can we please talk about how basil got arrested for being in a play about lesbians and was pissed off enough about it that he went on to write about it in length in his memoirs almost 40 years later?? i really appreciate that he didn't just pretend that it didn't happen, but continued to bring up the play in later years
(if you've never read the captive, i really recommend it! it's not particularly shocking by our standards ofc, but the ending is quite interesting -- not meant to be a happy ending but it can be read as such!)
YES!
Basil, and his costars, were arrested on February 9th 1927 (nearly 100 years ago!) and were released on bail. Two other plays were also closed, it was a bid by a local politician to try and make point of closing down 'immoral' plays.
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" (In and Out of Character, p. 105).
—Variety, February 16, 1927, p. 39 For anyone that wants to read more about it, I suggest checking it out here Here are some photos from the play:
Basil Rathbone and Ann Andrews
Helen Menken, Ann Trevor, and Basil Rathbone
Basil Rathbone and Ann Andrews
This is going to torture me. I need to see it, I need to see it SO BAD
