George Sanders

Chronicles the life of the Academy Award-winning actor who built his fame playing the well-mannered cad, revealing the troubled man behind his public persona and the real reasons for his suicide

Sanders (1906-1972) is best remembered as one of the silver screen's consummate cads (his portrayal of cynical theater critic Addison DeWitt in All About Eve won him an Oscar in 1951) and for his suicide note: "I am leaving because I am bored." In this biography authorized by Sanders's sister and including previously unpublished material from family letters and journals, VanDerBeets, who teaches English at San Jose State University in California, covers Sanders's privileged early childhood in czarist Russia, his upbringing in England after the Bolshevik Revolution, his movie career--which declined as he tired of the profession--his four marriages (including an entertainingly tempestuous one to Zsa Zsa Gabor), his financial debacles and his final decline in the late '60s. The author offers few startling insights but does show, in Sanders's own words, how his family's sudden loss of wealth after fleeing Russia led the actor to mask his resulting insecurity and unhappiness with a public facade of misanthropy. Photos.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

George Sanders, who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in All About Eve (1950), appeared in more than 100 films from 1936 until his death by suicide in 1972. He usually played elegant villains, and he also had the reputation of being a cad in his private life. VanDerBeets halfheartedly and unsuccessfully tries to argue that there was another Sanders behind the public facade. Overall VanDerBeets has done a very competent job, and even if the book isn't brilliant, it's still preferable to Sanders's own Memoirs of a Professional Cad (LJ 1/1/60) or Brian Aherne's memoir, A Dreadful Man (LJ 9/1/79).
- John Smothers, Monmouth Cty. Lib., Manalapan, N.J.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.