George Sanders' Long Goodbye

Prologue :
            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.  { Taken from one of three suicide notes George Sanders left before he killed himself. }             

                      On April 25, 1972, Oscar winning actor George Sanders took his own life in a hotel room near Barcelona. Sanders was only 65, but the nature of his death seems completely in keeping true to the screen character he had perfected for nearly 40 years; that of an absolute total cad. One of the Golden Age of Cinema's most exquisite character actors, Sanders career in the movies began in earnest in the mid-1930's and lasted to his death, though the quality of his roles had diminished considerably the last ten or so years of his life. 

George in 1945's Picture of Dorian Gray.

   It's a career that peaked with his turn as Addison DeWitt in the 1950 classic All About Eve, directed by Joseph L.Mankiewicz {The Barefoot Contessa; Suddenly, Last Summer}, Eve was also 1950's Best Picture Oscar winner and had been pegged with a total 14 nominations. Let that sink in for a moment. 14 Oscar nominations. No film in history had ever received that many, not even Gone With The Wind, and only one film has had as many since, 1997's Titanic, but All About Eve did it without a lot of technical nominations, too. Of the 14, 8 of them were in the top 7 categories, while Titanic racked up only 4 in the upper echelon.

Cast photo, Marilyn included, from the great All About Eve, 1950

   Eve, along with his performance in Portrait of Dorian Gray, are my favorite Sanders creations. His cynical, sarcastic, biting line readings are among the finest in all of cinema. Only Claude Rains could equal Sanders ability to project that snarling, yet suave quality. A versatile actor, Sanders played in a variety of parts, from lavish costume drama's such as  Fritz Lang's Moonfleet, Cecil B.DeMille's Samson and Delilah, The King's Thief, Ivanhoe, and King Vidor's Solomon and Sheba [ Sanders was on set when Tyrone Power suffered his fatal heart attack } to suspense thrillers like Rebecca, Foreign Corespondent and Witness To Murder to comedies such as Her Cardboard Lover and A Shot In The Dark. Besides Lang, Vidor and DeMille, Sanders also collaborated with such top flight filmmakers as Hitchcock, Sidney Lumet, Roberto Rossellini, Douglas Sirk, Huston, Friedkin and Cukor. Sanders was the Saint in a series of popular films based on the books by Leslie Charteris, after that he played a detective named The Falcon in four films before Sanders brother, Tom Conway { Cat People, I Walked With A Zombie } took over that role. In 1967 Sanders provided his perfect voice to the character Shere Khan in the Disney version of The Jungle Book.  Based on the novel by Rudyard Kipling, the film has gone on to become one of Disney's beloved animated classics. One of Sanders less known talents was music, both singing and piano playing and he recorded a couple of albums. On occasion Sanders also appeared on TV. A couple of his more memorable "Guest Appearances" included a spot on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and Batman, in the role of Mr.Freeze { take THAT Arnold! }, both childhood favorites of mine.  

As the voice of Shere Khan in Disney's The Jungle Book

    By most accounts Sanders in 1972 had come to the end of his rope. His third wife Benita Hume, the widow of Ronald Colman, who Sanders married in 1959, passed away from bone cancer in 1967 { his brother died the same year }. According to sources her death left Sanders devastated and adrift. In 1970, he married Magda Gabor, the eldest sister of second wife ZsaZsa, but the union only lasted a few weeks. In 1972 Sanders had been dating a girl about half his age and she somehow convinced him to sell his home in Majorca, Spain a home he adorned and regretted selling ever after. According to Wikipedia, in his last years Sanders was in poor health, including dementia, and fell into a prolonged depression. With nothing left to live for Sanders swallowed five bottles of Nembutal, essentially enough to kill a horse. Obviously George was leaving nothing to chance for only a truly desperate, despondent, self centered person takes his own life and this description fits Sanders pretty well. Anyone with Sanders gifts should have found something, anything, worth carrying on for, worth living for. Yet he had received some major body blows the last few years of his life.  Exhausted, death must have seemed like the ultimate release from the life of purgatory he had been subjected to since 1967. From George Sanders point of view suicide must have made perfect sense and held a relaxing permanence that proved irresistible.   

The romantic side of George saw the light of day with this album

 

Sources : Wikipedia
                IMDB