George Henry Sanders (3 July 1906 – 25 April 1972) was an English film and television actor, singer-songwriter, music composer, and author. His career as an actor spanned over forty years. His upper-class English accent and bass voice often led him to be cast as sophisticated but villainous characters. He is perhaps best known as Jack Favell in Rebecca (1940), Scott ffolliott in Foreign Correspondent (1940) (a rare heroic part), Addison DeWitt in All About Eve (1950), for which he won an Academy Award, Sir Brian De Bois-Guilbert in Ivanhoe (1952), King Richard the Lionheart in King Richard and the Crusaders (1954), Mr. Freeze in a two-parter episode of Batman (1966), the voice of the malevolent man-hating tiger Shere Khan in Disney's The Jungle Book (1967), and as Simon Templar, "The Saint", in five films made in the 1930s and 1940s.
Early life
Sanders was born in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, at number 6 Petrovski Ostrov. His parents were Henry Peter Ernest Sanders[1] (1868–1960),[2] and Margarethe Jenny Bertha Sanders (née Kolbe; 1883–1967), who was born in Saint Petersburg, of mostly German, but also Estonian and Scottish, ancestry.[3][4] A biography published in 1990 claimed that Sanders's father was the illegitimate son of a prince of the House of Oldenburg and a Russian noblewoman of the Czar’s court, married to a sister of the Czar.[5][a] The actor Tom Conway (1904–1967) was George Sanders's elder brother. Their younger sister, Margaret Sanders, was born in 1912.
Sanders travelled to South America where he managed a tobacco plantation. The Depression sent him back to England. He worked at an advertising agency, where the company secretary, the aspiring actress Greer Garson, suggested that he take up a career in acting.[10]
Career
In the trailer for Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940)
Early British work
Sanders learned how to sing and got a role on stage in Ballyhoo, which only had a short run but helped establish him as an actor.[9]
He began to work regularly on the British stage, appearing several times with Edna Best. He co-starred with Dennis King in The Command Performance.[11] He appeared in a British film, Love, Life and Laughter (1934).
Sanders travelled to New York to appear on Broadway in a production of Noel Coward's Conversation Piece (1934), directed by Coward, which only ran 55 performances.[9]
Some of these British films were distributed by 20th Century Fox who were looking for an actor to play a villain in their Hollywood-shot film Lloyd's of London (1936). Sanders was duly cast as Lord Everett Stacy, opposite Tyrone Power, in one of his first leads, as the hero; Sanders' smooth upper-class English accent, his sleek manner and his suave, superior and somewhat threatening air made him in demand for American films for years to come.[12]
Lloyds of London was a big hit and Fox put Sanders under a seven-year contract (though he would frequently be loaned to other studios, notably RKO).[13]
Public response to Sanders had been strong, so Fox gave him his first heroic lead, in the B picture Lancer Spy (1937) with Dolores del Rio. He and del Rio were promptly reteamed in International Settlement (1938).
Sanders returned to Hollywood where RKO wanted him to play the hero in a series of B-movies, The Saint. The Saint in New York (1938) had already been made starring Louis Hayward in the title role, but when he decided not to return to the role Sanders took over for The Saint Strikes Back (1939).[14][15]
MGM used him as a villain in Bitter Sweet (1940) and he performed a similar function for Edward Small in The Son of Monte Cristo (1940). Sanders made his last appearance as Simon Templar in The Saint in Palm Springs (1941), then MGM called him back for Rage in Heaven (1941), an early film noir, playing the trustworthy good guy whose best friend, Robert Montgomery, goes murderously insane and sets him up for the rap.
Sanders was a villain in Man Hunt (1941) but heroic in Sundown (1941).
The Falcon
RKO had been fighting with Leslie Charteris, creator of The Saint, so they stopped the series and put Sanders in a new B picture series about a suave crime fighter, The Falcon. The first entry was The Gay Falcon (1941). It was popular and quickly followed by A Date with the Falcon (1942).
Sanders was tiring of The Falcon, so he handed the role to his brother Tom, in The Falcon's Brother (1942), in which both appeared (and Sanders was killed off). The only other film in which the two siblings appeared together was Death of a Scoundrel (1956), in which they also played brothers.
In July 1942 Fox suspended him for refusing the lead in The Undying Monster (1942). "I like to be seen in pictures that at least seem to be slightly worthwhile."[9] In September they suspended him again for refusing an "unsympathetic role" in The Immortal Sergeant (he was replaced by Morton Lowry).[17] In November Fox and Sanders came to terms, with the studio offering him a pay rise and the lead in a film, School for Saboteurs, which became They Came to Blow Up America.[18]
Sanders was a pirate villain in The Black Swan (1943), again fighting Tyrone Power, at Fox; the same studio used him in Quiet Please, Murder (1943).
RKO called him back for This Land Is Mine (1943). They bought an original story for him, Nine Lives, but it does not appear to have been made.[19]
In February 1943 Fox announced they were developing three films for Sanders - The Porcelain Lady, a murder mystery, plus biopics of the Earl of Suffolk and Bethune.[21]
Fox originally announced him to play the role of the detective in Laura (1944) alongside Laird Cregar, but neither ended up being in the final film.[22]
Fox finished his long-term contract with them in Paris After Dark (1943) and The Lodger (1944), playing the romantic lead to Laird Cregar's title villain.
RKO
Sanders signed a new three-film contract with RKO, starting with Action in Arabia (1944).[23] After Summer Storm (1944), Fox called him back to a Lodger follow up with Cregar, Hangover Square (1945).
After playing the lead in Lured (1947) Fox cast him as Charles II in their expensive blockbuster Forever Amber (1949). The same studio used him in The Fan (1949). He was a villain in Cecil B. DeMille's biblical epic Samson and Delilah (1949), the most popular film of the year.
All About Eve and beyond
As Addison DeWitt in the trailer for All About Eve (1950)
He was a leading man in Black Jack (1950) but back to supporting/villain roles in I Can Get It for You Wholesale (1951). He signed a three picture deal with MGM for whom he did The Light Touch (1951) and Ivanhoe (1952), playing Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert and dying in a duel with Robert Taylor after professing his love for the Jewish maiden Rebecca, played by Elizabeth Taylor. It was a huge success.[25]
In 1955 it was announced he would host and occasionally appear in The Ringmaster, a TV series about the circus.[27] The series was never made. Instead Sanders was in "A Portrait of a Murderer" on The 20th Century-Fox Hour, a remake of Laura (1944), playing the role of Waldo Lydecker, made famous by Clifton Webb.
Sanders guest starred in The Rogues, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and Daniel Boone. He played an upper-crust English villain, G. Emory Partridge, in two episodes of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. in 1965, "The Gazebo in the Maze Affair" and "The Yukon Affair". He also portrayed Mr. Freeze in two episodes of the live-action TV series Batman, both shown in February 1966.
He had a supporting role in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter (1969), in which his first scene showed him dressed in drag and playing the piano in a gay bar in San Francisco. In 1969 he announced he was leaving showbusiness.[32]
Two ghostwritten crime novels were published under his name to cash in on his fame at the height of his wartime film series. The first was Crime on My Hands (1944), written in the first person, and mentioning his Saint and Falcon films.[33] This was followed by Stranger at Home in 1946. Both were written by female authors: the former was by Craig Rice, and the latter by Leigh Brackett.
In 1958 Sanders recorded an album called The George Sanders Touch: Songs for the Lovely Lady. The album, released by ABC-Paramount Records, featured lush string arrangements of romantic ballads, crooned by Sanders in a fit baritone/bass (spanning from low to middle C), including "Such is My Love", a song he had himself composed. After going to great lengths to get the role, he appeared in the Broadway cast of South Pacific, but was overwhelmed with anxiety over the singing and quickly dropped out. His singing voice can be heard in The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry and in Call Me Madam (1953). He also signed on for the role of Sheridan Whiteside in the stage musical Sherry! (1967), based on Kaufman and Hart's play The Man Who Came to Dinner, but he found the stage production demanding and quit after his wife Benita Hume discovered that she had terminal bone cancer.
On 27 October 1940 Sanders married Susan Larson (real name Elsie Poole). The couple divorced in 1949. From later that year until 1954 Sanders was married to Zsa Zsa Gabor, with whom he starred in the film Death of a Scoundrel (1956) after their divorce. On 10 February 1959 Sanders married Benita Hume, widow of Ronald Colman. She died in 1967, the same year Sanders's brother Tom Conway died of liver failure; Sanders had become distant from his brother because of his drinking problem.[35] Sanders endured a further blow in the same year with the death of their mother, Margarethe.
Sanders's autobiography, Memoirs of a Professional Cad, was published in 1960 and gathered critical praise for its wit. Sanders suggested the title A Dreadful Man for his biography, which was later written by his friend Brian Aherne and published in 1979.[36] Sanders's last marriage, on 4 December 1970, was to Magda Gabor, the elder sister of his second wife. This marriage lasted only 32 days, after which he began drinking heavily.[37][38]
Sanders suffered from dementia, worsened by waning health, and visibly teetered in his last films, owing to a loss of balance. According to Aherne's biography, he also had a minor stroke. Sanders could not bear the prospect of losing his health or needing help to carry out everyday tasks and became deeply depressed. At about this time he found that he could no longer play his grand piano, so he dragged it outside and smashed it with an axe. His last girlfriend persuaded him to sell his beloved house in Majorca, Spain, which he later bitterly regretted. From then on he drifted.[39]
On 23 April 1972, Sanders checked into a hotel in Castelldefels, a coastal town near Barcelona. He died of a cardiac arrest two days later, after swallowing the contents of five bottles of the barbiturate Nembutal.[40][41] He left behind three suicide notes, one of which 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.[42][43][44][45]
Sanders's body was returned to Britain for funeral services. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered in the English Channel.
David Niven wrote in Bring on the Empty Horses (1975), the second volume of his memoirs, that in 1937 his friend George Sanders had predicted that he would commit suicide from a barbiturate overdose when he was 65 and that in his 50s he had appeared to be depressed since his marriages had failed and several tragedies had befallen him.[46]
In the "House Arrest" episode of The Sopranos, Tony tells Doctor Melfi of his boredom and states "I'm ready for the George Sanders long walk here."
In the 2000 film Wonder Boys, Sanders is one of the people Tobey Maguire's character mentions when he is naming high-profile suicides that have taken place in distant memory.
^"George Sanders". The World's News. No. 2004. New South Wales, Australia. 4 May 1940. p. 13. Retrieved 1 September 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
^"George Sanders dead". The Canberra Times. Vol. 46, , no. 13, 109. Australian Capital Territory, Australia. 27 April 1972. p. 5. Retrieved 1 September 2017 – via National Library of Australia.((cite news)): CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
^Niven, David (1975). Bring on the Empty Horses. Coronet Books/Hodder and Stoughton. p. 304. ISBN978-0340209158.
