The Biggest Movies and TV Coming in September

"The Gentlemen" and "Slow Horses" return this fall, while the "Reacher" spin-off series "Neagley" makes its debut. See our guide of the biggest Fall TV and streaming releases.

2026 Fall TV and Streaming Watch Guide

&quot;The Gentlemen&quot; and &quot;Slow Horses&quot; return this fall, while the &quot;Reacher&quot; spin-off series &quot;Neagley&quot; makes its debut. See our guide of the biggest Fall TV and streaming releases.

See who dazzled on the red carpet and took home gold at the 78th Primetime Creative Emmy Awards.

Primetime Creative Arts Emmys: Photos We Love

Basil Rathbone was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1892, but three years later his family was forced to flee the country because his father was accused by the Boers of being a British spy at a time when Dutch-British conflicts were leading to the Boer War. The Rathbones escaped to England, where Basil and his two younger siblings, Beatrice and John, were raised. Their mother, Anna Barbara (George), was a violinist, who was born in Grahamstown, South Africa, of British parents, and their father, Edgar Philip Rathbone, was a mining engineer born in Liverpool. From 1906 to 1910 Rathbone attended Repton School, where he was more interested in sports--especially fencing, at which he excelled--than studies, but where he also discovered his interest in the theater. After graduation he planned to pursue acting as a profession, but his father disapproved and suggested that his son try working in business for a year, hoping he would forget about acting. Rathbone accepted his father's suggestion and worked as a clerk for an insurance company--for exactly one year. Then he contacted his cousin Frank Benson, an actor managing a Shakespearean troupe in Stratford-on-Avon.

Rathbone was hired as an actor on the condition that he work his way through the ranks, which he did quite rapidly. Starting in bit parts in 1911, he was playing juvenile leads within two years. In 1915 his career was interrupted by the First World War. During his military service, as a second lieutenant in the Liverpool Scottish 2nd Battalion, he worked in intelligence and received the Military Cross for bravery. In 1919, released from military service, he returned to Stratford-on-Avon and continued with Shakespeare but after a year moved onto the London stage. The year after that he made his first appearance on Broadway and his film debut in the silent Innocent (1921).

For the remainder of the decade Rathbone alternated between the London and New York stages and occasional appearances in films. In 1929 he co-wrote and starred as the title character in a short-running Broadway play called "Judas". Soon afterwards he abandoned his first love, the theater, for a film career. During the 1920s his roles had evolved from the romantic lead to the suave lady-killer to the sinister villain (usually wielding a sword), and Hollywood put him to good use during the 1930s in numerous costume romps, including Captain Blood (1935), David Copperfield (1935), A Tale of Two Cities (1935), Anna Karenina (1935), The Last Days of Pompeii (1935), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Tower of London (1939), The Mark of Zorro (1940) and others. Rathbone earned two Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (1936) and as King Louis XI in If I Were King (1938).

However, it was in 1939 that Rathbone played his best-known and most popular character, Sherlock Holmes, with Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, first in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) and then in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), which were followed by 12 more films and numerous radio broadcasts over the next seven years.

Feeling that his identification with the character was killing his film career, Rathbone went back to New York and the stage in 1946. The next year he won a Tony Award for his portrayal of Dr. Sloper in the Broadway play "The Heiress," but afterwards found little rewarding stage work. Nevertheless, during the last two decades of his life, Rathbone was a very busy actor, appearing on numerous television shows, primarily drama, variety and game shows; in occasional films, such as Casanova's Big Night (1954), The Court Jester (1955), Tales of Terror (1962) and The Comedy of Terrors (1963); and in his own one-man show, "An Evening with Basil Rathbone", with which he toured the U.S.

When you become the character you portray, it&#39;s the end of your career
as an actor.

Never regret anything you have done with a sincere affection; nothing
is lost that is born of the heart.

[on how he was awarded his Military Cross] All I did, old man, was disguise myself as a tree--that&#39;s correct, a tree--and cross no man&#39;s land to gather a bit of information from the German lines. I have not since been called upon to play a tree.

[from a private letter written when he was serving in World War I] Out here, we step over death every day. We stand next to it while we drink our tea. It&#39;s commonplace and ordinary. People who had lives and tried to hold on to them and didn&#39;t, and now slump and stare and melt slowly to nothing. You meet their eyes, or what used to be their eyes and you feel ashamed. And now Johnny is one of them. That&#39;s an end of it. Grieving is only ridiculous in this place. It could be me today or tomorrow and I shouldn&#39;t want anyone to bother grieving over that.

Sometimes I just crave to play in [William Shakespeare (I)] again and I know and love playing Orlando so much.

I was so badly typed that when I went back to New York I lost my own identity. On the street no one ever said &#39;Good morning, Basil,&#39; or &#39;Good morning, Mr. Rathbone.&#39; They said &#39;Good morning, Sherlock.&#39;

[on <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm0001124/?ref_=nmqu_qu">Cecil B. DeMille</a>] I have never worked for C.B. DeMille and I guess now I never will. It seemed odd that the two of us who specialize in costume pictures should never have gotten together. We are old friends, too.

[on writing DeMille for a part in <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/title/tt0049833/?ref_=nmqu_qu">The Ten Commandments (1956)</a>] I wanted it for the record as this probably will be DeMille&#39;s last picture and I knew there was a real good heavy in the script - a real heel type - but C.B. gave it to <a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm0001637/?ref_=nmqu_qu">Vincent Price</a> instead.

Quotes

Basil Rathbone

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