Philip St. John Basil Rathbone MC was an Anglo-South African actor. He rose to prominence in the United Kingdom as a Shakespearean stage actor and went on to appear in more than 70 films, primarily costume dramas, swashbucklers, and, occasionally, horror films.
Raymond Hart Massey was a Canadian actor, known for his commanding, stage-trained voice. For his lead role in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940), Massey was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. He reprised his role as Lincoln on television and in How the West Was Won (1962). Among his other well-known roles were Dr. Gillespie in the NBC television series Dr. Kildare (1961–1966), John Brown in Santa Fe Trail (1940) and Seven Angry Men (1955), Abraham Farlan in A Matter of Life and Death (1946), and Jonathan Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace (1944).
The year 1944 in film involved some significant events, including the wholesome, award-winning Going My Way plus popular murder mysteries such as Double Indemnity, Gaslight and Laura.
Romeo and Juliet is a 1936 American film adapted from the play by William Shakespeare, directed by George Cukor from a screenplay by Talbot Jennings. The film stars Leslie Howard as Romeo and Norma Shearer as Juliet, and the supporting cast features John Barrymore, Basil Rathbone, and Andy Devine.
George Brent was an Irish-American stage, film, and television actor. He is best remembered for the eleven films he made with Bette Davis, which included Jezebel and Dark Victory.
Evelyn Brent was an American film and stage actress.
Louis Charles Hayward was a South African-born, British-American actor.
The Black Cat is a 1941 American comedy horror and mystery film directed by Albert S. Rogell and starring Basil Rathbone. The film was a stylistic hybrid, inspired by comedy "Old Dark House" films of the era as well as the 1843 short story "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe. It stars Basil Rathbone as Montague Hartley, the head of a greedy family who await the death of Henrietta Winslow so that they can inherit her fortune. When she is found murdered, an investigation begins into who might be the culprit. Alongside Rathbone and Loftus, the film's cast includes Hugh Herbert, Broderick Crawford, and Bela Lugosi.
Evelyn Felisa Ankers was a British-American actress who often played variations on the role of the cultured young leading lady in many American horror films during the 1940s, most notably The Wolf Man (1941) opposite Lon Chaney Jr., a frequent screen partner.
A Bucket of Blood is a 1959 American comedy horror film directed by Roger Corman. It starred Dick Miller and was set in the West Coast beatnik culture of the late 1950s. The film, produced on a $50,000 budget, was shot in five days and shares many of the low-budget filmmaking aesthetics commonly associated with Corman's work. Written by Charles B. Griffith, the film is a dark comic satire about a dimwitted, impressionable young busboy at a Bohemian café who is acclaimed as a brilliant sculptor when he accidentally kills his landlady's cat and covers its body in clay to hide the evidence. When he is pressured to create similar work, he becomes a serial murderer.
Frenchman's Creek is a 1944 adventure film adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's 1941 novel of the same name, about an aristocratic English woman who falls in love with a French pirate. The film was released by Paramount Pictures and starred Joan Fontaine, Arturo de Córdova, Basil Rathbone, Cecil Kellaway, and Nigel Bruce. Filmed in Technicolor, it was directed by Mitchell Leisen. The musical score was by Victor Young, who incorporated the main theme of French composer Claude Debussy's Clair de Lune as the love theme for the film.
Paris Calling is a 1941 American war film noir directed by Edwin L. Marin and starring Randolph Scott, Elisabeth Bergner and Basil Rathbone. It was produced by Universal Pictures before America's entry into World War II and released just after the Attack on Pearl Harbor.
The Mad Doctor is a 1941 American crime thriller film directed by Tim Whelan and starring Basil Rathbone as a physician whose successive wealthy wives die. Ellen Drew plays his latest bride. John Howard plays her ex-fiancé, who grows increasingly suspicious of her new husband. It was produced and distributed by Hollywood studio Paramount Pictures.
Rosalie is a 1937 American musical film directed by W.S. Van Dyke and starring Eleanor Powell, Nelson Eddy and Frank Morgan. An adaptation of the 1928 stage musical of the same name, the film was released in December 1937. The film follows the story of the musical, but replaces most of the Broadway score with new songs by Cole Porter. The story involves the romantic entanglements of a princess in disguise and a West Point cadet.
Temptation is a 1946 American film noir thriller film directed by Irving Pichel and starring Merle Oberon, George Brent, Charles Korvin and Paul Lukas. The film was based on Robert Smythe Hichens's 1909 novel Bella Donna. Other film adaptations of the novel were produced in 1915, 1923 and 1934.
The Great Awakening is a 1941 American historical musical drama film starring Alan Curtis, Ilona Massey, and Billy Gilbert. Directed by Reinhold Schünzel, the film was produced by Gloria Pictures Corporation, and released by United Artists. Miklós Rózsa was responsible for the musical direction, though he later expunged the title from his filmography, because he considered it a travesty of the great composer's life story.
Secrets of Scotland Yard is a 1944 American thriller film directed by George Blair and starring Edgar Barrier, Stephanie Bachelor and C. Aubrey Smith. The screenplay was by Denison Clift, adapting one of his own stories "Room 40, O.B." from Blue Book Magazine. It concerns a British police detective who goes undercover to root out a Nazi spy in Britain's decoding organization.
Innocent is a 1921 British silent drama film directed by Maurice Elvey and starring Madge Stuart, Basil Rathbone and Edward O'Neill. The film marked the screen debut of Rathbone, with his casting as a villainous figure pointing towards the sort of roles he would play in later British and Hollywood films. The film was made by Stoll Pictures, Britain's leading film company of the era, at Cricklewood Studios.
The Sun Never Sets is a 1939 American drama film directed by Rowland V. Lee and starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Basil Rathbone and Barbara O'Neil.
Frederick Worlock was a British-American actor. He is known for his work in various films during the 1940s and 1950s, and as the voice of Horace in One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961).
