It is no use saying one won't get typed - one always is

By the mid-1930s, Basil Rathbone was one of Hollywood's best-paid freelance actors. When Samuel Goldwyn offered him a four-year contract in 1936, the actor had serious misgivings, having worked under contract before (to MGM) and hating it. In a letter from December 1936, Rathbone voiced his objections to Goldwyn about signing with him. Apart from being very unhappy with the billing clause in the contract, Rathbone was not at all interested in playing the heavy in Goldwyn's upcoming film The Hurricane (1937). Ever since he had portrayed the evil Murdstone in David Selznick's production of David Copperfield (1935), the actor had played villains. Afraid of being typecast as a villain, Rathbone rejected The Hurricane ("my part is a cold blooded unaffectionate duty loving bastard"), the role eventually played by Raymond Massey. Incidentally, Rathbone's most famous villain role was yet to come, that of Sir Guy of Gisbourne in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).

Here is the letter Rathbone wrote to Samuel Goldwyn on 2 December 1936, in which he complains about his billing situation, boasts about his acting achievements and —not wishing to be typed as a villain— suggests several characters he would be interested in playing.

 

Source: Heritage Auctions

Transcript:

Grand Hotel Dunapalota

Budapest

Dec. 2, 1936

Dear Sam, I would not for the world have you misunderstand why I have not signed the contract with you. There is so much to talk about, which even in a letter cannot be fully covered & I want to talk to you before doing anything as drastic as signing a 4 year contract. To you Sam, it is just another contract along with other artists engaged to you. To me it is the one & only contract & it has so many “ifs” to it.

I have been very happy freelancing & to me freedom is almost irreplaceable. Five years ago I was under contract to MGM & I was miserable. I only got just what was on paper & no more. I was promised this & promised that — hope was high one day & in the dust the next. After “[The Last of Mrs.] Cheyney” I was typed & I was allowed to do nothing but “tea cup & white tie parts.” Even as late as “Romeo & Juliet” promises have meant nothing. I was to be featured after John Barrymore & Edna May Oliver in the same type. I was not. I was put down with Ralph Forbes & Andy Devine etc. I accepted Count Anteoni in “The Garden of Allah” without reading the script because David Selznick told me the story & the part as he told it was colourful & vital & important. We came to shoot it & it was nothing. In “Allah” I was promised the same billing as John Barrymore got in Romeo & Juliet. I did not get it. This was my agent’s fault. It was not in the contract & Mr. Selznick pointed out it was not in the contract & would do nothing. So I was bunched down with Tilly Losch, Aubrey Smith & [Joseph] Shildkraut [sic]. I don’t say like things would happen with you Sam, but I have been so badly bitten & I am completely lacking in confidence in anyone. I am sure you must be able to understand this.

Your billing clause for instance gives me no more than I can get freelancing & yet you star Herbert Marshall with [Merle] Oberon & [Fredric] March in “Dark Angel,” & you have just starred Brian Aherne with Oberon. My contract would enable you to have me supporting Marshall & Aherne either as stars or featured players & I won’t do it. I must either be very important to you or I will go on freelancing. I earned $120,000 last year and 140,000 this year & I am completely content with your contract in that regard but it is not money I am after (much as I appreciate it!) I have been a very important actor both in London & New York for years. I bring you a very full experience & equipment, especially after the past 2 years in pictures. You not only made [Ronald] Coleman [sic], you gave him the opportunity to learn to act. I come to you a finished product groomed in every branch of my trade. Just look at this for a few important ones.

London—My Parts                                             

Peter Ibbetson—Peter (co star) 

George Sand—de Musset (co star)

Henry IV—The Prince of Wales (no stars)

Othello—Iago (co star) 

The Unknown (Maugham)—the atheist soldier (no stars)

He who gets slapped—“He” (co star) 

New York & on tour all over the Country 

Czarina—Count Alexis, 1st feature

The Swan—The Tutor, equal feature LeGallienne & Merivale

The Command to Love—Attache, co-star Mary Nash

The Captive—the lead, co-star Helen Menken

Melo—the lead, co-star Edna Best

Stratford on Avon Shakespeare Festivals

47 parts in 22 plays of Shakespeare!

The pictures you know. The above is an education Sam. Only a man like Charles Boyer has anything like it & he is starred & has yet to have an outstanding American success. I am not asking for stardom. I want to win it in pictures as I won it on the stage, but I must have protection against people who were not & are not my equals now or in the past. The Garbos the Gables the Gary Coopers yes, but the Marshalls Ahernes etc. NO NO NO. And I can see no reason why you cannot do for me what you do for Marshall & Aherne. and -

as regards “Hurricane” I have read the book & can see what a fine production picture it will make. I don’t know how it is being treated but my part is a cold blooded unaffectionate duty loving bastard! He has a brief moment of humanity at the end but what of it — he’s a horrible person. I played one for Selznick 2 years ago “Murdstone” & then I played Karenin & a part for Fox but no more. I am not against heavies, but I am against men whose wives dislike them, who are unsexed, complex & inhibited. Tybalt, Pontius Pilate & Levasseur (in Capt. Blood) were all heavies but glamorous & full blooded - men, not lily-livered knaves. Such parts as this man in Hurricane & Karenin limit one too much & a career along such lines would soon end. It is no use saying one won’t get typed — one always is & the better one plays the parts the worse it gets. Hurricane as Hurricane doesn’t interest me in a contract unless the contract contains the antidote to such poison. As a freelancer to do Hurricane, yes, perhaps, but with a term contract & nothing else stipulated, NO.

People say “O look at [Charles] Laughton”! Yes look at him. He couldn’t be anything but unpleasant - it’s no argument at all because we have only one thing in common — i.e. we can both act.

And I would be no good to you at all Sam, & so no good to myself unless we were going places untravelled by your other contract players to date. There is a wealth of parts for a man like myself — Casanova, Leonardo da Vinci, Machiavelli, “The Cavalier of the Streets” (Michael Arlen), Charles I, Lafayette & a mass of modern stories I know — all good picture material. In other words anyone taking me on, on a contract must be bold & unconventional. I could be made to box office that way but never as a [Ronald] Coleman [sic] or a [Gary] Cooper or a [Walter] Huston or [Clark] Gable. I know myself very well & I will wait until someone wants to be bold with me as Irving Thalberg was going to be had he lived. Ask Frances Marion — she says it is criminal that no one sees how to promote me. She wants to write Leonardo da Vinci for me. Ask John Stahl too. There is a grand story on “Casanova” (by Billy Wilder). Bill Woolfenden has it — Wilder wrote it for me. If you can think along such lines with me, we could & would “go places” together, but just to sign a contract for the same money & billing as I now get freelancing does not make sense. To someone who loves their work, that work & its quality means something more than money can buy. I love my work & am proud of the past. The future must belong to the past & be of its quality & standing. You could do it Sam if you would — will you? Kindest regards & please understand I only write because I would like to be with you — If I did not think we could be happy together I would not write.

Yours very sincerely,

Basil Rathbone

Dec 14-17 – Ritz Paris

Dec 18 Sail “Normandie”

Dec 23 to 28th New York Lombardy Hotel

Jany 1st Home — 5254 Los Feliz Blvd. (Normandie 6140)

_____

The four-year contract with Samuel Goldwyn Productions was never signed. Rathbone kept freelancing and was just a few years away from playing the part he is best known for. Between 1939 and 1946, he would portray Arthur Conan Doyle's iconic detective Sherlock Holmes in 14 films and a radio series. Initially enthusiastic about Sherlock, by 1946 the actor hated the character and refused to renew his film and radio contracts. While afraid of being typed as a villain a decade earlier, he now hated being only identified with Holmes. In a 1938 interview with Bosley Crowther of The New York Times, Rathbone had said that the only thing he dreaded was being typed, whether as a villain or hero. And in his 1962 autobiography In and Out of Character, he said with regards to quitting Sherlock: "I was deeply concerned with the problem of being 'typed', more completely 'typed' than any other classic actor has been or ever will be again. My fifty-two roles in twenty-three plays of Shakespeare, my years in the London and New York Theater, my score of motion pictures, including my two academy award nominations, were slowly but surely sinking into oblivion..." Rathbone left Hollywood in 1946, dedicating his later career to the stage while also doing film and television work and at times appearing in Sherlock Holmes spoofs.

Basil Rathbone as (from left to right) Sherlock Holmes, Sir Guy of Gisbourne in The Adventures of Robin Hood and Murdstone in David Copperfield.