Basil (Philip St John) Rathbone - Early life, Personal life, Career

British actor, born in Johannesburg, NE South Africa. He made his film debut in The Fruitful Vine (1921), and went on to become a major star of the 1930s, with roles in several films from literature, such as David Copperfield (1935), Anna Karenina (1935), and Romeo and Juliet (1936). A character actor who specialized in villains, he also played Sherlock Holmes in several films.

Basil Rathbone
Born	13 June 1892 Johannesburg, South Africa
Died	21 July 1967 New York, New York, USA

Basil Rathbone (13 June 1892 – 21 July 1967) was an English actor most famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes and swashbuckler film villain roles.

Early life

He was born Philip St. John Basil Rathbone in Johannesburg, South Africa, to English parents: Edgar Philip Rathbone and Anna Barbara George.

Personal life

Rathbone married actress Marion Foreman (married 1914, divorced 1926) and was involved briefly with actress Eva Le Gallienne during his first marriage.

He and Foreman had one son, Rodion Rathbone, while he and Bergere adopted a daughter, Cynthia Rathbone.

Unlike some of his British actor contemporaries in Hollywood and New York, Rathbone never renounced his British citizenship.

Career

During the 1920s, Rathbone appeared in Shakespearean roles on the British stage.

Rathbone became famous for playing suave villains in many swashbucklers of the 1930s, including David Copperfield (1935), Anna Karenina (1935), The Last Days of Pompeii (1935), Captain Blood (1935), A Tale of Two Cities (1935), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) Tower of London (1939), and The Mark of Zorro (1940).

He was admired for his athletic cinema swordsmanship, particularly in the duel on the beach in Captain Blood and as Sir Guy of Gisbourne in the long fight scene in The Adventures of Robin Hood.

Basil Rathbone earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance of Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (1936), and another nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance of King Louis XI in If I Were King (1938).

Basil Rathbone is most widely recognized for his starring roles in fourteen Sherlock Holmes movies. He also starred as Holmes with Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson in an old-time radio mystery series, The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939 - 1946), and did numerous other radio broadcasts.

It was in 1939 that Rathbone first starred as Sherlock Holmes, in The Hound of the Baskervilles. The last Universal Holmes film was released in 1946, and Rathbone quit the radio series shortly thereafter (It continued with Nigel Bruce and other actors playing Holmes, such as Tom Conway). In the 1950s, he excelled in two spoofs of his earlier swashbuckling villains in Casanova's Big Night (1954) opposite Bob Hope and The Court Jester (1956), with Danny Kaye, appeared frequently on TV game shows, and had a substantive role in John Ford's political drama The Last Hurrah.

Rathbone also acted on Broadway numerous times. To pay the bills, he unfortunately also had to take jobs in films of far lesser quality, such as Queen of Blood, Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (with the inevitable wisecrack from comic Harvey Lembeck, "That guy looks like Sherlock Holmes.") and Hillbillies in a Haunted House.

He is also known for his readings of the stories and poems of Edgar Allan Poe, which are collected together with readings by Vincent Price. (Price and Rathbone had appeared in Tower of London with co-star Boris Karloff.)

Basil Rathbone has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame;