Basil Rathbone Tribute posted this photo on Tumblr. He’s incredibly young and innocent-looking. But it’s the date that FF draws attention to. 1923, the year THE SWAN opened on Broadway, and things changed forever in his life. The year he met Ouida Bergere. And of course Eva Le Gallienne. Where was he when he signed this? “Yours sincerely” is a rather quaint and awkward thing to put on a fan photo. Maybe he wasn’t used to autograph protocol yet.
Here’s the link to the tumbr post: forlornfaghag.tumblr.com/post/33702054065/digitalhoarder-basil-rathbone-in-1923-i
The Baz 
He was breathtaking as a young man!
LikeLike
I think he liked Flynn well enough, but thought Flynn was a bit dangerous because he relied more on athleticism than actual skill, which made him as a fencer more of a risk. I also remembering reading that Flynn had a “cruel” sense of humor because he liked practical jokes.
LikeLike
Lovely, how batty Hollywood was
LikeLike
I’d ask him why he said Power was a better fencer than Flynn.
LikeLike
He didn’t like Flynn
LikeLike
I think he did like him, I remember an interview from the sixties where he speaks of his sadness that Flynn destroyed himself with the lifestyle he led.
LikeLike
Romney or Obama? 🙂
LikeLike
Very pretty boy. Chicken hawk prey ;D
LikeLike
Thanks. never seen this one before
LikeLike
I’d ask him why he stayed with Ouida if she was as bad some people say.
LikeLike
Why do you believe these people? What do they know? He loved Ouida dearly, and she was a beautiful person.
LikeLike
So you keep saying, only when anyone asks you for your evidence you just run away and hide for a few days.
LikeLike
Oh so would I. He must have loved her I guess.
LikeLike
I suppose it was love. Love is blind and all that jazz
LikeLike
if they had a kid maybe he stayed for her sake
LikeLike
you can love someone despite their failngs
LikeLike
Yes me too
LikeLike
I think we need a time machine so that we can travel back to the 1920s (or 1930s or 1940s) and see Baz in person!
LikeLike
And be able to ask him some questions! What would you ask him?
I would ask him why he hated Sherlock Holmes as much as he did
LikeLike
I’d ask him which movie he enjoyed making most
LikeLike
Why he had that weird hair in the first three Sherlock movies
LikeLike
lol yes!
LikeLike
lol yes, what was that all about?
LikeLike
I want to know what he said to Eva Le Gallienne
LikeLike
I’d go back to when he wrote that letter about his brother and just hug him
LikeLike
aww
LikeLike
who was his favourite doggy
LikeLike
I think I know that one. Moritz the German shepherd. “Moritz was my very dear friend, my close companion, the silent sharer of my hopes, disappointments and triumphs. … A finer dog never lived,” Basil writes in an article. (“He Was My Friend”, Hollywood Magazine, November, 1936)
LikeLike
Ye, he was his favorite, is it true he was name after a friend?
LikeLike
I would go back to 1923 and tell him to marry me!
LikeLike
Me too
LikeLike
We’d all do that!
LikeLike
No,no, I like the ones whe he was in his 40s or so. Then he’s just the right age for me!
LikeLike
Me too. He’s at his prime in the Sherlock Holmes films IMO. God he’s gorgeous in them. So manly and that little bit of world-weary, like life has kicked him around and knocked off the pretty boy edge. Cuz he almost was a bit too pretty boy and smug in his early films wasn’t he? Like he was thinking “hell, yes, I am pretty damn fine.” But the 1940’s Rathbone has lost that. He’s more self confident, more assured, but also more vulnerable and alone. Don’t you want to meet that guy in a bar some place and help him find his faith in humanity again? 🙂
LikeLike
That’s a perfect description of the Holmes character as he plays him in the Universal series, but not in the Fox series. the Fox Holmes is very different I think. More youthful and optimistic. His character changes between the Fox Holmes in 1939 and the Universal Holmes in 1942. There’s so much more quiet sadness in the later Holmes, and as you say world-weariness.
LikeLike
So true
LikeLike
Ooh he is very sexy as Sherlock
LikeLike
He looks about 17!
LikeLike
I wish he was right now! (I’m sixteen!!!)
LikeLike
Can we share him when we find the time machine? I’m seventeen 🙂
LikeLike
The photo on tumblr with him drinking milk next to the table with the sandwich fixings is cuter. I’d just love to sit down and have a sandwich with him.
LikeLike
Oh me too Rosebette. A sandwich, a cup of coffee, a glass of wine…anything just so long as there was time for a long long talk about life, the universe and everything
LikeLike
Absolutely agreed.
LikeLike
I like that one, can the webmaster please post it in Photo Week?
LikeLike
Don’t forget to check basilrathbone.net, it has lots more photos than you would first think. At least I kept discovering them.
LikeLike
Thanks yeah I’ve seen that site, and the great pics!
LikeLike
Amazing what this photographs conveys, a kind of combined purity and melancholy. Rathbone was a great photo subject.
LikeLike
Purity and melancholy. Tying in with what Verity said, I wonder if he was still rather sad at this time. His brother and mother were both dead and he had yet to meet the love of his life
LikeLike
Yes it must have been very sad for him until he met Ouida
LikeLike
He was a pure person and it shows on his face. And he knew happiness as soon as he met Ouida. Until then he was only half a soul.
LikeLike
What do you mean a “pure person”?
LikeLike
I was wondering that too
LikeLike
In that autobiography you keep ramping on about he mentions – delicately – visiting a whorehouse. Is this some new definition of “pure” we haven’t previously come across?
LikeLike
Excuse me but he does not say he had anything to do with the women in that place. And he might have heard it all second hand. The only women in his life were the two women he married, and he only was intimate with Marion once.
LikeLike
“and he only was intimate with Marion once.”
I know that information is not in Basil’s autobiography. How do you know how many times he was intimate with his first wife?
LikeLike
*blinks*
ROFL
LikeLike
You can’t be serious. You think he went to a brothel to look at the scenery? What do you suppose ended his first marriage?
LikeLike
Whatever the decree says, Basil felt it was a sin to have relations with Marion without love, and that is the reason he ended the marriage.
LikeLike
So what you’re saying is Basil Rathbone only slept with two women in his entire life, and one of those was only once?
And you still claim he was straight? 😉
You’re kind of doing my work for me here Alyssia.
LikeLike
That is NOT what I meant and you know it. There are people who can only sleep with people they truly love and I believe Basil was one of those people. He only loved two women and the only love that lasted was his love for Ouida
LikeLike
LOL
LikeLike
Was just thinking this i only five years after he wrote that heartbreaking letter to his father from the trenches. Was he healed by this time? Or was it only Ouida who helped him finally to heal?
LikeLike
It was Ouida who made his broken heart whole again. He tells a bit of that beautiful story in his autobiography. He was very sad after the death of his brother and mother and only wanted to be alone, until he saw Ouida across a room and his life changed.
LikeLike
Awww…they had such a wondeful love story
LikeLike
They really did. He was complete as long as he could be with her
LikeLike
What’s your source for that?
LikeLike
Anita would like me to post this for her as she can’t post herself for some reason:
“I told you, his autobiography”
LikeLike
So does he say she was his soulmate in his autobiography?
LikeLike
No he doesn’t as far as I remember.
LikeLike
Thanks for the link back!
LikeLike
I like what he’s wearing. What is it?
LikeLike