George Henry Sanders (3 July 1906 – 25 April 1972) was a British actor and singer whose career spanned over 40 years. His heavy, upper-class English accent and smooth bass voice often led him to be cast as sophisticated but villainous characters. He is remembered for his roles as wicked Jack Favell in Rebecca (1940), Scott ffolliott in Foreign Correspondent (1940, a rare heroic part), The Saran of Gaza in Samson and Delilah (1949, the most popular film of the year), theater critic Addison DeWitt in All About Eve (1950, for which he won an Oscar), Sir Brian De Bois-Guilbert in Ivanhoe (1952), King Richard the Lionheart in King Richard and the Crusaders (1954), Mr. Freeze in a two-part episode of Batman (1966), and the voice of Shere Khan in Disney's The Jungle Book (1967). He also starred as Simon Templar, in 5 of the 8 films in The Saint series (1939–1941),[1] and as a suave Saint-like crimefighter in the first 4 of the 16 The Falcon films (1941–1942).
Early life
Sanders was born on 3 July 1906 in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, at number 6 Petrovski Ostrov, to rope manufacturer Henry Sanders and horticulturist Margaret (née Kolbe),[2] who was also born in Saint Petersburg, of mostly German, but also Estonian and Scottish ancestry. (Sanders wrote of his mother's descent from "the Thomas Clayhills of Dundee, who went to Estonia in 1626 to establish a business there".) Sanders referred to his parents as "well-off" and noted his mother's "forebears of solid social position and impeccable respectability", stating that "to the best of (his) knowledge, (his) father came in the mail".[3]
A biography published in 1990 alleged that family members' "recent disclosures... indicate" that Sanders' father was the out-of-wedlock son of a Russian noblewoman of the Tsar's court, and a prince of the House of Oldenburg who was married to a sister of the Tsar.[4] At the time of Henry Sanders's birth, the Anglo-Russian Sanders family were living at Saint Petersburg; the mother, Dagmar, was a lady-in-waiting to the Dowager Empress, and it was said to be through this connection Henry came to be adopted by the Sanders family.[5]
Sanders travelled to South America, where he managed a tobacco plantation. The Depression sent him back to Britain. He worked at an advertising agency, where the company secretary, aspiring actress Greer Garson, suggested that he take up a career in acting.[10]
Sanders learned how to sing and got a role on stage in Ballyhoo, which had only 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]
Sanders travelled to New York to appear on Broadway in a production of Noël Coward's Conversation Piece (1934), directed by Coward, which ran for only 55 performances.[9]
Hollywood and 20th Century Fox
20th Century Fox was looking for an actor to play a villain in its 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]Lloyd's of London was a big hit, and in November 1936, Fox placed Sanders under a seven-year contract.[13]
RKO had canceled its Saint series and replaced it with The Falcon in 1941. George Sanders was assigned the leading role of Gay Laurence, debonair man about town always involved in murder cases. Saint author Leslie Charteris thought the resemblance between the Falcon and the Saint was obvious, and sued the studio for unfair competition. Sanders himself was also unhappy about playing still another screen sleuth in still more "B" pictures, and bowed out of the series in 1942 after only four films. (He was replaced by his elder brother, Tom Conway.)
In July 1942, Fox suspended Sanders 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 raise in pay and the lead in a film, School for Saboteurs, which became They Came to Blow Up America.[18]
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] He was lent to Columbia for Appointment in Berlin (1943).[20]
In February 1943, Fox announced it was developing three film projects for Sanders – The Porcelain Lady, a murder mystery, plus biopics of Charles Howard, 20th Earl of Suffolk and a hero of World War II, and Canadian physician Norman Bethune.[21] Fox originally announced that he would play the detective in Laura (1944) alongside Laird Cregar, but neither ended up being in the final film.[22] In 1947, Sanders portrayed King Charles II in Fox's lavish production of the scandalous historical bodice-ripper, Forever Amber.
Sanders signed a new three-film contract with RKO, starting with Action in Arabia (1944).[23] The film superficially looked expensive but it was actually a low-budget feature, embellished by spectacular location footage filmed in 1933 for an unfinished production about Lawrence of Arabia.
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 was back to supporting-villain roles in I Can Get It for You Wholesale (1951). He signed a three-picture deal with MGM, for which he did The Light Touch (1951) and Ivanhoe (1952), playing Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, dying in a duel with Robert Taylor after professing his love for Jewish maiden Rebecca, played by Elizabeth Taylor. It was a huge success.[25]
Sanders declared bankruptcy in 1966 due to some poor investments.[31]
Sanders was cast in the musical comedy, Sherry!, but withdrew from the show while it was out-of-town. He was replaced by Clive Revill for Broadway.[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.[34]
During the production of The Jungle Book, Sanders was unavailable to provide the singing voice for his character Shere Khan during the final recording of the song, "That's What Friends Are For". According to Richard Sherman, Bill Lee, a member of The Mellomen, was called in to substitute for Sanders.[35]
Personal life
On 27 October 1940, Sanders married Susan Larson (born 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). On 10 February 1959, Sanders married Benita Hume, widow of Ronald Colman. She died of bone cancer in 1967, aged 60, the same year that Sanders's brother Tom Conway died of liver failure. Sanders had become distant from his brother because of Conway's drinking problem.[36]
Sanders' autobiography Memoirs of a Professional Cad was published in 1960 and gained critical praise for its wit. Sanders suggested the title A Dreadful Man for his biography, later written by his friend Brian Aherne and published in 1979.[37] Sanders' fourth and final marriage on 4 December 1970 was to Magda Gabor, the elder sister of his second wife. This marriage lasted 32 days ending in an annulment.[38][39][40]
Even before his dementia, Sanders had grown increasingly reclusive and depressed due to a string of tragedies, including the deaths of his third wife, his mother and his brother Tom, all within the span of a year. This was followed by a failed investment, which cost him millions. Before his dementia diagnosis, his fourth marriage of 32 days, to Magda Gabor, was annulled. 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. 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, Lorraine Chanel, with whom he had an on-off relationship in the last four years of his life, persuaded him to sell his beloved house in Majorca, Spain, which he later bitterly regretted. From then on, he drifted.[41]
On 23 April 1972, Sanders checked into a hotel in Castelldefels, a coastal town near Barcelona, where he phoned his friend George Mikell. Two days after swallowing the contents of five bottles of the barbiturate Nembutal, he died from cardiac arrest.[42][43] He left behind two 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.[44][45][46][47]
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 because his marriages had failed and several tragedies had befallen him.[48]
Sanders has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for films at 1636 Vine Street and television at 7007 Hollywood Boulevard.[49]
^"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.
^Niven, David (1975). Bring on the Empty Horses. Coronet Books/Hodder and Stoughton. p. 304. ISBN978-0340209158.
^"George Sanders". Hollywood Walk of Fame. 25 October 2019. Archived from the original on 26 June 2021. Retrieved 26 June 2021.
Bibliography
Aherne, Brian. A Dreadful Man: The Story of Hollywood's Most Original Cad, George Sanders. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979. ISBN0-671-24797-2.
McNally, Peter. Bette Davis: The Performances that made her Great. Jefferson North Carolina: McFarland, 2008. ISBN978-0-7864-3499-2.
Niven, David. The Moon's A Balloon. London: Dell Publishing, 1983. ISBN978-0-440-15806-6.
Sanders, George. Memoirs of a Professional Cad: The Autobiography of George Sanders. London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1960. ISBN0-8108-2579-1.
VanDerBeets, Richard. George Sanders: An Exhausted Life. Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Madison Books, 1990. ISBN0-8191-7806-3.
Further reading
Alistair, Rupert (2018). "George Sanders". The Name Below the Title : 65 Classic Movie Character Actors from Hollywood's Golden Age (softcover) (First ed.). Great Britain: Independently published. pp. 237–239. ISBN978-1-7200-3837-5.
