George Sanders (actor)
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George Sanders (July 3, 1906 – April 25, 1972) was an Academy Award-winning English film and television actor.
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Early life
Sanders was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, of British parents. In 1917, at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, when Sanders was eleven, the family returned to Britain and, like his brother, he attended Brighton College, a boys' independent school in Brighton. After graduation he worked in an advertising agency. It was there that the company secretary, an aspiring actress named Greer Garson, suggested to him a career in acting. Sanders' lookalike older brother, Tom Conway, was also a movie actor, to whom Sanders later handed over the role of The Falcon in The Falcon's Brother (1942). The only other film in which the two real-life brothers appeared together was Death of a Scoundrel (1956). In both films they played brothers.
Career
He made his British film debut in 1934 and, after a series of British films, made his American debut in 1936 with a role in Lloyd's of London. His British accent and sensibilities, combined with his suave, snobbish, and somewhat menacing air, were utilised in American films during the next decade. He played supporting roles in prestige productions such as Rebecca, in which he joined with the sinister Judith Anderson as Mrs Danvers, in her persecution of Joan Fontaine. He also played leading roles in lesser pictures such as Rage in Heaven. During this time he was also the lead in both The Falcon and The Saint film series, and also played Lord Henry Wotton in a film version of The Picture of Dorian Gray. In 1947 he co-starred with Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.
In 1950 he gave his most widely recognised performance and achieved his greatest success as the acid-tongued, cold-blooded theatre critic Addison DeWitt in All About Eve, winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for this role.
He moved into the field of television and was responsible for the successful series George Sanders Mystery Theatre. Sanders played an upper crust English villain, G. Emory Partridge, in a 1965 The Man From U.N.C.L.E. episode. "The Gazebo in the Maze Affair", and reprised the role later that year in "The Yukon Affair". He also portrayed Mr. Freeze in two episodes of the 1960s live-action Batman TV series.
Later, he provided the voice for the malevolent Shere Khan in the Walt Disney production of The Jungle Book. One of Sanders's final screen roles was in the 1972 feature film version of the popular television series Doomwatch.
Sanders' smooth voice, urbane manner, and upper-class British accent were the inspiration for the Peter Sellers' character "Hercules Grytpype-Thynne" in the famous BBC radio comedy series The Goon Show. Sellers and Sanders appeared together in the Pink Panther sequel, A Shot in the Dark.
He was honoured with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: for Motion Pictures at 1636 Vine St, and for Television at 7007 Hollywood Blvd. In popular culture, he is mentioned in The Kinks' song "Celluloid Heroes" and his ghost makes an appearance in Clive Barker's 2001 novel Coldheart Canyon.
Other projects
Sanders has two crime novels to his credit: Crime on My Hands (1944, written in the first person and mentioning his "Saint" and "Falcon" movies) and Stranger at Home (1946). These were published simply to cash in on his screen success, and both were ghostwritten: the former by Craig Rice, the latter by Leigh Brackett.
In 1958 Sanders recorded an album entitled The George Sanders Touch: Songs for the Lovely Lady. Released by ABC-Paramount Records, the album offered lush string arrangements of romantic ballads, crooned by Sanders in a persuasive baritone. He went to great lengths to get himself signed to sing in South Pacific, but was overwhelmed with anxiety over the role and quickly dropped out. Sanders' singing voice can be heard in Call Me Madam and Disney's The Jungle Book. He signed for the role of Sheridan Whiteside in the stage musical Sherry! (1967) based on the Kaufman - Hart play The Man Who Came to Dinner, but felt overwhelmed by the demands of the production, and resigned when his wife, actress Benita Hume, found she had terminal bone cancer.
Marriages
In 1940, he married Susan Larson; the marriage ended in divorce in 1949. From 1949 until 1954, he was married to the Hungarian actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, whose previous marriage had been to Conrad Hilton. (In 1956 Sanders and Gabor starred together in the film Death of a Scoundrel.) Sanders was then married to actress Benita Hume, widow of actor Ronald Colman, from 1959 until her death in 1967. His last wife was Magda Gabor, the older sister of his second wife; the marriage lasted only 6 weeks. Following this he began to drink heavily.
His autobiography, Memoirs of a Professional Cad, was published in 1960 and received critical praise for its wit. Sanders, himself, suggested the title A Dreadful Man for the biography of him later written by Brian Aherne and published in 1979.
Death
After being convinced by a woman he had taken up with, George Sanders sold his beloved house in Majorca, Spain. Soon after, he checked into a hotel in Barcelona, Spain. That is where Sanders committed suicide in Castelldefels (a coastal town near Barcelona, Spain) by an overdose of barbiturates. His body was discovered two days later next to five empty tubes of Nembutal. He left behind a suicide note that read:
"Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck."
His friend David Niven recorded in his Bring On The Empty Horses that Sanders had long predicted that he would be committing suicide at the age of sixty-five.
Selected filmography
- Lloyd's of London (1936)
- The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936)
- Things to Come (1936) (extra)
- Slave Ship (1937)
- Four Men and a Prayer (1938)
- The Saint Strikes Back (1939)
- Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939)
- Mr. Moto's Last Warning (1939)
- The Saint in London (1939)
- Allegheny Uprising (1939)
- Green Hell (1940)
- The Saint's Double Trouble (1940)
- Rebecca (1940)
- The Saint Takes Over (1940)
- Foreign Correspondent (1940)
- The Son of Monte Cristo (1940)
- The Saint in Palm Springs (1941)
- Rage in Heaven (1941)
- Man Hunt (1941)
- The Gay Falcon (1941)
- Tales of Manhattan (1942)
- Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake (1942)
- The Falcon's Brother (1942)
- This Land Is Mine (1943)
- Appointment in Berlin (1943)
- The Lodger (1944)
- The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945)
- The Strange Woman (1946)
- A Scandal in Paris (1946)
- The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947)
- Lured (1947)
- Forever Amber (1947)
- Samson and Delilah (1949)
- The Fan (1949)
- All About Eve (1950)
- I Can Get It for You Wholesale (1951)
- Ivanhoe (1952)
- Call Me Madam (1953)
- King Richard and the Crusaders (1954)
- Witness to Murder (1954)
- Journey to Italy (Viaggio in Italia) (1954)
- Jupiter's Darling (1955)
- Moonfleet (1955)
- While the City Sleeps (1956)
- Death of a Scoundrel (1956)
- Never Say Goodbye (1956)
- That Kind of Woman (1959)
- From the Earth to the Moon (1959)
- Solomon and Sheba (1959)
- The Last Voyage (1960)
- Cone of Silence (1960)
- Village of the Damned (1960)
- The Rebel (aka Call Me Genius in USA) (1961)
- Operation Snatch (1962)
- In Search of the Castaways (1962)
- A Shot in the Dark (1964)
- Trunk to Cairo (1966)
- The Quiller Memorandum (1966)
- Warning Shot (1967)
- The Jungle Book (1967) (voice)
- Good Times (1967)
- The Kremlin Letter (1970)
- Endless Night (1971)
- Psychomania (1971)
- Doomwatch (1972)
