Basil Rathbone: Romeo and Juliet

A tragedy by William Shakespeare, arranged in two acts and twenty-three scenes by Katharine Cornell. Opened at the Martin Beck Theatre, New York City, December 20, 1934, and closed on February 23, 1935, after 77 performances. Produced by Katharine Cornell, staged by Guthrie McClintic, settings by Jo Mielziner, dance direction by Martha Graham, music by Paul Nordoff.

Cast of Characters

Escalus, Prince of Verona	Reynolds Evans
Paris, kinsman to the Prince	George Macready
Montague, head of a house at variance with the Capulets	John Miltern
Capulet, head of a house at variance with the Montagues	Moroni Olsen
An Old Man of the Capulet family	Arthur Chatterton
Romeo, son of Montague	Basil Rathbone
Mercutio, kinsman to the Prince	Brian Aherne
Benvolio, nephew to Montague	John Emery
Tybalt, nephew to Lady Capulet	Orson Welles
Friar Laurence, a Franciscan	Charles Waldron
Friar John, a Franciscan	Paul Julian
Balthasar, a servant to Romeo	Franklin Gray
Sampson, a servant to Capulet	Joseph Holland
Peter, a servant to Capulet	David Vivian
Gregory, a servant to Capulet	Robert Champlain
Abraham, a servant to Montague	Irving Morrow
An Apothecary	Arthur Chatterton
Officer	Irving Morrow
Lady Montague	Brenda Forbes
Lady Capulet	Irby Marshal
Juliet, daughter of Capulet	Katherine Cornell
Nurse to Juliet	Edith Evans/ Blanche Yurka
A Street Singer	Edith Allaire
Citizens of Verona, Kinsfolk of Both Houses, Maskers, Guards, Watchmen and Attendants	Margaret Craven, Jacqueline De Wit, Lois Jameson, Agnete Johannson, Ruth March, Pamela Simpson, Gilmore Bush, Angus Duncan, John Gordon Gage, William Hopper, Albert McCleery, Ralph Nelson, Charles Thorne
Chorus	Orson Welles

The story of the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet is well-known. Very briefly, the Montagues and Capulets, two wealthy families in the city of Verona, are constantly fighting one another. Young Romeo Montague and his friends Mercutio and Benvolio crash a masked ball at the Capulet house. At the ball Romeo meets Capulet's daughter Juliet, and they fall in love instantly. After the party, Romeo sneaks into the Capulet's garden and calls to Juliet, who is on the balcony of her bedroom. They declare their love for one another and plan to marry.

With the help of Friar Laurence, the two lovers marry in secret. Later, when Romeo is celebrating with Mercutio and Benvolio, Juliet's cousin Tybalt picks a fight with them, and kills Mercutio. Enraged, Romeo then kills Tybalt. The prince punishes Romeo by banishing him from Verona. Romeo and Juliet spend the night together before he flees to Mantua.

Unaware that Juliet has married Romeo, her father Capulet arranges for her to marry Paris, kinsman to the Prince, in just three days' time. Desperate to avoid a forced marriage to Paris and be reunited with Romeo, Juliet seeks the counsel of Friar Laurence. He suggests a plot in which Juliet fakes her death, and when she awakes from her deathlike slumber, her beloved Romeo will be there, and they can live happily ever after. Sounds like a great plan, but Romeo doesn't get the message from the Friar about Juliet's fake death. He hears only that Juliet has died. Seeing her apparently lifeless body in the tomb, Romeo decides that he cannot live without her; he kills himself. When Juliet then awakes, instead of being joyfully reunited with Romeo, she sees his dead body. She likewise kills herself.

In the face of this double tragedy, the Capulet and Montague families vow to end their feud.

Cornell's Romeo and Juliet (along with The Barretts of Wimpole Street and Candida) was also performed during a seven-month U.S.A. tour from November 1933 through June 1934. The tour will be reviewed next month.

On June 28, after the tour had ended, Katharine Cornell and her husband Guthrie McClintic sailed for Europe, for a vacation in Majorca, the Riviera, Geneva, and the Bavarian Alps. Rathbone had a very different sort of "vacation": He had his tonsils removed, and then retreated to a little cottage on a golf course at Great Neck, Long Island. In August MGM agents came looking for Rathbone to offer him the part of Murdstone in David Copperfield; they tracked him down on a New England farm. The farm was likely the home of Rathbone's friend, fellow-actor and singer Mike Bartlett. Rathbone's beloved dog Moritz had died in May and was buried on the Bartlett property in Oxford, Massachusetts.*

Rathbone traveled to Hollywood to arrive by September 17, when filming for David Copperfield began. Katharine Cornell had left her dog Flush in Rathbone's care while she was vacationing in Europe, so Flush got to go to Hollywood too!

Rathbone (and Flush) returned to New York in late October, in time to start rehearsals for Romeo and Juliet on November 8, 1934.

Before opening on Broadway, Romeo and Juliet was performed in the following four cities:

"Basil Rathbone's Romeo was vigorous, well turned, and growing in favor as the evening progressed." —Len G. Shaw, Detroit Free Press, December 4, 1934

"Mr. Rathbone in voice, figure and ardor is never less than magnificent. His diction is music, his love-making fiery." —Annie Oakley, The Windsor Star, December 4, 1934

"Basil Rathbone is the handsome romanticist with which legends of the past have endowed their Romeos, a virile lover, a persuasive wooer and a fine tragedian. His is an accurate performance, intelligent, sensitive and commanding." —Harold W. Cohen, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 14, 1934

"Basil Rathbone makes music of words. ... He struck at the beginning of the play, and maintained throughout the play, a restraint which tended to mute his performance. At all times distinguished, and marked by a flawless enunciation and highly intelligent reading, his Romeo did not BURN. He looked very handsome. He 'behaved' almost too nicely. In his scenes with the ribald and rousty Mercutio, Romeo appeared in almost pastel contrast. I would have liked to see more fire and less perfection." —Florence Fisher Parry, The Pittsburgh Press, December 14, 1934

"Basil Rathbone as Romeo made the youthful lover throb with exuberance. His lithe figure and splendid voice were always equal to the part, whose only flaw was rather too much resemblance to Hamlet." —Augustus Bridle, The Toronto Star, December 18, 1934

On December 20, the play opened in New York City. Katharine Cornell had originally planned a limited engagement of four and a half weeks at the Martin Beck Theatre, But Romeo and Juliet was so popular, it was held over until February 23, 1935.

People who attended the premiere of Romeo and Juliet at the Martin Beck included: Katharine Hepburn, Lawrence Tibbett, Jane Wyatt, Walter Connolly, Nedda Harrigan, Ilka Chase, Rex O'Malley, Alexander Woollcott, Gladys Hanson, Charles L. Wagner, Owen Davis, Edward Emery, Gale Sondergaard, Herbert J. Biberman, Martin Beck, Max Gordon, Fannie Hurst, Brock Pemberton, Isidore Godfrey, Mrs. Martin Green, George S. Kaufman, Leland Hayward, George Jean Nathan and Robert Benchley.

In an interview, Katharine Cornell described Romeo and Juliet as "the best melodrama in the world—swell theater. It is full of words, beautiful words—but there is a surge, a movement underneath that makes it something for the public to get excited over. We have tried to give it pace, tempo—and without slurring dialogue or situations."

In a January 1935 interview with her hometown paper, the Buffalo Courier Express, Katharine Cornell told the reporter that she learned a lot about how to play Juliet from the tour last season. "At the end of that time I knew Juliet better and I knew what I wanted to do with her. So we scrapped that production. And this one, a better one, I'm sure, is the result. We recast many of the parts. And we revised the script. We have added a great deal more of the original Shakespeare. Until now we have the most complete Romeo and Juliet that has been seen in decades." —Buffalo Courier Express, January 13, 1935

Cornell also had new scenery created for the Broadway production, rather than using the scenery from the tour. She even had a new balcony built for the New York opening because the balcony used during the out-of-town tryouts proved to be unsatisfactory. "So on opening night Basil and I had to play on a balcony that we had never seen before except as a sketch. ... There had been no time for a routine rehearsal for change of set." (Katharine Cornell, I Wanted to Be an Actress, 1938)

Romeo was Rathbone's favorite character to play. He played Romeo numerous times as a young man with Frank Benson's Shakespeare Company.

Romeo and Juliet

There has probably never before been a Romeo and Juliet so handicapped from a gross standpoint. Because, no matter how fine, how beautiful, how well done—Shakespeare is still Shakespeare, and $3.35 top is a lot of money. Miss Cornell has a big following, which will help, and the show is in for only four weeks, which will help even more. But it must not be lost sight of that Shakespeare's biggest potential drawing field is in the school and college mob and they can't afford those kind of prices. Lowest price in the house—and not many of them—is $1.10.

There are many nice things to be said about the production. It is lavish and yet in good taste; it has exceptionally fine acting, and it is colorful. ...

Brian Aherne as Mercutio runs away with the male acting honors while on stage, towering above Basil Rathbone's Romeo, which is traditional. Charles Waldron is excellent as Friar Laurence, and Edith Evans as Juliet's nurse is way above par. She's a thoroughly schooled and capable actress and has never shown it as much as in this play. Rathbone's Romeo will displease some because of the bounciness he gives it, but on the whole it is a schooled and thoroughly acceptable reading. Miss Cornell's Juliet doesn't technically seem better than previous good Juliets but has added vivacity and her personal charm.

Guthrie McClintic's direction and staging is excellent, ... Jo Mielsiner's sets and costumes are exceptionally fine. ... Among the supporting cast Orson Welles as Tybalt and John Miltern as Montague stand out.

—Variety, December 25, 1934

John Mason Brown wrote, "Basil Rathbone's Romeo is handsome; he wears his costume well, enunciates clearly and handles the verse with fluency. But though he has his moments of excellence, he is throughout much colder than one might wish, indulges in pauses which are not helpful, and speaks more slowly than is good for the production." —New York Post, December 21, 1934

Burns Mantle wrote, "a word or two of praise for Basil Rathbone, whom I did not expect to be half so good a Romeo as he is, and Brian Aherne, who I thought would be even a better Mercutio than he is. These are two fine performances, the Romeo dashing a bit suddenly into his love mood, with Rosalind still on his mind, but being beautifully sincere and impassioned thereafter. The Mercutio striking the note of banter with not too much overdoing." —New York Daily News, December 21, 1934

"Basil Rathbone is a most effective Romeo and he plays the part with admirable grace and vigor." —Rowland Field, The Brooklyn Times Union, December 21, 1934

"In reviewing an excellent Shakespearean production, like Katharine Cornell's Romeo and Juliet, there is no way for the reviewer to keep from sounding pompous and dull. If he can't find fault, there is nothing left for him to do but stroke his beard and try to think up different ways of saying 'swell.' ... I enjoyed Miss Cornell's production of Romeo and Juliet more than any other I have ever seen. In fact, for the first time I had a feeling of watching a real play. ... Basil Rathbone is not an ideal choice for Romeo, but after all, Romeo is probably not Mr. Rathbone's ideal choice for a part." —Robert Benchley, The New Yorker, December 29, 1934

Romeo and Juliet

For more than a year New York had been waiting to welcome Katharine Cornell back. The country had already seen her in Romeo and Juliet (it was in her repertory on tour last year). But this was a new production, a re-studying of the play itself, staged by Guthrie McClintic, with new designs by Jo Mielziner, and to a considerable extent with a new casting. Basil Rathbone was still playing Romeo as he had last year, but Brian Aherne, as Mercutio, was making his first appearance in a Shakespeare part, and Edith Evans had come across the sea to play the rich part of the Nurse, towards which her imagination had long hankered.

Of all the world's great love stories there is none more tender than Romeo and Juliet. But tradition has let it come down to us as a star's play, or, at best, a play for two stars. And in a theatre that makes haste from big scene to big scene something of the continuity is always lost. For years players and actor managers, making their cuts in Shakespeare's lines to suit their persons, have skimped the transitions needed to keep the line of the story clear. the events that are the pulse of the story have often been dispensed with to save time. Saving time, the method has squandered attention and belief.

In Romeo and Juliet, as much as in any of his plays, Shakespeare develops his characters out of the happenings of the story. When the play begins Juliet is a child. She seems a woman, fully grown, with a lifetime of suffering behind her when, only a little later, she follows Romeo to death. The feud that divides their families, the chance meeting and the hurried marriage, the street brawl that sends Juliet's cousin to the grave at Romeo's hands and banishes Romeo, the sleeping potion that Friar Laurence gives, the dread of the tomb, the miscarried letter — all of these facts the poetry needs to build a play for a poet's people.

In this Cornell version every detail of the story is clear. That is its first advantage. the responsibility for bringing the play within an evening's theatre hours is put where it belongs, on the pace of the playing and the right adjustment of the material surroundings. Jo Mielziner's settings are deft and serviceable as well as full of color, and true to the play's feeling. they make the path for the action easy and the scenes flow one into another as smoothly as if the mind were leading them. The speech is quickened beyond the usual speed of Shakespearean reading, to the advantage of the lines. Its quicker flow focuses the attention and quickens the memory, and over and over again a listener finishes, before it is spoken, a line he did not know he knew. this is partly, too, because what the reading lacks in ponderousness it gains in lyric value and strangely enough (except in a few notable spots) in precision. Although all of the playing is not in one method, the elements are knit closely into a single pattern. Even the minor parts — like Reynolds Evans' Prince of Verona, George Macready's Paris, the Montague and Capulet of John Miltern and Moroni Olsen, the Lady Montague and Lady Capulet of Brenda Forbes and Irby Marshal, the Tybalt of Orson Welles — have their own completion and authority. The players that carry the major burden of the action are splendidly measured for their parts. Charles Waldron, as Friar Laurence, is a fountain of human understanding and of sympathy. Brian Aherne is a noble and dashing Mercutio, so much alive, so handsome and vigorous that all the puzzlement of young death comes out in his sudden dying. Edith Evans, the record says, has played the part of the Nurse before, but not in professional performance. She makes of this kind, shrewd, loving old friend to Juliet one of the theatre's rare portraits, a character wholly created out of an actor's gifts and yet made wholly from the stuff the poet gave her. There is the same onslaught in her humor as in her person, the same melody in her speech as in her gait.

Romeo is a difficult part and Basil Rathbone does it the honor to recognize the difficulties and to change the habit and style of his playing to suit the necessities. He is not the ideal player for Shakespeare's romantic hero, but he plays the part freely, graciously, without weakness or hysteria. Sometimes the low tone which is one of the marked virtues of his conception dulls the edge of the character and often it leads him astray in his speech, losing the lines for the audience altogether. But he makes a fine presence and it always a good foil for the other players.

And so to Juliet. It is good for once to speak without reservation and to say quite simply that Katharine Cornell in her performance has wiped out the memory of other Juliets. where, in the rich maturity of her experience. she kept the mystery of a youth so loving and so lovely there is no knowing. But here she is, a beautiful and noble girl, not quite fourteen, suddenly one of a pair of star-crossed lovers.

Little by little, through the play, as she pours out the glowing lines without missing the color or the quality of a single phrase, she seems to build up out of the poet's words the burden of a new life, a too great love and joy and a far too mighty sorrow. She give back to every scene the whole of what is in it, the full romance with Romeo, the full jest with the nurse, the questioning and the faith with Friar Laurence, the bewilderment and aloneness of the phial scene and the final peace and acceptance in the tomb. Of the whole performance there is no more to say than that it is the East and Juliet is the sun!

—Theatre Arts Monthly, February 1935

"Katharine Cornell's production of Romeo and Juliet is thus far the thrilling event of the season. The high hopes that had been raised for the production were realized in the presentation the the Martin Beck. ... Miss Cornell gives what probably is the most rounded and completely captivating portrayal the present generation of theater-goers has seen. ... Unlike most stars she has not surrounded herself with a mediocre company. The nurse of Edith Evans is probably the best portrayal that has been given of the part while Basil Rathbone is a competent if not exactly a thrilling Romeo. ... The settings, which were designed by Jo Melziner, are quite the finest ever used for a production of the tragedy." —Carlton Miles, The Minneapolis Star, December 27, 1934

"The production, directed by Guthrie McClintic, is first rate. For once Shakespeare is done without the flavor of ham. ... Basil Rathbone, picturesque, with a head and profile like something by Velasquez, is the Romeo, quick, acting with slightly conventionalized Elizabethan flourishes, not quite the sweet-marrowed and effervescent mate to this ethereally wanton Juliet, a young Montague too careful to lose his handsome head and go completely lyrical over his Veronese beloved. ... You won't hear more genuine enthusiasm than expressed itself at the Martin Beck Theatre. This Romeo and Juliet is a moving and precious experience." —Arthur Pollock, The Brooklyn Eagle, December 21, 1934

Edith Evans had come from England to New York to play the role of Juliet's nurse. On January 10, 1935, Edith Evans's husband died, which made it necessary for her to return to England. Brenda Forbes filled in as the nurse until January 18, when Blanche Yurka took over the role of the nurse. Miss Yurka turned in a performance that earned praise from the critics. John Mason Brown wrote, "Capable as Miss Yurka is throughout, she rises to true magnificence in the scene in which she discovers Juliet under the influence of the Friar's drug and thinks her dead. Her cries ... are sobs that stab the heart. They are final proofs of the shading and variety which lend such vocal color and interest to Miss Yurka's characterization as a whole. And they find her at this moment outdistancing her predecessor and endowing the scene with a poignancy that even Miss Evans failed to bring to it." (New York Post, January 19, 1935)

In her book Bohemian Girl: Blanche Yurka's Theatrical Life, Blanche Yurka wrote about Rathbone's performance:

"Romeo and Juliet continued its New York run for several more weeks. Katharine's triumph was complete and her warm joy in it was infectious. I, for one, had been charmed and moved by Basil Rathbone's Romeo. Some of the critics had been of a different opinion, but watching it repeatedly from the wings, my first impression was, if anything, intensified. In certain scenes I thought him the best of the six Romeos I had seen. Especially in the bedroom scene his tender, muted reading was so convincing, so touching, that I never grew tired of listening to it. Some Romeos, in this scene, use sufficient voice to rouse the Capulet household a dozen times. As for the balcony scene, it is usually done in a key which would ensure the 'death, of any of my kinsmen find thee here' of which Juliet was apprehensive. Not so with Basil Rathbone. He played the whole scene in a muted voice which nevertheless carried perfectly. He was very moving, too, in the scene in Mantua, when word is brought to him of Juliet's death.

"The whole performance was one which could be watched night after night with pleasure. Brian Aherne's Mercutio was brilliant both in voice and appearance. Only Katharine's desire to play a series of other parts that season prompted her to terminate the run while business was still good. I said goodbye to her and 'honey nurse' with a heavy heart."

Romeo and Juliet

For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.

Katharine Cornell maintained, even while she was performing them, that her rich rôles in The Green Hat, The Barretts of Wimpole Street and Lucrece were only part of her apprenticeship as an actress. When she had thoroughly prepared her self, said she, she was going to stand the supreme dramatic test of Shakespeare's Juliet. In Manhattan last week she presented herself in the tragedy that has brought more woe to more ambitious actresses than any other single play. To the satisfaction of critics and public alike, Katharine Cornell proved herself, once & for all, the First Lady of the U. S. Stage.

From the moment she appeared, long chestnut locks falling on a sweeping Renaissance gown designed by artful Jo Mielziner, Miss Cornell handled her part with definite authority. She seemed a little less awed by Shakespeare's rich verse than such predecessors in the rôle as Jane Cowl and Eva Le Gallienne. Her technical resource was never strained as she ran the gamut of shy girlishness in the opening scenes, mischievous eroticism on the star lit balcony, near-delirium when about to take Friar Laurence's potion. Newspaper reviewers sent up a praiseful paean to the adjectival accompaniment of: "Lovely! Exquisite! Extraordinary! Marvelous! Thrilling! Exciting! Radiant! True magnificence! Superlative!" Burns Mantle of the Daily News: "The potion scene, I venture, has never been as tellingly read as Miss Cornell gave it last night, simply, without affected hysteria, or hair-tearing.'' Brooks Atkinson of the Times: "This is an occasion. All a reviewer can say is 'Bravo!' " High praise, too, was due Miss Cornell's excellent supporting company. Particularly good was Edith Evans as the Nurse. Miss Evans speaks lines which are usually expurgated with a wholesome bawdry which somehow manages to dodge the usual tiresome vulgarity of the part. Brian Aherne, in a curly red wig, is an ebullient Mercutio, gay as May in the Queen Mab speech, bitter as gall when he dies cursing "both your houses." Capable but less distinguished as Romeo is Basil Rathbone, whose virtuosity appears to stop just this side of eloquence. His pausing, prosy delivery is perhaps better suited to modern evening dress than to 16th Century tights.

—TIME magazine, December 31, 1934

"If a catalog of adjectives is permitted I should like to say that she is young, lovely, languorous, vivacious, fiery, virginal and wanton as she engages in her tragic encounter with Basil Rathbone's handsome and Freudian Romeo. From the Balcony to the Tomb she is a vivid and beautiful portrait. ... Mr. Rathbone's Romeo is a subject for argument. Personable in his purple tights, ardent and valiant, he is still, as my confrere, Arthur Ruhl, has hinted, not at all the sort of Romeo that Miss Cornell's Juliet would probably fall for." —Percy Hammond, The Philadelphia Inquirer, December 30, 1934

"Perhaps I'm wrong in alleging that McClintic has deliberately surrounded his wife with a bad cast—Edith Evans excepted. Perhaps he just couldn't discover a better Romeo than the stiff, unromantic chanter, Basil Rathbone." —John V. A. Weaver, Esquire magazine, March 1935

Basil must have been discouraged by the negative critic reviews. His friend, pianist Victor Wittgenstein, wrote to him, "A true artist must know the value of his work and the sheer beauty of the Romeo which I so thoroughly enjoyed tonight was wrought by a master of his craft, an idealist and a lyricist of the highest rank. Be happy dear Basil in your achievement and be grateful that you possess that power to achieve. In my own humble way I think I know artistic beauty when I see it, and your performance was just that. Turn a deaf ear to the critics and wear the royal mantle of Romeo, which is your rightful heritage, with pride."

Brian Aherne, who played Mercutio, recalled that Basil was "a fine actor ... one of the best in the profession. He was also a fine man ... good ... kind ... intelligent ... humorous ... and beloved by all who knew him." (quoted in Michael B. Druxman's book Basil Rathbone: His Life and His Films)

When Romeo and Juliet closed, Rathbone returned to Hollywood and busied himself making movies, starting with Anna Karenina.

Romeo and Juliet

Having avoided Shakespeare until she believed herself ready to play him, Miss Cornell has hung anther jewel on the cheek of the theatre's nights. Her Romeo and Juliet, which she put on at the Martin Beck last evening, is on the high plane of modern magnificence. Probably no one expected anything less radiant from her resourceful workshops, where she and Guthrie McClintic prepare the dramas for her repertory. But the result is no less exalting to those who sit before the footlights, listen to the lines of Shakespeare's verse on the lips of modern actors and reflect the glow of Jo Mielziner's costumes and settings. For this is an occasion. When it is produced conscientiously and played with romantic and tragic candor Romeo and Juliet is a drama that drains the playgoer's emotions. In these circumstances all a reviewer can say is "Bravo!"

Being an actress who respects the drama above everything, Miss Cornell has been faithful to the text and taken pains to see that it tells a closely woven narrative. It is off in a rush; it hurries on through the ball to the sweet rapture of the balcony scene; and the tragedy it plumbs in the final tomb scene is the overpowering conclusion to a tremendous drama of idealized passions. Having a respect for the drama, Miss Cornell surrounds herself with superior actors. The Nurse of Edith Evans is a masterpiece. The Friar Laurence of Charles Waldron is brimming with fatherly affection and a good man's anxiety. As Romeo and Mercutio, Basil Rathbone and Brian Aherne, respectively, are not of first quality, in this reviewer's opinion, but they are able actors who do not let the drama down. Add to this Mr. McClintic's direction, which ahs an eye for stage grouping, and a sense of life throbbing through a spacious script, and Mr. Mielziner's brilliantly executed decor, and you have a Romeo and Juliet that will endure in the memory of our theatre.

Perhaps vitality is its fundamental motive. Certainly Miss Cornell's Juliet is vital. Looking especially lovely in the flowing vestments of a decorative period, she plays with an all-consuming fervor that takes the big scenes with the little and works them all into a pattern of star-crossed youthfulness. For girlishness there is the gayety of the evening festival and the ardor and vagrant mischief of the balcony scene. For tragedy there is the brave submission of that scene in the tomb. ...

Mr. Rathbone is a neat and tidy actor with an immaculate exterior. Within those limitations he plays a sufficient Romeo. The verse needs more virtuosity in speaking than he has at his command, for he is not always intelligible. When fortune goes against Romeo Mr. Rathbone can raise his voice in vigorous lamentation, but he lacks the emotional range to play the part all the way through.

—Brooks Atkinson, The New York Times, December 21, 1934

In his autobiography, Rathbone writes that he was offered the part of Murdstone in David Copperfield in July. It may have been late July or early August. According to the New York Daily News, dated August 8, 1934, Rathbone "was located by the studio's scouts on a New England farm last week." So somewhere around August 1.

Rathbone also writes in his autobiography that his dog Moritz died in April. However, in the 1936 article "He Was My Friend," Rathbone wrote that when Moritz became too sick to continue with him on the tour, he left him in the care of "Miss O'D." "Two days later, 'Miss O'D' called me in New Haven and told me to come at once. I took an early morning train from Providence to New York and spent nearly three hours with my beloved friend. Then rushed back to my performance. I did not see him again. He died in his sleep that night." It seems likely that Rathbone was performing in New Haven (Connecticut) when he received the phone call about Moritz. The dates for the performances in New Haven were May 24-26. Since Rathbone wrote the article just two years after Moritz died, his memory of being in New Haven is likely accurate. (Although he may be mistaken about taking the train from Providence. Trains run from New Haven to New York. Why go to Providence?) Rathbone wrote his autobiography more than twenty years later and can be forgiven for not remembering exactly in which month Moritz died. Likewise, his memory of when he had his tonsils removed is slightly off. In his autobiography, he writes that it happened in early June. The last performance of the tour was June 20, so the tonsil surgery was likely late June or early July.

In 2003 the Martin Beck Theatre (located at 302 W. 45th St., New York City) was renamed the Al Hirschfeld theatre after the caricaturist who spent decades sketching theater performances.
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