Basil Rathbone

Basil Rathbone (1892–1967), South African-born British stage and motion-picture actor. He specialized in playing villains, and he also portrayed the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes in a series of films.

Philip St. John Basil Rathbone was born in Johannesburg of British parents, attended a British boarding school, and worked briefly in insurance before joining the stage company run by his cousin, Sir Frank Benson. Rathbone made his stage debut in 1911 in William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and a year later toured the United States with Benson’s company. After serving in World War I (1914-1918) he made his screen debut in 1921 in Innocent. His first American film, Trouping with Ellen, followed in 1924, but he made few films in the silent era, preferring stage work. Rathbone was known for the energy and versatility of his acting; on Broadway in 1933 he played a legendary Romeo to the Juliet of Katharine Cornell.

In his earliest film roles Rathbone generally played the romantic lead, but in 1935 he was cast as Mr. Murdstone in David Copperfield, directed by George Cukor. In this film version of the Charles Dickens novel, Rathbone revealed himself to be a formidable screen villain. With his tall, dark good looks and rapier profile, he was born for swashbuckling roles, and he crossed swords with heroes ranging from Errol Flynn (Captain Blood, 1935; The Adventures of Robin Hood, 1938) and Tyrone Power (The Mark of Zorro, 1940) to Danny Kaye (The Court Jester, 1956). Hoping to escape typecasting he switched to virtuous roles, playing Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939), teamed with Nigel Bruce as Dr Watson. The pair were widely hailed as the ideal screen incarnations of the Arthur Conan Doyle sleuths, but Rathbone once again found himself trapped in a role, appearing in countless sequels in which the quality steadily slumped. After World War II (1939-1945) he left the screen, concentrating on stage work for nearly ten years. He returned to cinema in 1954, appearing in 16 more films, mostly low-budget horror films, until his death in 1967.