George Sanders: Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright.
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George Sanders...If I was to start counting down from the top of my most favorite on screen actors, I'm sure he'd end up in my top 20 somewhere. For the better part of 40 years he worked in Hollywood -at his height sometimes unavoidable - as one of the best if not the best character actor around. He had preternatural presence, self awareness, a misanthropic wit, and a voice to die for. As a kid, it was his voice work as Shere Khan in Disney's the Jungle Book that stood out more than any other because it was so alarmingly polite and yet every word, every enunciated vowel, spoke to a peril and an impending danger just beneath. Later on as I began to study acting, and the still underrated tactic of finding a - for lack of better word "spirit animal" - to encompass your performance, I put together that so much of Sanders work (especially as a villain) bore a physical, and spiritual resemblance to a tiger. Sanders many times seemed to stalk his co stars Male or Female. He stared intently watched them, and then encroached upon their space. His voice registered at a low growl, but his accent often purred. He pounced unexpectedly often going for the jugular of whomever his current prey is at the moment with his razor sharp wit, or compressing cruelty, holding the victims throat until they surrender.
The broad stroke of Sanders career in my opinion was playing mostly nefarious characters who weaponized charm and manners. He was a poster boy for mannered vitriol. If watching any one actor taught me that civility can be a bedazzled Iron Maiden it was George. His threats were always mostly veiled, his smugness just beneath his congeniality, he was entitled, strident, and he had a sexual energy that was unnerving, uncomfortable, and captivating, which was part of what made him the silver screens foremost cad. He was usually a society man on the outskirts of society. A man with little to no scruples because he was contemptuous of society in general, but particularly of those better off than he. Sadly these qualities did not seem to be born of invention with little or nothing to do with the actual man, as Sanders had an atrocious record with women, often quoted leveling a similar brand of vitriol at the women in his life and to people in general as his characters did, ditto for his contempt for society. On his death bed after battling depression Sanders checked into a hotel and committed suicide, leaving behind a letter that said
"Dear World,
I am leaving you because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck."
