Book review – “In and Out of Character” by Basil Rathbone

The British acting generation who fought WWI were an odd one – Ronald Colman, Herbert Marshall, and Rathbone. Old school actors, who were devoted to empire, fought for it in the trenches, were fond of flowery prose. Rathbone was born in Sth Africa, dad was involved in the Jameson Raid, encouraging him to get his family out of the country, education at a public school (which he picked for sports – Rathbone was a jock), war service which involved Rathbone actually killing people, a successful stage career which took him to Hollywood and famous (well paid) villainy, then Sherlock Holmes, typecasting, and back to stage, then TV work.

Rathbone writes in a flowery style, not untypical of his generation, going off on all sort of tangents: he devotes one line to his son from a first marriage, a few paragraphs to Errol Flynn, around six pages to one of his dogs, a chapter to an episode involving a married couple. Rathbone is sort of intelligent but a bit dopey – well read, but a bit pompous, he slags off television (which he surprisingly says he made some money writing for – had no idea), is clearly more devoted to the stage than film (there is depressingly little on the film work and almost nothing on the tremendous parties he and his wife threw in Hollywood, but we get pages on The Heiress and JB; this was written in 1962 so no mention of his AIP films).

I think it was a mistake for Rathbone to leave the Holmes series, at least financially – he did, too, later on, I think, unsuccessfully trying to revive the role on stage. Worth a read if you are a Rathbone fan, but you always feel as though you need to read a biography to follow up.