Sebastian Cabot (actor) - Acting Career

Acting Career

His formal acting career began with a bit part in Foreign Affaires (1935); his first screen credit was in Alfred Hitchcock's Secret Agent (1936). Other British films followed such as Love on the Dole (1941), Pimpernel Smith (also 1941), Old Mother Riley Overseas and Old Mother Riley Detective (both 1943) and They Made Me a Fugitive (1947). In 1946, he portrayed Iago in a condensed short film version of Othello.

Post-war, Cabot landed roles in such British films as Third Time Lucky (1949), The Spider and the Fly (1949), as the villainous Fouracada in Dick Barton Strikes Back (1949); he was also in Ivanhoe (1952) and The Love Lottery (1954). He appeared in a couple of international productions, the Spanish-UK-USA Sinbad comedy Babes in Baghdad (1952) and the Italian version of Romeo and Juliet (1954) as Lord Capulet, before working for Disney in Hollywood on Westward Ho, the Wagons! (1956) and as the scheming landlord Jonathan Lyte in Johnny Tremain (1957). In George Pal's production of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine (1960) he was Dr. Hillyer who doubts the time traveller's story.

Meanwhile, Cabot had begun to work as a voice actor. In the 1950s he was featured in a radio show called Horizons West, a 13-part radio drama which followed the story of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and was the voice of Noah in the first recording of Igor Stravinsky's biblical 'musical play' The Flood (1962). He also did voice parts for animated films such as Disney's The Sword In The Stone (1963) as Sir Ector, Jungle Book (1967) as Bagheera, and the narrator of Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966) and Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968).

At about this time Cabot began taking on television work, appearing in such series as The Adventures of Hiram Holliday (1956–57), on Frank Lovejoy's detective series Meet McGraw (1958), with James Best in the western series Bonanza (1960) and Pony Express ("The Story of Julesburg", 1960), The Beachcomber (regular 1962), and The Twilight Zone ("A Nice Place to Visit", 1960), as the white-suited, courtly provider of a vain but disillusioned man's every wish. Cabot had a two-year period as one of the three leads as college professor Dr. Carl Hyatt on Eric Ambler's detective show Checkmate (1960–1962), which co-starred Anthony George and Doug McClure. Cabot was also a regular panelist on the TV game show Stump the Stars. He also appeared on the NBC interview programme Here's Hollywood. In 1964, Cabot hosted the short-lived television series, Suspense, and voiced or narrated a few other film and television projects, before he was cast as Giles French in the CBS series Family Affair (1966–1971) with Brian Keith.

Cabot did not halt his other film and television work during the run of Family Affair; in fact, he took a leave of absence from the series at one point—(his stand-in, an actor often typecast as a butler or a detective, was veteran British character actor John Williams, who played French's brother Nigel in Family Affair). Cabot was also the host of Journey to Midnight as well as other work from the period. But he was so vividly etched as French in viewers' minds that he never shook the image even after Family Affair finally ended production in 1971. He received another role as the host (Winston Essex) of Ghost Story, (1972, but retitled Circle of Fear after he left the series) a supernatural anthology). Perhaps Cabot's most memorable role following the series' demise was as Kris Kringle in the television remake of Miracle on 34th Street (1973).