Nov. 8, 1940: Hear tell the Basil Rathbones will give up their Brentwood mansion for a more modest home. Big charity donations make it necessary, Jimmie Fidler says.

Also on the jump, a review of a touring production of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” by the San Francisco Opera at Shrine Auditorium (at 6,000+ seats, it has about twice the capacity of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion—not exactly an intimate space for a Mozart opera). The opera was conducted from the piano by Erich Leinsdorf, with Ezio Pinza, Alexander Kipnis, Tito Schipa, Elizabeth Rethberg, Margit Bokor and Elsa Zebranska. The production was evidently given on a large, rotating stage. 

Anyone familiar with the opera will realize the shortcomings of Times music critic Isabel Morse Jones (d. 1951) rather quickly.