Basil Rathbone's homes

I thought I'd share some pictures from Basil Rathbone's home and family.

First out: The house that Basil and Ouida moved into after their marriage in 1926. It was situated at the Beekman Place neighbourhood in New York City, a duplex apartment.

The drawing room. The colour scheme was green, muave and mulberry.
The satin couch was mulberry coloured.

The supper room with green walls and green tile floors, and an open to an Italian roof garden!

In 1935 Basil and Ouida moved to Hollywood. For the first three years they lived at the address 5254 Los Feliz Blvd., a time that Basil later recalled as "the happiest three years of my life".

"The house was small but extremely comfortable. It had a large and lovely garden and a kidney-shaped swimming pool. Over the four-car garage there was a spacious studio. This studio was occupied by dear Jack Miltern, who had come to live with us."

Basil Rathbone and his dogs in front of the Los Feliz home. Through-out his life he had many dogs, one of his greatest passions.

When Basil and Ouida adopted their daughter Cynthia, they felt that they needed a bigger place to live. They moved to 10728 Bellagio Road in Bel Air.

Basil and his dog Mortiza in front of their Bel Air home.

Basil and Ouida in their Bel Air garden. Look at that view!

Shouldn't we all have a comfortable arm chair in front of a fireplace in a Bel Air home?

Basil and Ouida in front of a really cool portrait, that rather remind me of Laura (1944)...

Basil and Ouida looking extremely happy together.

Ouida pulled some strings at one time, and fixed that Basil's son from his first marriage, Rodion (to whom he hadn't always been able to be there for as a father), came to visit them in their home in Bel Air.

In 1946 Basil and Ouida moved from Hollywood, back to New York City. They lived for one year at 10 Gracie Square, over-looking the East River (no photo), and then moved to 9 East 92nd Street.

Look at that staircase and the paintings on the walls! They seemed to have a great, if ever luxurous, taste.

"In the fall of 1950 I sold the house on 9 East Ninety-second .... We moved into an apartment in a new modern building, just around the corner from where we had lived, and in this apartment we were to stay for the next three and a half years."

That apartment was located at 15 East 91st Street (no photo). In 1954 Basil and Ouida moved to 135 Central Park West.

"This apartment house was built in 1902, and is one of the last to be built with spacious rooms and high ceilings. Our view from the eleventh floor looks north, east and south. The whole of Central Park is spread out beneath us."

135 Central Park West, as seen in 1957...

... and the apartment building as seen in 2001.

For the last of Basil's life he and Ouida lived in this apartment building (photo taken in 2001) in 10 West 72nd Street in New York.




The quotations are taken from Basil Rathbone's auto-biography In and Out of Character (1956), and the photos from basilrathbone.net.