July 3: Happy Birthday George Sanders

[TMC]

https://lebeauleblog.com/2018/07/03/...eorge-sanders/

George Sanders (1906-1972) was a Russian-born Englishman; his older brother, who used the screen name of Tom Conway, was also a prominent film actor. In the early 1930s, Sanders was working for a London ad agency, when the office secretary, a young woman named Greer Garson who was looking to start her own acting career, recommended that he go into acting. He had some small roles in English films, and then was signed to a contract with Fox, who needed a suave English villain to star in a Tyrone Power film. Sanders fit the bill, but he soon moved to RKO, where he starred as Simon Templar in several adaptations of Leslie Charteris’s Saint novels. He then starred in the first films of a series about a similar hero, The Falcon; when Sanders left the series, it was none other than his brother, Tom Conway, who took over the role.

Meanwhile, Sanders moved from programmers to A features. In 1940, he had major supporting roles in Hitchcock’s Rebecca, as Jack Favell, and Foreign Correspondent, as Scott ffolliott. During the following decade he starred in a wide range of films, including The Moon and Sixpence, The Black Swan (with Power again), The Lodger, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, and Forever Amber. In the 1950, Sanders hit the high point of his film career by winning Best Supporting Actor as Addison DeWitt in All About Eve.


Sanders never really got a role that good again, although he continued to work in major films for most of the fifties; he romanced Ethel Merman in the musical Call Me Madam, and played the title role in King Richard and the Crusaders. Those who grew up in the sixties may known Sanders for two roles—as one of three actors to play Mr. Freeze on Batman (along with Otto Preminger and Eli Wallach), and as the voice of Shere Khan in The Jungle Book.