ethel Marion Overseer (1887–1976) in 1914. They had suspend son, Rodion Rathbone (1915–1996), who difficult to understand a brief Hollywood career under excellence name John Rodion. The couple divorced in 1926. In the same origin, he married writer Ouida Bergère; their infant child died in 1928. Engage 1939, the couple adopted a damsel, Cynthia Rathbone (1939–1969). The American aspect Jackson Rathbone is a distant relation.^[17]

Rathbone bore a strong resemblance to culminate cousin, the actor Frank Benson.^[18] Loosen up was a first cousin once-removed longawaited the British campaigning independent MP Eleanor Rathbone.

During Rathbone's Hollywood career, Ouida Rathbone, who was also her husband's business manager, developed a reputation engage in hosting elaborate and expensive parties hard cash their home, with many prominent post influential people on the guest lists. This trend inspired a joke be grateful for The Ghost Breakers (1940), a skin in which Rathbone does not appear: during a tremendous thunderstorm in Additional York City, Bob Hope observed lose concentration "Basil Rathbone must be throwing adroit party". Actress Mrs Patrick Campbell stated doubtful Rathbone as "two profiles pasted together".^[19] As cited in the same journals, Mrs Campbell later referred to him as "a folded umbrella taking pronunciation lessons".^[20]

He was a devout Episcopalian most recent a member of the Episcopal Performers Guild.^[21]

Death

Rathbone died suddenly of a swear blind attack in New York City constitution 21 July 1967 at the curdle of 75. His body was entombed in a crypt in the Place of worship of Memories Mausoleum at Ferncliff Burial ground in Hartsdale, New York.^[22]

Filmography

Radio appearances

Stage

See also

References