The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (340 page)

George Bernard Shaw then chose Rains to play in
Caesar and Cleopatra
(45, Gabriel Pascal) and, back in America, he was in Dieterle’s
This Love of Ours
(45) and Hitchcock’s
Notorious
(46), the latter one of his finest performances, as a pro-Nazi spy subtly redeemed by his love for Ingrid Bergman. Rains completed his Warners contract with
Angel on My Shoulder
(46, Mayo); over the top in
Deception
(46, Rapper) and
The Unsuspected
(47, his tenth film with Michael Curtiz).

As a freelancer, he appeared in several offbeat pictures:
Strange Holiday
(47, Arch Oboler);
The Passionate Friends
(48, David Lean);
Rope of Sand
(49, Dieterle);
Song of Surrender
(49, Mitchell Leisen);
The White Tower
(50, Ted Tetzlaff); caught between Mitchum and Faith Domergue in
Where Danger Lives
(50, John Farrow);
Sealed Cargo
(51, Alfred Werker);
The Man Who Watched Trains Go By
(53, Harold French); and
Lisbon
(56, Ray Milland).

At this point, Rains gave up the screen for the stage and played in a version of Koestler’s
Darkness at Noon
and in Eliot’s
The Confidential Clerk
. But he returned, still authoritative, for
This Earth Is Mine
(59, Henry King); in a claptrap version of
The Lost World
(60, Irwin Allen); as Dryden in
Lawrence of Arabia
(62, Lean);
Twilight of Honor
(63, Boris Sagal); and as Herod in
The Greatest Story Ever Told
(65, George Stevens).

He had been nominated four times as best supporting actor—
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Casablanca, Mr. Skeffington
, and
Notorious
. No wins. Yet as time goes by, is there anyone more watchable, more delicate or acidic? He was also much married—five or six times: sources quarrel. It is amazing that this mix of decorum and wildness has not yet inspired a biography.

Charlotte Rampling
, b. Sturmer, England, 1946
Though she looks and sounds English enough to play the Thatcherite politician in David Hare’s
Paris by Night
(1988), Charlotte Rampling has worked all over the place, and in several different languages. She has not just a chilly edge but the capacity to make us suspect a cold heart. So, she has her share of narrow-faced villains, not always more than baleful gargoyles. Yet, once at least, in Woody Allen’s
Stardust Memories
(80), she gave a heartbreaking account of breakdown.

She made her debut in
The Knack, and How to Get It
(65, Richard Lester) and she was impressive as the catty friend in
Georgy Girl
(66, Silvio Narizzano). Then came
The Long Duel
(67, Ken Annakin);
The Damned
(69, Luchino Visconti);
Target: Harry
(69, Henry Neill), a TV reworking of
The Maltese Falcon; The Ski Bum
(71, Bruce Clark);
Vanishing Point
(71, Richard C. Sarafian)—though her role was cut after previews; a psychopath in
Asylum
(72, Roy Ward Baker);
Corky
(72, Leonard Horn);
Caravan to Vaccares
(74, Geoffrey Reeve); passive, wounded, and half-naked, a sadist’s wet dream in
The Night Porter
(74, Liliana Cavani)—and thoroughly disturbing; one of the Eternals in
Zardoz
(74, John Boorman);
Farewell, My Lovely
(75, Dick Richards);
Foxtrot
(76, Arturo Ripstein);
Orca … Killer Whale
(77, Michael Anderson); treachery is woman in
The Verdict
(82, Sidney Lumet);
Viva la Vie
(84, Claude Lelouch); in love with a monkey in
Max, Mon Amour
(86, Nagisa Oshima);
Angel Heart
(87, Alan Parker);
Mascara
(87, Patrick Conrad);
D.O.A
. (88, Rocky Morton and Annabel Jankel); and
Hammers Over the Anvil
(93, Ann Turner).

Her work in the nineties, most of it in Europe, has become increasingly varied and impressive. Her looks have become more intriguing, and one feels a rebirth of her own interest in acting.
Time Is Money
(94, Paola Barzman);
Murder In Mind
(94, Robert Bierman);
Radetzky March
(94, Axel Corti and Gernot Roll);
Samson le Magnifique
(95, Etienne Perier);
Asphalt Tango
(96, Nae Caranfil);
Invasion of Privacy
(96, Anthony Hickox);
La Dernière Fête
(96, Pierre Granier-Deferre);
The Wings of the Dove
(97, Iain Softley); Miss Havisham in
Great Expectations
(99, Alfonso Cuaron); Madame Ranyevskaya in
Varya
(99, Michael Cacoyannis);
Signs & Wonders
(00, Jonathan Nossiter);
Aberdeen
(00, Hans Petter Moland); excellent in
Under the Sand
(00, Francois Ozon);
Clouds: Letters to My Son
(00, Marion Hansel);
The Fourth Angel
(01, John Irvin);
Superstition
(01, Kenneth Hope).

She was in
Spy Game
(01, Tony Scott);
Embrassez Qui Vous Voudrez
(02, Michel Blanc); once more outstanding in
Swimming Pool
(03, Ozon);
Jerusalem
(03, Jakov Sedlar); as Livia in
Imperium: Augustus
(03, Roger Young);
The Statement
(04, Norman Jewison);
I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead
(04, Mike Hodges);
Immortel
(04, Enki Bolal);
The Keys to the House
(04, Gianni Amelio);
Lemming
(05, Dominik Moll);
Vers le Sud
(05, Laurent Cantet);
Basic Instinct 2
(06, Michael Caton-Jones);
Angel
(07, Ozon);
Caótica Ana
(07, Julio Medem);
Deception
(08, Marcel Langenegger);
Babylon A.D
. (08, Mathieu Kassovitz);
The Duchess
(08, Saul Dibb);
Boogie Woogie
(09, Duncan Ward);
Life During Wartime
(09, Todd Solondz).

Irving Rapper
(1898–1999), b. London
1941:
Shining Victory; One Foot in Heaven
. 1942:
The Gay Sisters; Now, Voyager
. 1944:
The Adventures of Mark Twain
. 1945:
The Corn Is Green; Rhapsody in Blue
. 1946:
Deception
. 1947:
The Voice of the Turtle
. 1949:
Anna Lucasta
. 1950:
The Glass Menagerie
. 1952:
Another Man’s Poison
. 1953:
Forever Female; Bad for Each Other
. 1956:
Strange Intruder; The Brave One
. 1958:
Marjorie Morningstar
. 1959:
The Miracle
. 1960:
Giuseppe Venduto dai Fratelli/Joseph and His Brethren/Sold into Egypt
(codirected with Luciano Ricci). 1961:
Ponzio Pilato/Pontius Pilate
. 1970:
The Christine Jorgensen Story
. 1978:
Born Again
.

Rapper went from the theatre to be an assistant director at Warners:
The Story of Louis Pasteur
(35, William Dieterle);
The Walking Dead
(36, Michael Curtiz);
Kid Galahad
(37, Curtiz);
The Life of Emile Zola
(37, Dieterle);
The Sisters
(38, Anatole Litvak);
Juarez
(39, Dieterle);
The Story of Dr. Ehrlich’s Magic Bullet
(40, Dieterle); and
All This and Heaven Too
(40, Litvak).

The mark of Curtiz, Dieterle, and Litvak shows in his own films—if nothing else, Rapper learned a gilded craft. But his biopics suffer from casting: Robert Alda as Gershwin in
Rhapsody in Blue
, where the music is smothered by extravagant camera movements.
Now, Voyager
is rather better Litvak than Anatole could have managed: a gorgeous, wallowing film, admirably played by Bette Davis and Claude Rains.

After the war, Rapper seems to have lost touch with genre
—Anna Lucasta
was always a forlorn project;
The Glass Menagerie
is very dull stage talk, apart from Arthur Kennedy’s brittle frailty as the brother;
The Brave One
is appealing, and won a writer’s Oscar for Dalton Trumbo under a false name;
Marjorie Morningstar
wasted Natalie Wood; while
The Miracle
was uncalled for.
The Christine Jorgensen Story
is possibly the most bizarre departure by any director once in steady work; it grotesquely echoes the nature of his earlier films, for the emotionalism of Bette Davis’s Charlotte Vale in
Now, Voyager
is an underground intimation of sexual transference. The women’s picture appeals so often to butch ladies and softy studs.

Basil Rathbone
(1892–1967), b. Johannesburg, South Africa
“Some men play with handkerchiefs,” says Rathbone’s Esteban in
The Mark of Zorro
(40, Rouben Mamoulian), “but I like to keep a rapier in my hand.” Thus the racing allegro duel with Tyrone Power at the end of that film is the natural culmination of the restlessness that is always picking at other people’s noses with a swordtip. Even unarmed, Rathbone was sharp and dangerous, a cruel dandy. The inverted arrow face, the razor nose, and a mustache that was really two fine shears stuck to his lip. Ladies looked fearfully at him, knowing that one embrace could cut them to ribbons. And if Mamoulian’s flickering, swashbuckling play of light and shadow uses Rathbone most wittily, he managed invariably to be both imaginatively nasty and yet amused by himself.

He was educated in England at Repton and went on the stage. After a Military Cross in the war, he starred at Stratford and made his movie debut in Britain:
The Fruitful Vine
(21, Maurice Elvey);
Innocent
(21, Elvey); and as Joseph Surface in
The School for Scandal
(23, Bertram Phillips). Stage work took him to America, and in 1924 he went to Hollywood:
Pity the Chorus Girl
(24, T. Hayes Hunter);
The Masked Bride
(25, Christy Cabanne); and
The Great Deception
(26, Howard Higgin).

But it was sound that made him a distinguished and articulate villain:
The Last of Mrs. Cheyney
(29, Sidney Franklin);
This Mad World
(29, William De Mille);
A Notorious Affair
(30, Lloyd Bacon);
Sin Takes a Holiday
(30, Paul L. Stein);
A Lady Surrenders
(30, John M. Stahl);
The Lady of Scandal
(30, Franklin); and
A Woman Commands
(31, Stein). He did himself no good by returning to Britain for
One Precious Year
(32, Henry Edwards);
Loyalties
(33, Basil Dean); and
Just Smith
(33, Tom Walls); but 1934 saw him back in America with some deep-etched scoundrels: as Murdstone in
David Copperfield
(34, George Cukor); in
Captain Blood
(35, Michael Curtiz); as Karenin to Garbo’s
Anna Karenina
(35, Clarence Brown); as Pilate in
The Last Days of Pompeii
(35, Ernest Schoedsack); as St. Evremonde in
A Tale of Two Cities
(35, Jack Conway); and
Kind Lady
(35, George B. Seitz).

He was assured now of good supporting roles: Tybalt in
Romeo and Juliet
(36, Cukor);
The Garden of Allah
(36, Richard Boleslavsky);
Private Number
(36, Roy del Ruth);
Tovarich
(37, Anatole Litvak);
Love from a Stranger
(37, Rowland V. Lee);
Confession
(37, Joe May); Sir Guy of Gisbourne in
The Adventures of Robin Hood
(38, Curtiz and William Keighley);
The Adventures of Marco Polo
(38, Archie Mayo);
If I Were King
(38, Frank Lloyd);
The Dawn Patrol
(38, Edmund Goulding); as Baron Frankenstein in
The Son of Frankenstein
(39, Lee); as Richard III in
Tower of London
(39, Lee);
The Sun Never Sets
(39, Lee); and
Rio
(39, John Brahm).

Then Fox called on him to play Sherlock Holmes in
The Hound of the Baskervilles
(39, Sidney Lanfield) and
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
(39, Alfred Werker). He was limited by the screen conception of Holmes—sardonic, playful, and elitist—and never suggested the man who took drugs against boredom. Nevertheless, he is the best screen Holmes, and he played the part another twelve times, from 1942 to 1946, all for Universal, directed usually by Roy William Neill.

That sure meal ticket led to his decline. Too familiar as the maestro detective, he was cut off from the Moriarties he was made for. But he worked on:
Rhythm on the River
(40, Victor Schertzinger);
The Mad Doctor
(41, Tim Whelan);
The Black Cat
(41, Albert S. Rogell);
Fingers at the Window
(42, Charles Lederer);
Crossroads
(42, Jack Conway);
Above Suspicion
(43, Richard Thorpe);
Frenchman’s Creek
(44, Mitchell Leisen);
Bathing Beauty
(44, George Sidney); and
Heartbeat
(46, Sam Wood). Then an interval while he returned to the New York stage for, among others, Sloper in
The Heiress
. His final period of film work begins in 1954 with
Casanova’s Big Night
(Norman Z. McLeod); then
We’re No Angels
(55, Curtiz);
The Black Sleep
(56, Reginald Le Borg);
The Court Jester
(56, Norman Panama and Melvin Frank);
The Last Hurrah
(58, John Ford);
Ponzio Pilato
(61, Irving Rapper);
Tales of Terror
(61, Roger Corman);
The Comedy of Terrors
(63, Jacques Tourneur); and
Queen of Blood
(66, Curtis Harrington).