George Sanders - Career

Career

Sanders made his British film debut in 1929. Seven years later, after a series of British films, his first role in an American production was Lloyd's of London (1936) as Lord Everett Stacy. His smooth, upper-crust English accent and sleek British manner, along with a suave, snobbish and somewhat threatening air, put him in demand for American films throughout the following decade.He played supporting roles in high-end productions such as Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), in which he and Judith Anderson played cruel foils to Joan Fontaine's character. He had leading roles in somewhat lower-budget pictures such as Rage in Heaven (1941). He also played the lead in both The Falcon and The Saint film series.In 1942, Sanders handed the Falcon role to his brother Tom, in The Falcon's Brother. The only other film in which the two brothers appeared together was Death of a Scoundrel (1956), in which they also played brothers.

Sanders played Lord Henry Wotton in the 1945 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. That same year, he gave one of his most critically noted performances, starring with Angela Lansbury in director Albert Lewin's little-known film The Private Affairs of Bel Ami, taken from an 1885 novel by Guy de Maupassant. He and Lansbury also featured in Cecil B. deMille's biblical epic Samson and Delilah in 1949.

In 1950, Sanders drew his greatest popular and commercial success as the acerbic, cold-blooded theatre critic Addison DeWitt, in All About Eve, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He then starred as Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert in the 1952 film Ivanhoe, dying in a duel with Robert Taylor after professing his love for Jewish maiden Rebecca, played by Elizabeth Taylor.

Sanders went into television with the successful series The George Sanders Mystery Theater. He played an upper-crust English villain, G. Emory Partridge, in the 1965 The Man From U.N.C.L.E. episode "The Gazebo in the Maze Affair" and reprised the role later in that same year in "The Yukon Affair". He also portrayed Mr. Freeze in two episodes of the live-action Batman TV series which were shown in February 1966.

In 1967, Sanders voiced the malevolent Shere Khan in the Walt Disney production of The Jungle Book. During the production of The Jungle Book's soundtrack, Sanders was unavailable to provide the singing voice for Shere Khan during the final recording of the song, "That's What Friends Are For" despite being an accomplished singer. Mellomen member Bill Lee was called in to substitute for Sanders and can be heard on the soundtrack. In the film, however, all the singing was done live and Sanders provided Khan's singing voice.

Sanders' smooth voice, urbane manner and upper-class British accent inspired Peter Sellers' character "Hercules Grytpype-Thynne" in the famous 1950s BBC radio comedy series The Goon Show. In 1964, Sellers and Sanders appeared together in the Pink Panther sequel A Shot in the Dark. In 1969, he had a supporting role in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter, in which his first scene showed him dressed in drag and playing piano in a snooty San Francisco gay bar. One of Sanders' final screen roles was in a 1972 feature film version of the BBC television series Doomwatch.