To the average moviegoer, the name of Basil Rathbone conjures up an image of fiction’s most famous detective – Sherlock Holmes. Certainly, of all the actors who have played the Baker Street sleuth, his interpretation was definitive. Yet, for cinema aficionados, the actor was much more than the personification of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s character. He began his film career in 1921 in Innocent, which was one of several silent films in which he appeared. He was also Mr. Murdstone in David Copperfield, Richard III in Tower of London, Louis XI in If I Were King, Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet, Captain Estaban Pasquale in The Mark of Zorro, Sir Guy of Gisbourne in The Adventures of Robin Hood, and Baron Wolf von Frankenstein in Son of Frankenstein. For most of his years in motion pictures, Rathbone was the victim of type casting. During the 1930s, he was known as the screen’s ultimate villain, constantly in demand by producers to carry out dastardly deeds against such heroes as Errol Flynn,...