From the double biography of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, Basil and Willie...

Édouard Bourdet's La Prisonnière premiered at the Théâtre Femina in Paris on 6 March 1926. Despite the subject matter of the play, there was no controversy, and the critics found it well written, audacious and presented with clarity and subtlety. It was a success with the intellectuals and the upper class, but critics found the play was less popular with the general public. Within a year, after its debut in Paris, the play was performed in Berlin, Vienna and Budapest. With Basil Rathbone, as Jacques Virieu, in its cast, it will also grace the Broadway stage. It would also lead to the cast being arrested, including its leading players.

What made this three-act play, set in contemporary France, by one of its leading playwrights so controversial that it led to be one of three plays to arouse the consternation of the authorities in one of America's largest cities? Simple, lesbianism, and Bourdet, as a highly skilled and populist dramatist, merely tackled a subject that had become all the rage. After the catastrophic loss of life, not just as a result of warfare but the outbreak of Spanish flu that had followed in the wake of the Armistice, many women had had to forego marriage or embrace a widow's weeds. Bourdet had already embarked on a writing career - his first play had been staged in 1910 - but had abandoned that for the duration, much as Rathbone had done. As with British counterpart, he had distinguished himself, being wounded twice, cited three times for bravery and awarded the cross of the Légion d'honneur.

It was whilst in the trenches that he met a young man with a death-wish, who had enlisted simply to flee the awfulness of his life at home; and it was that had provided the inspiration for the character of d'Aiguines, as played on the Broadway stage by Arthur Wontner. In a bizarre twist of fate, British-born Wontner would essay the role of Sherlock Holmes on the big screen, from 1931 to 1938, a year before Rathbone would finally embrace the role. And, Helen Menken, cast as Irene De Montcel, had just married a fellow actor by the name of Humphrey Bogart, a future co-star, albeit in separate films, with Rathbone and Bruce. With its provocative central theme, the more puritanical elements in New York society were already rumoured to be suitably appalled in anticipation.

The hedonism of the post-war world, certainly in the United States, would eventually be called to a stop by the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The frantic pace of the Jazz Age, the wealth displayed with vulgar abandon and the general gaiety of urban life was fully on show in the New York and the city thrived in such an atmosphere. In Europe, there was civil war in Russia and Ireland, there was the General Strike in Great Britain of 1926 and Mussolini and Hitler had begun their rise to power. And, the Mayor of New York City, James "Gentleman Jimmy" Walker sensed a change was on the horizon and, accordingly, moved with it. In 1927, he waged a campaign against "immoral" plays and one of those targeted would be The Captive. Walker's life was enshrined on the silver screen in a rather dubious biographical film that would star Bob Hope in 1957.

Essentially, the play is a three-hander, set in contemporary France, where Irene de Montcel, daughter of a diplomat, refuses to move to Paris to Brussels. Her father believes his daughter has come under the influence of an older, married woman, but to avoid her familial duty, Irene implores her childhood sweetheart, Jacques Virieu, to marry her. Duly warned by the older woman's husband, Virieu marries Irene, but within a year, after their return from honeymoon, the marriage is a failure. Irene, unable to shake off her fascination with the older woman, leaves her husband. Set within a traditional three-act structure, the play is a subtle tragedy of modern times, but in the description of the play in The Best Plays of 1926-27, edited by Burns Mantle, and published by Dodd Mead and Co; the older woman is twice referred to as "degenerate."

Translated into English by Arthur Hornblow Jr - whose surname would inspire C S Forester to name his swashbuckling hero of Nelson's fleet - and produced by Gilbert Miller, The Captive, as the play was now known, opened at New York's Empire Theatre on 29 September 1926. It ran for over 160 performances, until it and the cast of two other plays, one written and starring Mae West, were arrested by the police in February of the following year. Sex by Jane Mast, West's playwright pseudonym was the story of a prostitute's revenge upon a society matriarch who had sent her to prison and The Virgin Man by William Francis Dugan, a tale of an innocent student from Yale bedevilled by New York's many temptations. Of the three plays, the latter had had the shortest run up to its cast being arrested, and of the three, Mae West's effort had been filling theatres for nearly a year before the city fathers decided to take such moral umbrage.

Compared with the other two plays, The Captive was a model of dramatic propriety that inferred the nature of its subject matter, rather than blasted its audience with invective and kept the right side of titillation. J Brooks Atkinson, in his review of the play in the New York Times of 30 September 1926, praised the performances of all the actors, including the supporting cast, including Arthur Wontner's short appearance, although brief but whose function "in the drama is highly responsible." Atkinson held up for special praise was Helen Menken as "the wretched girl" and singled out Rathbone's Jacques for its "rare dignity and understanding; without a single histrionic flourish, his Jacques Virieu indicates profound emotion and the torture of conflicting emotions."

Throughout Atkinson's review, the L word never appears, but he is clear to air his disapproval of the central relationship that causes such consternation to the main characters is clear. He classifies the young woman's love for the older woman as "a loathsome possibility." Bourdet's reason for the play may have had something to do with his wife, Denise. The Princesse de Polignac, lover of Violet Trefusis, was a friend of Mrs Bourdet and it was said that the three main characters were modelled on the Princesse, Violet and her husband, Denys, who had, apparently, match-made for the two women. Near the climax of the play, violets appear and women in the audience displayed their solidarity by fixing violets to their lapels. In later years, Violet Trefusis would become better known as the lover of Vita Sackville-West as their open love affair caused a societal sensation, when they eloped from their respective husbands.

In Florence Talmage's A History of Homosexuality in Europe, the play is described as "fundamental anti-lesbianism and the number of prejudices it reveals. Curiously, its success was attributed to its modernity... it was judged by many to be scandalous and symptomatic of the epoch. It became a symbol of the homosexual culture of the period, and sparked a fashion for strict tailoring, ties and a short haircut - "La Prisonnière." Clearly, there was something in the air.

By the time he secured the male lead for Bourdet's play, however, Rathbone's name had been up in lights on the Great White Way. Gilbert Miller, producer of The Captive, had brought the actor over from London in 1921 to make his Broadway debut in a ten-year-old Hungarian comedy that dealt with the life of Catherine the Great called The Czarina by Melchior Lengyel and Lajos Biro. It brought him good notices from the critics but was only a modest success, although one playgoer, Ouida Bergere, would see it.

Rathbone's return to Broadway was much more successful and he scored a hit with the translation of another play, this time by Ferenc Molnar, a comedy called The Swan. Critics raved about his performance of the tutor in love with a princess and it sustained over two hundred and fifty performances and made Rathbone a Broadway star. The success of the play led to his first appearance in a Hollywood film, as it toured the major cities of the United States. During this time, he met and fell in love with Ouida and by 1926, when Rathbone's divorce from his first wife came through, they were able to tie the knot. So, when Gilbert Miller approached him with an offer of the role in yet another translation of a hit foreign play, he could not have envisaged the trouble ahead. Neither he, nor his fellow players, could have conceived of any problems on the horizon.

So it must have come as something of a shock to the entire production that, after seventeen weeks of box-office success, garnering good reviews, and standing room at every performance, that the cast would face arrest at the hands of the law. In his autobiography, Rathbone admitted that rumours had travelled with the play from France about its groundbreaking content, as some Americans had attended the play in Paris, but "at no time was it ever suggested that we were salacious or sordid or seeking sensation." A jury may have begged to differ about Mae West, and her more unusual play, but, surely, the police had made a mistake over his play.

POLICE RAID THREE SHOWS, SEX, CAPTIVE AND VIRGIN MAN; HOLD ACTORS AND MANAGERS ran the headline in the New York Times of 10 February 1927. It was Chief City Magistrate McAdoo who had issued warrants for the producers, managers and actors in The Captive at the Empire Theatre, Sex in Daly's Sixty-third Street Theatre and the Princess Theatre's production of The Virgin Man the night before. All in all, forty-one arrests were made.

Until the night he looked out of his dressing room window at the Empire Theatre, Rathbone had had no idea of the arrests. He observed that "an unusual number of people outside and more policemen than I had ever seen anywhere at one time in New York..." To say, the police actions were farcical can only be an understatement and would have been an insult to the Keystone Kops.

Far from going in with all guns blazing, the police were instructed to act with a modicum of restraint, not just to the paying public but to the prisoners. Rathbone recalled how each member of the cast, as they were about to make their first entrance, was stopped by a policeman in plain clothes, who showed his badge and told: "Please don't let it disturb your performance tonight but consider yourself under arrest!" Indeed, such was the police, so the newspaper report mentioned, that there "were interchanges of courtesies and compliments between the men of the theatre of the men of the law, and the prisoners were accorded all the honours of war."

Lieutenant James J Coy and Detective Charles J Kane visited the Empire Theatre shortly after the curtain had gone up. On entering the theatre, they met Roland Christie, assistant manager of the show, in the lobby. Unlike the cast, Christie had been forewarned and had been told "to expect developments" and greeted Coy cordially, as both men knew each already. Lieutenant Coy asked to see the manager and Christie led them backstage and presented the policemen to the manager of the show, George Kondolf, Jr. Coy introduced himself to Kondolf and informed him that he had the arrest warrant for the producer of the show, Gilbert Miller, and the cast.

"That's all right," replied Kondolf. "I expected it." Coy went on to explain that the police would allow that evening's performance to continue, but that the arrests would made afterwards. He then asked to be taken to Mr Miller.

By some weird presentiment, Gilbert Miller was unavailable, and for which Kondolf duly apologised, as he informed Coy that the producer was not in the theatre. When he was contacted over the telephone, Miller failed to accept the gravity of the situation. "I'm very much occupied," he said to Kondolf. "Wouldn't some other time do just as well?" The police had asked Kondolf to ask Miller to attend the theatre, before curtain fall, in order that he could be arrested.

After Coy had informed Miller via the intermediary that he preferred him to appear sooner rather than later, he took matters into his own hand and wrested the telephone receiver from Kondolf and explained the seriousness of the situation. Due to previous engagements that he felt he had to attend, Miller said that he had no objection to being arrested, just not tonight! Then, a long and earnest conversation followed on the telephone and eventually Miller allowed himself to be won over by Coy's reasoning. Miller arrived late in the second act so that he could be arrested with the play's cast.

Similar arrests happened at The Virgin Man, where the show's writer and producer, William Francis Dugan, who had prepared so thoroughly that, at one point, he thought the police were never turning up at all. Dugan had informed Dorothy Hall, his leading lady, that they were to be arrested and had called in sick, but so had her understudy, so she still had to do the show. Even the arresting officer, Lieutenant Mulligan, got in on the act. He tapped Dugan on the shoulder and said, as he did so: "Young man, your fortune is made."

Even more farcical were the scenes at Mae West's Sex, a box-office smash that was still open, despite other shows that were closing all over town. It made her a star and a fortune to boot and was such a hit it had garnered a crossover audience that appealed as much to the smart set as sailors on shore leave. Fergus Cashin in his biography on West described it as being "in the best tradition of theatrical farce."

Outside stood ten taxis into which the police escorted the cast from the stage to their waiting transports. Not everyone in the cast was arrested, as the extras in the big scenes were ignored, much to their visible chagrin, as if somehow they were considered unimportant in the great scheme of things. From a cast of fifty players twenty-one were arrested, but they included the show's star and author, Mae West. It took ten policemen, accompanied by Deputy Chief Inspector James S Bolan to arrest West and her fellow thespians, although they were apprehended with "ceremonious gallantry" to the women in the cast; as they observed strict etiquette, as the actresses were handed into the cabs. Rumour had spread and, as the cast and police left the stage door, there was a large crowd of onlookers, as well as photographers. Farce, it now was, but on a grand scale.

At the Empire Theatre, another crowd had gathered, flashlights popping with gay abandon outside the stage door. James P Sinnott, Secretary of the Police Department, no less, personally supervised the arrest of the play's leading lady, Helen Menken, the soon-to-be divorced first wife of Humphrey Bogart, was her and the rest of the cast out of the theatre, under the glares and explosions, onto the pavement.

Rathbone's leading lady was escorted through the hubbub to a waiting Police Department limousine, as she pleaded with Sinnott for the riotous behaviour of the mob to cease. Bundled up in grey furs, Menken, with fellow actress Gail Kane by her side, as the Secretary of the Police Department, with the air of a gallant knight in blue, placed in them the automobile. Five members of the cast rode as guests of Police Headquarters, as four other cast members had to make do with a following taxicab. They all rode in the direction of the Night Court for their arraignment.

Of the three parties, now in transit to the Night Court, the producer and cast of The Captive were first to arrive. Magistrate Flood and Acting Mayor Joseph V "Holy Joe" McKee were in attendance and, although they sat on the bench, they took no actual part in the proceedings. Walker was away on vacation. It was McKee, who had given his approval the night before for the proceedings in a conference, held on the previous Tuesday. He had discussed the case with the lawyers for the groups of prisoners and made arrangements for their bail. This was done so that the early notice of arrests would prevent any problems with obtaining legal representation and bail. Further evidence that the occasion was a contrivance of the authorities saw a number of representatives of surety companies on hand to furnish bail, in order to speed up proceedings for the Court.

Heralded by exploding flashlights, Rathbone and his fellow prisoners from The Captive arrived before the magistrate at quarter to midnight in the Night Court. Each defendant held up their hand, as their name was called out, as the grinning visage of Albert Blogg Uger, the Assistant District Attorney, received them into his domain. The whole evening appeared to be for the benefit of the press, as the wheels of the law ground their way through the evening, and the flashbulbs continued to explode.

Apparently, during the scrum of defendants, lawyers and police, Mae West and Helen Menken engaged in a war of words, largely on the merits of each other's respective plays. Menken accused West's theatrical presentation as being nothing but "busts and brothels." West retorted, in reference to the Sapphic theme of Menken's play: "Well, anyhow, we're normal!"

Somehow, in the melee, Uger held up a sheaf of documents towards the defendant, and pronounced: "These are the original papers in the case of the people against those concerned in the production of 'The Captive.' And we have here," as he gave a wave of his hands toward the prisoners, "six captives."

For half a second, Uger paused for dramatic effect, and there was a round of hearty laughter. Hilarity was swiftly dispensed, when he announced that he was determined to hold the defendants for bail of $1,000 and $500. He fixed their next hearing at 2.30 p m on Monday afternoon at Jefferson Market Court. He did likewise for the group from The Virgin Man and those from Sex on the Tuesday after.

Following the arraignment "Holy Joe" McKee warned that if the shows went ahead tonight that there would be further arrests. It would be up to the police whether the arrests took place, before, during or after the performance. Also, it would be seen as another alleged crime and that the penalties would be cumulative.

More than anything, the whole affair was a warning across the bows, a signal to those in the business, especially producers, that dramatic plays were far from being just the target of this action but also musical comedies and cabaret. McKee gave notice that this was not just an isolated incident, but only the start of a "continuous application of the processes of the law" to prevent "an indecent situation" that had become the "scandal and disgrace of New York".

Despite being out of town, Mayor Walker had been availed of the action of the previous night and not only that he approved of it, but the Mayor's office was in receipt of the full co-operation of Commissioner McLaughlin and the police force. McKee was asked if theatres would be able to block today's injunctions to action from the police pending a judicial determination of their guilt or innocence. McKee was confident that the courts would uphold the side of decency.

McKee was also clear that the theatrical producers should see fit to clean up their own houses, but that the policy of the city was that the court was now the arbiter of what was deemed fit to grace the New York stage.

Three lawyers represented the triumvirate of cast and producers. James A Timoney for Mae West and her party and Fred M Wolf for the group from The Virgin Man. Nathan Burke represented Rathbone, Miller and the rest of the cast from The Captive. Burke's words to the court were, somewhat, of a valedictory nature:

"The matter is now before the courts and the proper procedure is to let the courts determine whether the law has been violated or not. Until that has taken place, there is no good ground for further arrests. If my clients are arrested again I will seek an injunction to prevent further arrests."

Rathbone was incandescent with rage, even years later, when he described the situation in his autobiography. He considered it to be an act of political censorship that was an affront to a democratic society, little more than sabotage of an important contemporary play and a "cheap political expedient" to gather votes. Unfortunately, the die was cast and the moral climate that McKee and the rest of the authorities had created was now rather chilly as regarded the stage. So much so, that another production of Mae West's called The Drag would never reach Broadway, despite the success of her most recent production. To the casts of the plays in question, if not the management, there was already something in the air, even before these most public of arrests.

The moral backlash was on its way and within two months, the New York State legislature would pass a law that outlawed the presentation of a work "depicting or dealing with, the subject of sex degeneracy, or sex perversion." The law remained on the statute books until 1967. Unusually, the law prohibited not only the play itself from being put on the stage but the very building in which it was to be performed, as well as that the theatre owner could lose his, or her, operating licence and the theatre shut down.

With the benefit of hindsight, Rathbone's stand against theatre censorship may have been a moot point, but he had earlier suggested, in a letter to the President of the Dramatists' Guild, an alternative to the recent establishment of a Citizens' News Jury to vet plays. Other sponsors of the idea, besides Rathbone himself, were Arthur Lewis, Joe Santley and Bernard Granville. The letter was addressed to Arthur Richman, care of the Authors' League, dated 27 November 1926 and reprinted in the New York Times two days later:

Dear Mr Richman:

Watching the operation of the Citizens' Play Jury, we notice that the most important effect of the action of the jury is the clarification of standards. We, a group of actors, wish to ask your assistance and advice and co-operation in suggesting the formation of a similar jury to function in regard to the crime news as dramatised in the daily news. A Citizens' News Jury, functioning as the play jury now does, would, it seems to us, be valuable in establishing a standard of what testimony should be published. Will you co-operate with us by appointing a committee of dramatists to meet with us and consider the ways and means of suggesting a jury?

The letter was signed: Yours very truly, BASIL RATHBONE.

Further explanation to the newspaper continued in the vein that if the newspapers could publish all the latest gory headlines about the present crime wave, why should the theatre not be allowed to depict real life, as it was, on the stage? Every evening, when he travelled to the theatre from his lodgings on Long Island, he had discussed this very subject with several other players and they were anxious that worthwhile work that appealed to intelligent people should prosper. If, any child could pick up a newspaper and read the details of crime, surely it should be the fourth estate that should be forced to clean up its act. For, as Rathbone pointed out, that with the amount of space "he (or she) receives in the papers, our most important citizen, the hero in the news, is the criminal."

'What is a Clean Play?' Its Topic was the headline in the New York Times of 2 December 1926, when it announced the first luncheon of the Drama League at the Hotel Biltmore for the following day. Amongst the eight speakers were the author and journalist Rebecca West and the Reverend George Reid Andrews, Chairman of the Drama Committee of the Federal Council of Churches and Chairman of the Church and Drama Association. Rathbone and fellow Basil and Englishman, Basil Dean, writer, producer and director were also present. The discussion was presided over by Eddie Dowling.

The debate revolved around the notion of what constituted a clean, or dirty, play. All to no avail, of course, as the minds of the judiciary had seen fit to make an example of the theatrical community. Anyway, a brace of Englishmen would already have been aware of censorship, in regard to the stage, as the Lord Chamberlain had been, effectively, the official censor in England from the middle of the eighteenth century. His role was not abolished, until the Theatres Act of 1968. In the end, both men, had "practically agreed" that the "test of cleanliness in plays was the sincerity of the playwright."

It was all over bar the shouting. Horace Liveright, the publisher turned theatrical producer mounted a rearguard legal action to revive The Captive. His own production, An American Tragedy, was still on Broadway. He had hoped that the courts would give Bourdet's play "a clean bill of health" but due to, Percy Shostac, the stage director's refusal to co-operate with the rest of the defendants' promise not to act in a production of the play, until it become permissible via the courts. Shostac considered it "morally degrading" to make such a promise and, despite Liveright's - and most of the rest of the cast's - attorney, Arthur Garfield Hays, attempt to persuade Magistrate Renaud to hear the charges against Shostac as a test case, there and then, Renaud was adamant.

"This is another Scopes case," commented Hays, one of the defence's representatives in the infamous Dayton evolution case in the Deep South. "Exactly the same issue is involvedžthe belief that if you keep people ignorant you will save them. Down in Tennessee they thought if you kept the people ignorant you would save their souls. Here in New York some people think that if you keep people ignorant you will save their morals." Rathbone was only member of the cast not represented by Hays, but by Walter Stern.

So, after one hundred and sixty performances, The Captive closed on Broadway in the February of 1927.

"Censorship made me," was Mae West's ultimate verdict on the fallout from the moral backlash unleashed by the New York authorities. Rather than bringing her career on the stage to a standstill, it did the exact opposite, although she would still have to deal with meddlers; even when she moved to Hollywood and embark on a film career. Others involved in the debacle were less fortunate.

Helen Menken's career failed to prosper in the wake of the play's closure and within a year she had divorced Humphrey Bogart. Both would dip their toes in the Hollywood pond, but Bogart would, eventually, triumph and find love and happiness with his third wife, Lauren Bacall. William Francis Dugan's career withered into obscurity and never gained ground, even when he, too, was unable to ignore the lure of Los Angeles.

Bourdet, who had been the source of all the commotion, although far from the instigator, continued to have plays produced on Broadway for several years afterwards. Just as able to write a lighter, more satirical vein, he still touched on more serious subjects, such as incest. He remained a popular dramatist and administered the Comédie-Française from 1936 to 1940, before his death in 1945. As for Horace Liveright, the producer, who had tried in vain to revive the play shortly after its travails with the guardians of public morals, descended into alcoholism and debt and expired in 1933.

Until he made his final move to Hollywood himself, Rathbone was soon back on the boards and, apart from a brief hiatus due to his film career taking off, he continued to return to the stage for a number of years. When he had had his fill of Sherlock Holmes on screen, he even ventured on to Broadway with Conan Doyle's detective in a play written for him by Ouida. In 1948 he won a Tony for his role in The Heiress. His career on the Broadway stage was nearly as long as that of Mae West's; and she had started when just a child.

Censorship made Mae West's career and set her on the way to being one of the twentieth century's icons, her face adorned the album sleeve of the Beatles' most famous long playing record, but it would also enable the careers of Rathbone and Bruce. With a deepening recession that would have social and political ramifications around the globe, Hollywood would succumb to the change in temperature of the moral climate and change tack, accordingly. West would do her best to cock a snook at the censor, and Rathbone's villains would frighten many a young child, but with Bruce in tow as Watson, Rathbone would also embody the virtues of Englishness in his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes.

By comparison, Bruce's Broadway career was rather short and sweet. Between 1926 and 1938, he managed only five productions and the nearest he came to any controversy was with Springtime for Henry, where he essayed the role of Mr Jelliwell, a character he reprised later on film. When comic genius Mel Brooks made his debut as a film director in 1968 the original title - for what would become better known as The Producers - was Springtime for Hitler.

© Howard Watson 2009