Saint of the Month: Basil Rathbone

(NOTE: This post was originally meant for Halloween, but, as you see, I'm a bit late in publishing this week. I hope you enjoy it anyway!)



Happy Halloween!



Can I make a confession? I have a weakness for schlocky horror movies. Once upon a time in my misguided show-biz career, I had a gig as a horror movie host on a midwestern TV station. Okay. I know. The TV horror movie host is possibly the lowest job in the entertainment industry, ranking only a little higher than the guy in the gorilla suit who stands by the roadside holding a sign which reads, “GOING OUT OF BUSINESS, EVERYTHING MUST GO!” But, hey! I needed the money.

So, in honor of the fact that tonight is Halloween, I'd like to present my Saint of the Month, Basil Rathbone.

The South African born English actor was trained in Shakespeare. He had a stellar career on Broadway, winning a Tony award in the 1950's, and was also renown for playing suave villains in some of the great MGM and Warner Brothers classics of the 1930's and 1940's. Rathbone is best remembered for his definitive portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in more than a dozen films and countless radio broadcasts from those bygone days.

Of course, all actors have to eat, so from time to time Rathbone found himself cast in some schlocky horror movies. He appeared in classics like The Son of Frankenstein and Tales of Terror, but also managed to misuse his talents in total pieces of crap like The Black Sleep, Planet of Blood, and The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini. (Hey! The guy probably needed the money.)

What most film buffs may not know about Rathbone, however, is that he was a pious and devout Christian with a deep passion for the scriptures. In 1929, he went to considerable financial risk by producing, co-authoring, and starring in a Broadway play based on the story of Our Lord's passion. The play was called Judas, and Rathbone played the title character.

In his 1961 autobiography, In and Out of Character, Rathbone wrote:

I think I was still in my teens when the relationship between Jesus of Nazareth and Judas-ish-Kerioth first troubled me. At first I was frightened for myself for, 'The devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape' and was perhaps 'abusing me to damn me.' And yet over the years the thought pursued me and at last became an obsession. I felt I must think it through and try to arrive at some conclusion. If Judas was the mean, despicable betrayer he is said to have been, why did Jesus choose him to be one of his disciples?At what time in his life did Jesus become aware of his divine mission here on earth? Certainly by the time he made the choice of the twelve.

Rathbone's play followed a now-familiar theory that Judas truly loved Jesus and that his betrayal was a misguided attempt to force a confrontation between Palestine's Roman overlords and a rebellious and oppressed people who had finally found the longed-for Messiah in Jesus of Nazareth. Creatively, Rathbone imagined Judas as the devil who tempted Jesus in the wilderness following the baptism by John. The temptation, of course, would be for Jesus to use his charisma to launch a revolution and be crowned as Israel's king when the Romans were overthrown. Rathbone explained,

I do not believe in a hell of fire and brimstone and human misery as in Dante's Inferno any more than I believe in the devil, in either the Mephistophelean form or the one with the long tail and eyes of fire. As we are born in the grace of God so we are born in original sin and our hell is within us.

Rathbone's sympathetic interpretation of this arch betrayer underscores a basic premise: We are all, at the same time, both lovers of Christ and Christ's betrayers. Both justified and sinner. And, sometimes, with the best of intentions, we are capable of the most hurtful deeds. Simul justus et peccator. (Remember—Halloween is also Reformation Day. I just had to get a little Lutheran doctrine into this post!)

Unfortunately, Rathbone's interpretation proved a little too hip for the audiences of 1929. Christian leaders of several traditions voiced opposition to the play. Rathbone even wrote, in so many words, that a Roman Catholic priest told him such questioning of excepted interpretation of scripture was too dangerous for the average believer. The church of the day seemed more comfortable with a demonized Judas and not yet ready for a Judas for whom one could feel empathy. The play had mixed reviews and closed in three weeks.

This did not end Rathbone's dramatic relationship with biblical villains. A few years later, in 1933, he played a very contrite Pontius Pilate in the movie The Last Days of Pompei. He also appeared as Caiaphas in an Italian movie, Ponzio Pilato in 1961. On stage, Rathbone played the character of Nickles, the devil figure, in Archibald MacLeish's J.B., a poetic interpretation of the biblical story of Job.

I wish I could have met this guy as I'm quite certain we'd get along. Unfortunately, he died when I was still a little kid watching him as Sherlock Holmes on TV (And, for MY money, he will always be the best darn Sherlock Holmes of all time!). Nevertheless, I salute him for being an honest and searching Anglican Christian, a dedicated worker for charity, and an actor known in Hollywood for being both a devoted husband and father and a really, really nice guy—traits unusual in a profession and a town not known for niceness.

Why don't we all challenge accepted interpretations a bit and ask our Roman Catholic friends to share communion with us? Sign my petition here.