The Adventures of Robin Hood in the context of "Michael Curtiz"

Philip St. John Basil Rathbone MC (13 June 1892 – 21 July 1967) was an English actor. Born in South Africa and raised in Derbyshire, he rose to prominence in the United Kingdom as a Shakespearean stage actor and went on to appear in more than 70 films, primarily costume dramas, swashbucklers, and, occasionally, horror films.

Rathbone frequently portrayed suave villains or morally ambiguous characters, such as Mr. Murdstone in David Copperfield (1935), Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (1936) and Sir Guy of Gisbourne in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). His most famous role was that of Sherlock Holmes in fourteen Hollywood films made between 1939 and 1946 and in a radio series.

Dame Olivia Mary de Havilland (/də ˈhævɪlənd/; July 1, 1916 – July 26, 2020) was a British and American actress. The major works of her cinematic career spanned from 1935 to 1988. She appeared in 49 feature films and was one of the leading actresses of her time. Before her death in 2020 at age 104, she was the oldest living and earliest surviving Academy Award winner and was widely considered as being the last surviving major star from the Golden Age of Hollywood cinema. Her younger sister, with whom she had a noted rivalry well documented in the media, was Oscar-winning actress Joan Fontaine.

De Havilland first came to prominence with Errol Flynn as a screen couple in adventure films such as Captain Blood (1935) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). One of her best-known roles is that of Melanie Hamilton in Gone with the Wind (1939), for which she received the first of her five Oscar nominations, the only one for Best Supporting Actress. De Havilland departed from ingénue roles in the 1940s and later distinguished herself for performances in Hold Back the Dawn (1941), To Each His Own (1946), The Snake Pit (1948), and The Heiress (1949), receiving four Best Actress nominations and winning for To Each His Own and The Heiress. She was also successful in work on stage and television. De Havilland lived in Paris from the 1950s and received honors such as the National Medal of the Arts, the Légion d'honneur, and the appointment to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire at the age of 101.

Errol Leslie Thomson Flynn (20 June 1909 – 14 October 1959) was an Australian and American actor who achieved worldwide fame during the Golden Age of Hollywood. He was known for his romantic swashbuckler roles, frequent partnerships with Olivia de Havilland and reputation for his womanising and hedonistic personal life.

Flynn's roles include Robin Hood in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), which was later named by the American Film Institute as the 18th-greatest hero in American film history; the lead role in Captain Blood (1935); Major Geoffrey Vickers in The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936); and as the hero in a number of Westerns such as Dodge City (1939), Santa Fe Trail, Virginia City (both 1940) and San Antonio (1945).

William Claude Rains (10 November 1889 – 30 May 1967) was a British and American actor whose career spanned almost seven decades. He was the recipient of numerous accolades, including four Academy Award nominations for Best Supporting Actor, and is considered one of the screen's great character stars who played cultured villains during the Golden Age of Hollywood.

The son of a stage actor, Rains began acting on stage in his native London in the 1900s. He became a leading thespian on the West End, and an acting teacher at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. He moved to the United States in the late 1920s and became a successful Broadway star, before making his American film debut as Dr. Jack Griffin in The Invisible Man (1933). He went on to play prominent roles in such big screen production as The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), The Wolf Man (1941), Casablanca (1942), Kings Row (1942), Phantom of the Opera (1943) and Notorious (1946).