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George Sanders

George Sanders
George Sanders Allan Warren.jpg
A photograph of Sanders by Allan Warren, 1972
Born George Henry Sanders
(1906-07-03)3 July 1906
Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire
Died 25 April 1972(1972-04-25) (aged 65)
Castelldefels, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain
Cause of death Suicide
Education Bedales School, Brighton College
Alma mater Manchester Technical College
Occupation Actor, author, singer-songwriter, music composer
Years active 1929–1972
Spouse(s)
Partner(s) Lorraine Chanel
(1968–72; his death)
Family Tom Conway (brother)

George Henry Sanders (3 July 1906 – 25 April 1972) was a Russian-born English film and television actor, singer-songwriter, music composer, and author. His career as an actor spanned more than 40 years. His upper-class English accent and bass voice often led him to be cast as sophisticated but villainous characters. He is perhaps best known as Jack Favell in Rebecca (1940), Scott ffolliott in Foreign Correspondent (1940) (a rare heroic part), Addison DeWitt in All About Eve (1950), for which he won an Academy Award, King Richard the Lionheart in King Richard and the Crusaders (1954), Mr. Freeze in a two-parter episode of Batman (1966), the voice of the malevolent man-hating tiger Shere Khan in Disney's The Jungle Book (1967), and as Simon Templar, "The Saint", in five films made in the 1930s and 1940s.

Sanders was born in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire, at number 6 Petrovski Ostrov. His parents were Henry Peter Ernest Sanders (1868–1960), and Margarethe Jenny Bertha Sanders (née Kolbe; 1883–1967), who was born in Saint Petersburg, of mostly German, but also Estonian and Scottish, ancestry. A biography published in 1990 claimed that Sanders's father was the illegitimate son of a Russian noblewoman of the Czar’s court and a prince of the House of Oldenburg, married to a sister of the Czar. The actor Tom Conway (1904–1967) was George Sanders's elder brother. Their younger sister, Margaret Sanders, was born in 1912.

George Sanders was 11 when, in 1917, at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, the family moved to England. Like his brother, he attended Bedales School and Brighton College, a boys' independent school in Brighton, then went on to Manchester Technical College. After graduating he worked at an advertising agency, where the company secretary, the aspiring actress Greer Garson, suggested that he take up a career in acting.


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