George Sanders

In 1917, at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, Sanders and his 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 which he worked in textile research.

Lloyds of London was a big hit and in November 1936, Fox placed Sanders under a seven-year contract.

David Niven wrote in Bring on the Empty Horses (1975), the second volume of his memoirs, that in 1937 his friend George Sanders had predicted that he would commit suicide from a barbiturate overdose when he was 65 and that in his 50s he had appeared to be depressed because his marriages had failed and several tragedies had befallen him.

On 27 October 1940, Sanders married Susan Larson (real name Elsie Poole). The couple divorced in 1949. From later that year until 1954, Sanders was married to Zsa Zsa Gabor, with whom he starred in the film Death of a Scoundrel (1956) after their divorce. On 10 February 1959, Sanders married Benita Hume, widow of Ronald Colman. She died in 1967, the same year Sanders's brother Tom Conway died of liver failure; Sanders had become distant from his brother because of his drinking problem. Sanders endured a further blow in the same year with the death of their mother Margarethe.

In July 1942, Fox suspended him for refusing the lead in The Undying Monster (1942). "I like to be seen in pictures that at least seem to be slightly worthwhile." In September they suspended him again for refusing an "unsympathetic role" in The Immortal Sergeant (he was replaced by Morton Lowry). In November, Fox and Sanders came to terms, with the studio offering him a raise in pay and the lead in a film, School for Saboteurs, which became They Came to Blow Up America.

In February 1943, Fox announced they were developing three film projects for Sanders - The Porcelain Lady, a murder mystery, plus biopics of the Earl of Suffolk and Bethune.

Two ghostwritten crime novels were published under his name to cash in on his fame at the height of his wartime film series. The first was Crime on My Hands (1944), written in the first person, and mentioning his Saint and Falcon films. This was followed by Stranger at Home in 1946. Both were written by female authors: the former was by Craig Rice, and the latter by Leigh Brackett.

In 1955 it was announced he would host and occasionally appear in The Ringmaster, a TV series about the circus. The series was never made. Instead Sanders was in "A Portrait of a Murderer" on The 20th Century-Fox Hour, a remake of Laura (1944), playing the role of Waldo Lydecker, made famous by Clifton Webb.

In 1958, Sanders recorded an album called The George Sanders Touch: Songs for the Lovely Lady. The album, released by ABC-Paramount Records, featured lush string arrangements of romantic ballads, crooned by Sanders in a fit baritone/bass (spanning from low to middle C), including "Such is My Love", a song he had himself composed. After going to great lengths to get the role, he appeared in the Broadway cast of South Pacific, but was overwhelmed with anxiety over the singing and quickly dropped out. His singing voice can be heard in The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry, Summer Storm and in Call Me Madam. He also signed on for the role of Sheridan Whiteside in the stage musical Sherry! (1967), based on Kaufman and Hart's play The Man Who Came to Dinner, but he found the stage production demanding and quit after his wife Benita Hume discovered that she had terminal bone cancer.

Sanders' autobiography Memoirs of a Professional Cad was published in 1960 and gathered critical praise for its wit. Sanders suggested the title A Dreadful Man for his biography, later written by his friend Brian Aherne and published in 1979. Sanders's last marriage on 4 December 1970 was to Magda Gabor, the elder sister of his second wife. This marriage lasted only 32 days after which he began drinking heavily.

Sanders guest starred in The Rogues, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and Daniel Boone. He played an upper-crust English villain, G. Emory Partridge, in two episodes of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. in 1965, "The Gazebo in the Maze Affair" and "The Yukon Affair". He also portrayed Mr. Freeze in two episodes of the live-action TV series Batman, both shown in February 1966.

Sanders declared bankruptcy in 1966 due to some poor investments.

He had a supporting role in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter (1969), in which his first scene showed him dressed in drag and playing the piano in a gay bar in San Francisco. In 1969 he announced he was leaving show business.

On 23 April 1972, Sanders checked into a hotel in Castelldefels, a coastal town near Barcelona. He died of a cardiac arrest two days later after swallowing the contents of five bottles of the barbiturate Nembutal. He left behind three suicide notes, one of which read:

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' father was the illegitimate son of a prince of the House of Oldenburg and a Russian noblewoman of the Tsar’s court, married to a sister of the Tsar. The actor Tom Conway (1904–1967) was George Sanders' elder brother. Their younger sister, Margaret Sanders, was born in 1912.

Sanders' ghost makes an appearance in Clive Barker's novel Coldheart Canyon (2001) as well as in the animated feature film Dante's Inferno (2007). In 2005, Charles Dennis played Sanders in his own play High Class Heel at the National Arts Club in New York City.