Here is a photo of an 18 year old Basil Rathbone and below is a link to the Basil Rathbone website where I found the comment for my post a couple of days ago. It is an interview with Robert Matzen whom I’m sure you are all familiar with, have a read it is very interesting and very informative. Not a bad looking Chap in his day was Basil.
— daringthorpe
zacal
April 21, 2015 at 6:09 pm
Amazing! He looks so contemporary, like a young Al Pacino. What a team he and Flynn made. They played off each other so well. They were always at odds. Great chemistry.
zacal
April 21, 2015 at 6:19 pm
You can see the athletic build. He was a terrific match for Errol in that regard. Henry Daniell was terrific in the Basil Rathbone-role of Lord Wolfingham in “The Sea Hawk”… except that he wasn’t an athlete! When he and Flynn dueled there was an embarrassing moment when Daniell fell backwards to the ground and then got up quickly. I can’t believe they didn’t reshoot that moment. But Basil would have handled it easily. Instead he did the Mark of Zorro!! Rathbone was able to transition into a hero with Sherlock Holmes. What if Errol had gotten a film series like that? Errol Flynn as Phillip Marlowe. Errol Flynn as Bulldog Drummond. Errol Flynn as The Saint. Modern day action with a gun. Then again, I suppose you could argue that he did exactly that by transitioning into the only successful English (Tasmanian) star of Hollywood Westerns. I suppose Errol looked too good on a horse!
rswilltell
April 22, 2015 at 3:46 pm
Zacal; Warner Bros. left the door open at the tail end of ‘Footsteps In The Dark’ (1941) for a sequel and possible murder-mystery series. MGM was having so much success with their Thin Man movies with William Powell and Myrna Loy that J.L. Warner wanted his own comical husband and wife sleuths but Errol Flynn only took the role for something different than his adventure films. Movie series always start out great but then slowly descend into ‘B’ films. Ralph Schiller