George Sanders

With his imperious gaze and resonant speaking voice, debonair British expatriate George Sanders was a perfect fit in Hollywood before and after World War II, playing cads, bounders, rogues and even the occasional hero. A contract with 20th Century Fox gave Sanders a home base in Tinseltown but he often did his best work for other studios, including the villains of Alfred Hitchcock's "Rebecca" (1940) for United Artists, Joe May's "The House of the Seven Gables" (1940) for Universal, and as swank soldier of fortune Simon Templar in "The Saint Strikes Back" (1940) and its sequels at RKO Radio Pictures. After the war, Fox slotted the epicene actor into a string of handsomely-mounted period pieces, including John Braham's "Hangover Square" (1945), Albert Lewin's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1945) and Joseph L. Mankiewicz's "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" (1947). Sanders won an Oscar for playing an acerbic theatrical critic in Mankiewicz's show biz satire "All About Eve" (1950), and his collaboration with neorealist pioneer Roberto Rossellini on the undervalued "Viaggio in Italia" (1954) marked what many considered to be his last great film performance. Widowed in 1969 and hobbled by a debilitating stroke that affected his speech, Sanders took his own life in Spain in 1972, drawing closed the curtain on the life of a consummate actor who could never completely camouflage his own fierce intelligence.