George Sanders
George Henry Sanders (3 July 1906 – 25 April 1972) was an Academy Award-winning English film and television actor. He was known for his height of six-feet, four inches and his deep voice.
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 next decade. He played supporting roles in high end productions such as Rebecca (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. He was also the lead in both The Falcon and The Saint film series. In 1942 Sanders handed off the Falcon role to his brother Tom, in the 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 taken from an 1885 novel by Guy de Maupassant, The Private Affairs of Bel Ami.
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.
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 widely seen 1960s live-action Batman TV series.
In 1967 Sanders voiced the malevolent Shere Khan in the Walt Disney production of The Jungle Book. In 1969 Sanders had a supporting role in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter, in which his rather notorious 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 popular television series Doomwatch.
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.
Sanders garnered two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for motion pictures at 1636 Vine Street and for television at 7007 Hollywood Boulevard. He is mentioned in The Kinks' song "Celluloid Heroes" and his ghost makes an appearance in Clive Barker's 2001 novel Coldheart Canyon as well as the animated feature from 2007 Dante's Inferno.
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