mid0nz:Basil Rathbone, perhaps the most famous Sherlock Holmes, made his Broadway debut in 1926 in “
mid0nz:Basil Rathbone, perhaps the most famous Sherlock Holmes, made his Broadway debut in 1926 in “The Captive.” The play was about lesbians!It, along with Mae West’s play about gay men, “Sex,” and another play “Virgin Man” were raided by police on the same night. Cast and production staff were arrested on obscenity charges.Rathbone has quite a bit to say about “The Captive” in his autobiography In and Out of Character. “The play was produced without any preproduction publicity with Helen Menken as Irene and myself as Jacques. Of course there were rumors as to what it was all about since a limited number of Americans had seen the play in Paris, but our first night audience was completely ignorant of its theme. They were stunned by its power and the persuasiveness of its argument. We were an immediate success and for seventeen weeks we played to standing room only at every performance. At no time was it ever suggested that we were salacious or sordid or seeking sensation.” The night of the arrest Rathbone went to the Empire Theatre as usual. Looking out his dressing room window, Rathbone saw “an unusual number of people outside and more policemen than I had ever seen anywhere at one time in New York… . As we walked out onto the stage to await our first entrances we were stopped by a plainclothes policeman who showed his badge and said, ‘Please don’t let it disturb your performance tonight but consider yourself under arrest!’ At the close of the play the cast were all ordered to dress and stand by to be escorted in police cars to a night court.” The cast was released on bail and ordered to appear in court a few days later. At the court hearing the management of the play announced its voluntary withdrawal from the stage. The cast had no choice but to accept this decision. Rathbone felt that the closing of the play was a “hideous betrayal, this most infamous example of the imposition of political censorship on a democratic society ever known in the history of responsible creative theater; this cold-blooded unscrupulous sabotage of an important contemporary work of art; this cheap political expedient to gain votes by humiliating and despoiling the right of public opinion to express itself and act upon its considered judgment as respected and respectable citizens.” (x) -- source link
#theatre#basil rathbone#historical