In and Out of Character

Limelight Editions (an imprint of Hal Leonard Corporation)

19 West 21st Street, New York, NY 10010

Copyright © 1956, 1962 by Basil Rathbone

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.

Published by Limelight Editions in 1989

Fifth printing, 2007

Printed in the United States of America

The Soldier from The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke. Copyright 1915 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc. Copyright 1943 by Edward Marsh. Reprinted by permission of Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc., McClelland and Stewart, Limited, and Sidgwick & Jackson, Ltd.

221 B by Vincent Starrett. Reprinted by permission of the author.

I Like Them Fluffy from Plain Jane by A. P. Herbert. Reprinted by permission of the proprietors of Punch, Sir Alan Herbert, Ernest Benn, Let., and Doubleday and Company, Inc.

The short story Daydream first appeared in the December 1956 number of Esquire.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rathbone, Basil, 1892--1967.

In and out of character / Basil Rathbone.---1st Limelight ed. p. cm.

Reprint. Originally published: Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, C1962.

1. Rathbone, Basil, 1892--1967. 2. Actors---Great Britain---Biography. I. Title.

PN2598.R35A3 1989

791.43’028’0924---dc19

[B]

88-21531

CIP

9780879105563

www.limelighteditions.com

Table of Contents

1 War

2 The Great Illusion

3 Repton School 1906-10

4 First Flush Of Success

5 Ouida,

6 A Gentleman’s Gentleman

7 The World Is Not A Stage

8 Judas

9 Katharine Cornell

10 Motion Pictures

11 A Home At Last

12 The War Years

13 Hi There, Sherlock, How’s Dr. Watson?

14 The Heiress

15 Good-By, My Friend

16 J.b.

17 Last Act, Please. Curtain Going Up.

18 And So Good Night

To my Ouida with love

Preface

I have heard it said that if one writes a book in which one’s thoughts and experiences play a major role, it is no good doing so unless one can be ‘sensational.’ A very well-known newspaperman—a good friend of mine—and I were talking one day, shortly after my return to New York from the West Coast in 1946. I was commenting upon the thousands upon thousands of happy families in the motion picture industry, and especially I mentioned in the name bracket—Irene Dunne and her husband-Claudette Colbert and her husband—Jack Benny’s marriage—Sir C. Aubrey Smith and his wife—the Nigel Bruces, to name but a few. Why was it, I asked my friend, that, at least so it seemed to me, successful marriages were not I news. His answer shocked me, but when I had time to think it through I had to agree with him. He said, My dear Basil, in my business the only good news is bad news. Cynical? Perhaps, but 1 am much afraid it is the truth.

My wife and I have been married for tbirty-six years. No two strong-minded, healthy, normal individuals live together that long in a romantic paradise! There have been times when clashes of personality and human folly have temporarily disrupted our lives. But because we happen to be in the public eye, does this entitle us—or you—dear reader, to an exposé of our weaknesses and problems? To what end? To destroy your illusions?—to insinuate that my problems are greater than yours and worthy of your consideration?—to feed my ego under the glaring light of publicity?—to expose a friend or acquaintance in circumstances that I have learned of by chance–or been exposed to in confidence? No! For me indeed no! Where, within the dictates of my conscience, I can speak with you of those I have known, and ofttimes loved, I will do so respecting their confidence in me and my regard for them.

I launch mysel upon this project with a light heart. I am a frustrated writer anyway, and I’ve nothing to lose; not even my time, for I shall enjoy writing this book. Add to a frustrated writer a frustrated musician, and most surely you will end up a frustrated actor. The author o this book is all three.

A considerable part of the success of Archibald MacLeish’s play J.B. grew from a sense of personal identification felt by so many of its audience. I dare to hope that this, even if in lesser degree, may be the fate of the journey I am about to record.

1 War

In June of 1918 a rumor had begun to spread through British forces all along the front that the Germans were pulling out of their positions. At night one heard sounds from behind their lines which strongly indicated that transport and artillery were on the move. As Patrols Officer of the Second Battalion, Liverpool Scottish, I had become increasingly aware of the urgency to obtain more complete information. Conditions were forcing me to look upon my role in the Great War with greater seriousness than I had done in the past.

At that time, reconnaissance patrols operated at night. Once or twice a week, with three other men in diamond shape, I crawled about no-man’s-land in the dark, hoping to bring back useful information about enemy dispositions and possible intentions. Our best bet, of course, was to meet up with a German patrol and take a prisoner. But this was rare, for both our own and the German patrols were not too willing to risk personal contacts and possibly their lives for such a purpose.

My men were old-timers and knew all the tricks of the game. When any member of a patrol thought he heard an enemy patrol, it was incumbent upon the officer in command to await confirmation and developments. The pros and cons of the least suspicion had to be weighed with infinite care. My men knew how to make use of this situation, and my patrols spent much time speculating on the possible appearance of these enemy ghosts! After an hour or so we returned to our lines and I wrote my report.

Some of these reports were based on fact, but most of them were pure fiction. As I remember them now, many of them were masterpieces of invention; inconclusive, yet always suggesting that every effort had been made by our patrol to garner information and/or make contact with the enemy. Under such circumstances one’s imagination was often sorely tried in supplying acceptable news items that could be examined at Battalion H.Q. and then confidently filed away under the heading of Intelligence. For many years after the war I kept my copies of these reports in an old theatrical basket that I had in storage and which, alas, was lost in a fire.

I cannot say that the changed conditions of June 1918 made an entirely new man of me, but I began to cast about for a new and more sure way to gain information on patrol. I went to Colonel Monroe, my commanding officer, and reasoned as follows: After stand down at dawn, sentry discipline relaxed to some extent. The possibility of a German daylight patrol seemed so remote that, had I warned our sentries to maintain close watch, I might have found myself recommended for sick leave. If our minds were so closed to this contingency, how much more blind would be the Germans, who followed the book implicitly and used little imagination.

I proposed to Colonel Monroe that Corporal Tanner, my sniper, and I go out into no-man’s-land just before dawn and lay up until full daylight. At night it was always most difficult to judge objects and distances. In daylight these difficulties would be obviated. I further suggested we use camouflage, a theatrical device which I had first learned under very different, though not always more peaceful circumstances, and which would compensate us somewhat for the loss of anonymity afforded by darkness. The ham in me had suddenly become stronger than my sense of survival. Colonel Monroe seemed intrigued and gave his consent.

The following morning I was awakened by my batman at 3:30 A.M. Camouflage suits had been made for us to resemble trees. On our heads we wore wreaths of freshly plucked foliage; our faces and hands were blackened with burnt cork. About 5:00 A.M. we crawled through our wire and lay up in no-man’s-land. All sentries had been alerted to our movements. The German trenches were some two hundred yards distant.

For several days we tested our adventure, and it soon became evident that the enemy had no suspicions whatsoever of our presence. We were able accurately to locate German machine-gun positions, which were later phoned back to artillery and put out of action. We also noted a sparseness of enemy front-line positions, supporting High Command’s contention that something was up.

One day Colonel Monroe said, Rathbone, we must have a prisoner or some positive identincation—can you handle this, or shall we make a raid?

I can handle it, sir, I said.

I was supremely confident that the shock of our appearance in German trenches during daylight would sufficiently disorganize the enemy, thus enabling us to accomplish our purpose, and make our get-away.

And so the following morning we went out as usual and lay up until full daylight. Suddenly out of an empty sky a squadron of German airplanes dived down on us. Each airplane was painted a different color. The leading plane was black—and its pilot was the famous Baron von Richthofen—the second plane was painted red and its pilot was Hermann Goering. The other planes were painted blue, green, yellow, etc., but their pilots, as far as I know, never became as famous as their leaders. The squadron passed over us not more than 100 feet up, strafing the British, who returned their fire, while from the German lines there were cheers upon cheers. What event could top a thrilling visit from the famous Richthofen Circus? It had disrupted the monotony of the daily routine and given it an almost festive atmosphere. In a very few minutes the planes were gone, but an aura of unreality prevailed. We remained motionless, listening to the sounds of talking and laughter and casual movement from behind both our lines. Richthofen’s arrival had served our purpose well. The enemy had let his guard drop. I whispered to Tanner, Let’s go.

We crawled so slowly that it must have taken us almost an hour to reach the German wire. I had picked a spot between two machine-gun posts. Reaching their wire I stood up and waited. Receiving no sign of recognition from enemy sentries, I ordered Tanner to follow me. Very carefully—like hunters —piece by piece we cut our way through the wire, reached their parapet, and rolled over into the German front lines. We remained there motionless for several minutes. The only sound now to be heard was a skylark climbing up into a cloudless blue sky, as the opposing armies took their midday siesta. We rose and proceeded slowly and with the utmost care along the German trench. We made our way around a traverse—then another stretch of empty trench—and proceeded further. Suddenly there were footsteps and a German soldier came into view behind the next traverse. He stopped suddenly, struck dumb, no doubt, by our strange appearance. Capturing him was out of the question; we were too far away from home. But before he could pull himself together and spread the alarm, I shot him twice with my revolver—he fell dead. Tanner tore the identification tags off his uniform and I rifled his pockets, stuffing a diary and some papers into my camouflage suit. (What a mania the Germans have always had for keeping detailed records.) Now things happened fast. There were sounds of movement on both sides of us, so we scaled the parapet, forced our way through the barbed wire —I have the scars on my right leg to this day—and ran for the nearest shell hole. We had hardly reached it when two machine guns opened a cross fire on us. We lay on the near lip of the crater, which was so close to their lines that it gave us cover. The machine-gun bullets pitted the rear of the crater.

Now what to do, with almost two hundred yards to go to make home base? Again I decided to gamble on German psychology. I told Tanner I would up-and-run to my left to the next shell hole; as soon as I was on my way he was to do the same thing, going to his right. It worked! As we dropped by turns into shell holes, the German machine gunners failed to make up their minds which of us to stay with, and their indecision unquestionably saved both our lives. Tanner and I arrived back in our trenches at approximately the same time —and at about one-half mile distant from each other. The information we had brought back was of much value. There seemed no doubt that a German retreat all along the line was imminent.

On my way back to headquarters to report—somebody said, Gosh, but you stink!

And now at last I could smell it myself—it was on my left boot. In one of the shell holes on my way back I had stepped into a decomposing body. For a moment I thought I was going to faint. Right there I removed the boot, and someone stuck a bayonet through it and heaved it back into no-man’s-land. Up to that moment, I had felt no fear, sustained and driven by the bravura of the mission and with the image of Richthofen’s bright circus dancing in my brain. With one shoe off and one shoe on, the reality and horror of war came rushing in on me.

Shortly after the incident just related, our division was taken out of the line. There were no orders on the board for our first day of rest—other than to clean up and sleep. I was billeted in a farmhouse. It was a beautiful day—bright sunshine and a clear sky. How quickly one’s mood changed on these occasions. It was a little debilitating, at first, and one had to be careful to hold onto one’s morale. The urgency of self-discipline being somewhat relaxed, one fell into a pattern of mild indulgences.

My room overlooked the farmyard, and my bed faced a window that looked into the yard—a high-mattressed, heavy old bed, in which I had floated through the night in a dreamless sleep. My batman, Private Isles, brought me my breakfast—steaming black hot tea, bacon and eggs, toast and marmalade. Then he picked up my tunic and kilt—my belt and my puttees and boots, and left. They would need a lot of elbow grease to get them cleaned and polished and bright for battalion inspection next morning. But I had nothing to worry about since Isles was the most meticulous batman in the regiment, and his pride in me was a matter of pride in himself and his work. As a civilian, Isles had sold hats in Liverpool, in all probability to members of my family. But he never took advantage of our being fellow-Liverpudlians, and even on the day he was demobilized he saluted me as smartly as on the first day we had met.

I was enjoying my breakfast and dreaming optimistically of going home on leave, when from the farmyard I heard the most terrifying squeals. Looking through the window, I saw the farmer lugging a pig out of a pen. The wretched animal was struggling violently. Suddenly the squeals turned into diminishing gurgles—the farmer had cut the pig’s throat. A moment later I threw up my breakfast. Yes, one certainly must watch out for diminishing returns in one’s morale.

That evening I met the farmer’s daughter and promptly fell in love with her. There was something so gentle, wide-eyed, and sweet about her—she reminded me of A. P. Herbert’s poem:

I like them fluffy, I gently replied.

Not huffy, or stuffy, or puffy with pride.

With downy soft eyebrows and artful blue eyes,

The kind that the highbrows pretend to despise.

With fluffy complexions like plums on the wall,

With fluffy opinions and no brains at all!

She was the first pretty girl I had seen for a long time—and the results were disastrous. I couldn’t sleep and all the next day I waited for that moment when I would see her again. Her mother never left us alone—her mother, who sat at the other end of the kitchen table—watching and listening and breathing heavy garlic fumes over us both.

I shall never know what Marie thought and felt about me, as she could not understand English, and I was afraid to speak to her in French in case her mother should understand my intentions. I recited Rupert Brooke to her, and Shakespeare’s sonnets:

Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

I had no idea whether Marie was inclined to be temperate or not, and under the circumstances still less inclined to try and find out. Inevitably, in due course, we were joined by her pig-sticking father, a morose, suspicious-looking man. Not that one could blame him—my intentions were definitely not honorable—and he didn’t have to be a particularly shrewd man to notice it in my voice and in my manner. I made violent love to Marie without once even touching her—while she would sit looking at me, smiling with those limpid eyes, and the drumming on the table with her fingers being intermingled with periods of nibbling on something that looked like salami. From time to time she would glance toward her mother and meet that expressionless stare with an enigmatical stare of her own. After about an hour of this sort of thing, Marie was ordered to bed. Oh! the miserable frustration of it all!

In desperation I managed to find out where her bedroom was situated. Fortunately there was a tree quite close to her bedroom window, whose branches gave promise that I might make a surreptitious entrance to her room. One night I decided to proceed upon my evil purposes. It was a pitch-black night and I had difficulty in finding my way. Eventually I found the tree and scaled it. I balanced myself precariously on a branch and edged myself slowly toward her window. I gently tapped on it once—twice—three times. Suddenly I heard a startled voice. Qui est là? It was her mother’s voice. Wrong tree—wrong room. The branch broke and I fell with a thud to the ground. As I picked my way back in the darkness, I heard a window open and a male voice this time, inquiring, Qui est là?—the pig-sticker, ye gods!

Fortunately, the next day, there was a phone call from my brother, John. His regiment, The Dorsets, was stationed close by, and he had leave to come over and spend the night with me. This, at least temporarily, put an end to my budding romance. Colonel Monroe obligingly gave his consent and John and I spent a glorious day together. John had an infectious sense of humor and a personality that made friends for him everywhere he went. In our Mess on that night he made himself as well-liked as in his own regiment. We retired late, full of good food and Scotch whisky. We shared my bed and were soon sound asleep. It was still dark when I awakened from a nightmare. I had just seen John killed. I lit the candle beside my bed and held it to my brother’s face—for some moments I could not persuade myself that he was not indeed dead. At last I heard his regular gentle breathing. I kissed him and blew out the candle and lay back on my pillow again. But further sleep was impossible. A tremulous premonition haunted me—a premonition which even the dawn failed to dispel.

Some weeks later, at one o’clock on June 4, 1918, I was sitting in my dugout in the front line. Suddenly I thought of John, and for some inexplicable reason I wanted to cry, and did. Immediately, I wrote him a letter to which he never replied, and in due course I received the news of his death in action at exactly one o’clock on June the fourth. We had always been very close to one another.

More weeks passed by and once again my battalion was out of the line, resting. I heard by chance that the area around Marie’s farmhouse had been heavily shelled. The farmhouse was not far distant, and come what may, I had to see for myself what might have happened to her. I borrowed the Colonel’s horse. It was raining cats-and-dogs, and I was soon soaked to the skin. Precariously I found my way to the farmhouse. It was a heaped-up pile of rubble and the ground all around it pitted with shell holes. Other houses nearby had been badly damaged, too. A stray dog hunted for food—he was the only living thing in sight.

Making my way slowly back, I stopped at a house and made some inquiries. There was no news of my little Marie and her family—my little Marie with her downy soft eyebrows and artful blue eyes . . . When I eventually reached headquarters I apologized for the condition of the Colonel’s horse, but I offered no excuses. I called Private Isles and asked him to have my uniform dried out. Then I sent word to Colonel Monroe asking to be excused from Mess that night—I was not well and had gone to bed. Mercifully, very soon, we returned to our trenches. And mercifully, very soon, the war-to-end-all-wars, the war that was to make the world safe for democracy, was over. The Fifty-seventh Division was sent to Le Havre awaiting transport to England and demobilization. A miserable town, Le Havre. At least it seemed so to me in those days. There was little to do but to get into trouble. And there was plenty of trouble almost anywhere you cared to look for it. However, the Liverpool Scottish left town with a fine reputation for their courteous and gentlemanly behavior. This was given personal recognition by a certain Madam of a certain House of Flowers. She and the girls decided to throw a farewell party for the boys.

I think it was the most unique party I have ever attended. Madam was gorgeously resplendent in an outrageously decollete evening gown—while the girls were all dressed in their Sunday best. A large central room was charmingly decorated with flowers, and there was a sumptuous supper, at which nothing but champagne was served. An elderly, rather superior-looking woman thumped out dance music of the period on an upright piano that had definitely seen better days. The style and the decorum were magnificent. We danced with the girls—but conversation was difficult as they spoke little English—and most of us spoke less French.

The whole affair had an almost classic dignity, and woe to the Scot who might dare to get out of hand. The party was over about 10:00 P.M. and some of the men took their girls for a drink to a local hotel; a sentimental reminder, no doubt, of where they had first met. Later, they may have returned and with Madam’s consent lingered on for a while, bidding one another a more intimate and final adieu—Vive la France!

EPILOGUE

In the summer of 1934 I was in Toledo, Ohio, with Miss Katharine Cornell, preparing Romeo and Juliet for our opening in New York. The Sunday we arrived there, Arturo Toscanini was on the radio with his famous Symphony of the Air Orchestra. I was listening intently, in my hotel room, when suddenly the telephone bell rang; my wife answered. Someone for you, she said, handing me the phone. I knew no one in Toledo; who could it be?

Hello, yes, who is it?

A very English voice answered, Corporal Tanner, here. I could hardly believe my ears.

Corporal Tanner! What on earth are you doing in the United States?

I’m a citizen, he answered. I’m a cop, here in Toledo.

Needless to say, we enjoyed a somewhat emotional reunion, which my wife Ouida helped us celebrate well into the early hours of the following morning. Some of the ghosts in my life have come back to haunt me, and some of them have been astonishingly real.

2 The Great Illusion

—Vive la France! Vive l’Angleterre! Vive l’Ecosse! Ypres, Festubert, Mademoiselle from Armentières, pinky, pinky parlez-vous, Colonel Monroe, Private Isles, Corporal Tanner—it was a whole and complete life that quite plausibly might have been spent on some other planet. As real as anything I should ever know in my life and yet, with each succeeding dawn of each succeeding day in each succeeding year, I was to be left with an ever-increasing sense of its unreality. How in the name of all the saints had this thing happened to me? In August of 1914 I would not have believed it possible that I could eventually become a competent and reasonably well-adjusted soldier. But that was just what had happened.

When England declared war on Germany, I had been very young, and dreaming of prodigious accomplishments for myself in my chosen profession. But by the middle of September in that year the end of my dream world as a promising young actor appeared ominously on the periphery of my life. I felt physically sick to my stomach as I saw or heard or read of the avalanche of brave young men rushing to join the colors; and if needs-be to give their lives for God and King and Country (for King and Country maybe—but for God! What utter blasphemy so casually to inform God which side he was on). Was I pigeon-livered that I felt no such call to duty (or did I, and just refuse to accept it?), that I was pondering how long I could delay joining up? The very idea of soldiering appalled me—and to think of it, there were men who did these things of their own free choice, and some of them had become great generals and admirals and had statues erected to them, like the one to Lord Nelson in Trafalgar Square in London. All this I had always accepted as I had accepted fairy tales and stories about explorers and wild-game hunters, but only through the medium of books and in paintings. As a boy I was an avid reader of G. A. Henty, and stories about the glory of the Empire by Rudyard Kipling. The nursery walls featured reproductions of Lord Kitchener, The Charge of the Light Brigade, and The Thin Red Line (the Guards Brigade at Waterloo). But now these things were become an inescapable reality for me personally—

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die.

What a shambles such nonsense made of all good common sense. Most probably somewhere in Germany there was a young man, with much the same ideas as I had, and one of us was quite possibly destined to shoot and kill the other. The whole thing was monstrous, utterly and unbelievably monstrous—irrational, pitiable, ugly, and sordid.

But in due course (and in spite of myself!) I eventually became a soldier; and as Private Rathbone I was trained at a camp at Richmond Park, just outside London, to kill Germans. I learned to hate them, to call them Boche and Huns, to believe them capable of all kinds of barbarous atrocities including bayoneting babies. I learned to kill them with a Lewis gun, a rifle, and a bayonet. Of all my training I loathed bayonet practice most—rushing frantically at a sackful of wet straw and thrusting my bayonet into it—turn the blade sharply so as to increase the size of the wound—then withdraw the cold steel and proceed on to another dummy figure and give it some of the same medicine. The bayonet and the boot. How these images crowd in on me.

By the grace of God a hiatus saved me from what looked like being an early baptism of fire on the battlefields of north-ern France. I purposely and with grim intent applied for a commission and was accepted. The officers training camp I was sent to was at Gailes in Scotland (the famous golf course at Gailes is one of the most difficult in the world). There I met and became close friends with a young man by the name of Macdonald, a Scottish International Rugby footballer. Between us we took over the camp and organized it into the Reds and the Blues! We played Rugby and soccer and held all manner of track meets against each other. We were enormously efficient and uncompromisingly competitive. Very soon Macdonald and I became and were accepted as a couple of arrogant little heroes, both by the cadets and the officers in charge of the training camp. But one day the commandant, Captain Smith, sent for us and coldly advised us that our term of training had but three more weeks to go and he saw