When did Basil Rathbone die and where can I find information about his life?

Answer 1

Basil Rathbone (13 June 1892 – 21 July 1967) was an English actor most famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, and of suave villains in swashbuckler films.

Contents 1 Early life
2 Personal life
3 Early Career
4 The Sherlock Holmes Years
5 Later Career
6 Death
7 The Sherlock Holmes Films
8 External links


Early life
He was born Philip St. John Basil Rathbone in Johannesburg, South Africa, to English parents: Edgar Philip Rathbone and Anna Barbara George. A younger sister and brother, Beatrice and John, rounded out the family. The Rathbones fled to England when Basil was three years of age after his father was accused by the Boers of being a British spy near the onset of the Second Boer War. He was educated at Repton School and served in the Liverpool Scottish in the First World War.

Personal life
Rathbone married actress Marion Foreman (married 1914, divorced 1926) and was involved briefly with actress Eva Le Gallienne during his first marriage. His second marriage was to writer Ouida Bergere (married 1927, his death 1967).

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.


Early Career
During the 1920s, Rathbone appeared in Shakespearean roles on the British stage. He was in a few silent movies, and played detective Philo Vance in the 1929 movie The Bishop Murder Case. Rathbone rose to fame playing suave villains in costume dramas and 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. Other noteworthy sword fights appear in Tower of London; The Mark of Zorro and The Court Jester (1956). Despite his real-life skill, Rathbone only won one swordfight onscreen, in Romeo and Juliet (1936). 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).

A Hollywood legend is that Rathbone was Margaret Mitchell's first choice to play Rhett Butler in the film version of her novel Gone with the Wind. The reliability of this story may be suspect, however, as on another occasion Mitchell chose Groucho Marx for the role, apparently in jest (the role went to Clark Gable).


The Sherlock Holmes Years

Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes (with Ida Lupino).
Sidney Paget illustration of Sherlock Holmes for the Strand Magazine, ca. 1892.
Rathbone is most widely recognized for his starring role as Sherlock Holmes in fourteen movies between 1939 and 1946, all of which co-starred Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. The first two films, The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (both 1939) were set in the late-Victorian times of the original stories. Both of these were made by Twentieth Century Fox. Later installments, made at Universal Studios, beginning with Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942), were set in contemporary times, and some had World War II-related plots. Rathbone and Bruce also reprised their film roles in a radio series, The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939 - 1946).

Despite the questionable quality of some of the later Holmes films, Rathbone captured the essence of Arthur Conan Doyle's character as convincingly as any actor has on film, and he remains to this day the definitive Sherlock Holmes. Indeed, Rathbone bore a striking resemblance to Sidney Paget's conception of the character in his original Strand Magazine illustrations for the Holmes stories. (By contrast, Nigel Bruce's portrayal of Watson as a doddering old fool was far from Conan Doyle's original concept, although it may have helped endear the duo to the moviegoing public.)

The many sequels had the effect of typecasting Rathbone, and he was unable to remove himself completely from the shadow of Holmes. However, 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. Rathbone also tried bringing Holmes to the stage in a play written by his wife Ouida. Thomas Gomez (who had appeared in one of the Universal Holmes films) played the villainous Dr. Moriarty. Nigel Bruce was too ill to take the part of Dr. Watson, and it was played by Jack Raine. Bruce's absence depressed Rathbone, particularly after Bruce died while the play was in rehearsals. The play ran only three performances.


Later Career
In the 1950s, Rathbone 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. He appeared frequently on TV game shows, and had a substantive role in John Ford's political drama The Last Hurrah (1958).

Rathbone also acted on Broadway numerous times. In 1948, he won a Tony Award for Best Actor for his performance as the unyielding Dr. Austin Sloper in the original production of The Heiress (later played by Ralph Richardson in the film version). He also received accolades for his performance in Archibald Macleish's J.B., a modernization of the Biblical trials of Job.

Through the 1950s and 1960s, he continued to appear in several dignified anthology programs on television. To pay the bills, he unfortunately also had to take jobs in films of far lesser quality, such as Queen of Blood (1966), Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966, with the inevitable wisecrack from comic Harvey Lembeck, "That guy looks like Sherlock Holmes."), Hillbillies in a Haunted House (1967, also featuring Lon Chaney Jr.), and his last film role, a Mexican horror cheapie called Autopsy of a Ghost (1968). Meanwhile, his Sherlock Holmes portrayal became iconic to newer generations through frequent repetition of the Holmes films on late-night television.

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. Especially powerful and striking is his reading of Poe's "The Raven". Price and Rathbone appeared together, along with Boris Karloff, in Tower of London (1939) and Comedy of Terrors (1964). Rathbone also appeared with Price in the final segment of Roger Corman's 1962 anthology film Tales of Terror (in a loose dramatisation of Edgar Allan Poe's "Facts in the Case of M Valdemar").

Basil Rathbone has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; one for motion pictures at 6549 Hollywood Boulevard; one for radio at 6300 Hollywood Boulevard; and one for television at 6915 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.


Death
Basil Rathbone died of a heart attack in New York City in 1967 at age 75. He is interred in a crypt in the Shrine of Memories Mausoleum at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.


The Sherlock Holmes Films
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939)
Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942)
Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943)
Sherlock Holmes in Washington (1943)
Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943)
The Spider Woman (1944)
The Scarlet Claw (1944)
The Pearl of Death (1944)
The House of Fear (1945)
The Woman in Green (1945)
Pursuit to Algiers (1945)
Terror by Night (1946)
Dressed to Kill (1946)

Answer 2

Basil Rathbone (13 June, 1892 – 21 July, 1967) was an English actor most famous ... Basil Rathbone at the Internet Movie Database. Biography ...

Answer 3

Cynthia Rathbone

Answer 4

Type Basil Rathbone into the search box on Google. This will bring up all links to him and his life and works.

Answer 5

You know what? I'm not sure I've ever seen Mr. Brett play Sherlock... but I have to go with Basil Rathbone on his name alone... I mean... imagine a moniker like that: Basil Rathbone... Elementary, my dear Watson...

Answer 6

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Answer 7

Born in 1892 till 1967, go on ask

Answer 8

Enter your question above in 'search for questions' then press search there is some information there.

Answer 9

best place for anything like that is wikipedia.