Trivia: Throughout much of his screen career, actor George Sanders was the very personification of cynicism, an elegantly dissolute figure whose distinct brand of anomie distinguished dozens of films during a career spanning nearly four decades. Born in St. Petersburg on July 3, 1906, Sanders and his family fled to the U.K. during the Revolution, and he was later educated at Brighton College. After first pursuing a career in the textile industry, Sanders briefly flirted with a South American tobacco venture; when it failed, he returned to Britain with seemingly no other options outside of a stage career. After a series of small theatrical roles, in 1934 he appeared in Noel Coward's Conversation Piece; the performance led to his film debut in 1936's Find the Lady, followed by a starring role in Strange Cargo. After a series of other undistinguished projects, Sanders appeared briefly in William Cameron Menzies' influential science fiction epic Things to Come. In 1937, he traveled to Hollywood, where a small but effective role in Lloyd's of London resulted in a long-term contract with 20th Century Fox. A number of lead roles in projects followed, including Love Is News and The Lady Escapes, before Fox and RKO cut a deal to allow him to star as the Leslie Charteris adventurer the Saint in a pair of back-to-back 1939 features, The Saint Strikes Back and The Saint in London. The series remained Sanders' primary focus for the next two years, and in total he starred in five Saint pictures, culminating in 1941's The Saint at Palm Springs. Sandwiched in between were a variety of other projects, including performances in a pair of 1940 Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, Foreign Correspondent and the Best Picture Oscar-winner Rebecca.After co-starring with Ingrid Bergman in 1941's Rage in Heaven, Sanders began work on another adventure series, playing a suave investigator dubbed the Falcon; after debuting the character in The Gay Falcon, he starred in three more entries -- A Date With the Falcon, The Falcon Takes Over, and The Falcon's Brother -- before turning over the role to his real-life brother, Tom Conway. Through his work in Julien Duvivier's Tales of Manhattan, Sanders began to earn notice as a more serious actor, and his lead performance in a 1943 adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novel The Moon and Sixpence established him among the Hollywood elite. He then appeared as an evil privateer in the Tyrone Power swashbuckler The Black Swan, followed by Jean Renoir's This Land Is Mine. A pair of excellent John Brahm thrillers, 1944's The Lodger and 1945's Hangover Square, helped bring Sanders' contract with Fox to its close.With his portrayal of the world-weary Lord Henry Wooten in 1945's The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Sanders essayed the first of the rakish, cynical performances which would typify the balance of his career; while occasionally playing more sympathetic roles in pictures like The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, he was primarily cast as a malcontent, winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his venomous turn in 1951's All About Eve. The award brought Sanders such high-profile projects as 1951's I Can Get It for You Wholesale, 1952's Ivanhoe, and Roberto Rossellini's 1953 effort Viaggio in Italia. However, his star waned, and the musical Call Me Madam, opposite Ethel Merman, was his last major performance. A series of historical pieces followed, and late in the decade he hosted a television series, The George Sanders Mystery Theater. In 1960, he also published an autobiography, Memoirs of a Professional Cad.Sanders spent virtually all of the 1960s appearing in little-seen, low-budget foreign productions. Exceptions to the rule included the 1962 Disney adventure In Search of the Castaways, the 1964 Blake Edwards Pink Panther comedy A Shot in the Dark, and 1967's animated Disney fable The Jungle Book, in which he voiced the character of Shere Khan the Tiger. After appearing on Broadway in the title role of The Man Who Came to Dinner, Sanders appeared in John Huston's 1970 thriller The Kremlin Letter, an indication of a career upswing; however, the only offers which came his way were low-rent horror pictures like 1972's Doomwatch and 1973's Psychomania. Prior to the release of the latter, Sanders killed himself on August 25, 1972, by overdosing on sleeping pills while staying in a Costa Brava hotel; his suicide note read, "Dear World, I am leaving you because I am bored." He was 66 years old.

Trivia: A bewitching blonde with a deliciously throaty speaking voice, Sally Gray was a London stage actress from childhood. After a false start in 1930, Gray established herself as a welcome screen presence in 1935, specializing in musicals and light comedies. She was introduced to American film fans in the 1938 RKO production The Saint in London. In 1942, Sally Gray temporarily retired from the screen, returning to the fore in tense, dramatic roles in such memorable films as Green for Danger (1946), They Made Me a Fugitive (1948) and The Hidden Room (1950).

Trivia: American actor David Burns began his U.S. in the early '40s and became a well-known, reliable supporting player. He has also worked in films and on TV.

Trivia: Gruff, stocky British character actor Gordon McLeod first appeared on stage in repertory in his native Devon. After establishing himself on the London stage, McLeod made his first film in 1925. Almost always cast as a brusque authority figure, he was most often seen as dyspeptic newspaper editors and conclusion-jumping detectives. Though his most famous screen role was the cigar-chomping city editor in The Squeaker (1935), Gordon McLeod is also fondly remembered for his work as Inspector Teal in The Saint in London (1939) and The Saint Meets the Tiger (1943), and as Inspector Venner in Meet Sexton Blake (1946).

Trivia: British actor Ralph Truman may seldom have played a leading role in films, but on radio he was a 14-carat star. On the air since 1925 (he was one of the first), Truman once estimated that he'd appeared in 5000 broadcasts. The actor's film career commenced with City of Song in 1930, followed by a string of cheap "quota quickies" and a few worthwhile films like Mr. Cohen Takes a Walk (1936), Under the Red Robe (1937), Dinner at the Ritz (1938) and The Saint in London (1941). The '40s found Truman cast as Mountjoy in Laurence Olivier's filmization of Henry V (1945) and in such equally prestigious productions as Oliver Twist (1948) and Christopher Columbus (1949). American audiences were treated to Truman in the wildly extroverted role of pirate George Merry in Treasure Island (1950); he'd beem deliberately cast in that role by director Robert Stevenson so that his hammy costar Robert Newton (as Long John Silver) would look "downright underplayed" in comparison. Though hardly as well served as he'd been on radio, Ralph Truman stayed with films until retiring in 1970; his last appearance was in Lady Caroline Lamb (released in 1971).

Trivia: German actor Carl Jaffe found it expedient to move to England in the late 1930s. Inevitably, Jaffe found himself cast as Nazis or heel-clicking Prussian aristocrats. His film characters in the postwar years were more sympathetic, but no less Teutonic. In the 1950s and 1960s, Carl Jaffe was often engaged to play Werner Von Braun types in such films as Rockets Galore (1954) and First Man Into Space (1958).

Trivia: British character actor Ben Williams first appeared before the cameras in 1935. Often cast in mystery films (he was a bit shady-looking), Williams showed up in such efforts as Man Without a Face (1935), Whispering Smith Hits London (1951), and The Teckman Mystery (1954). He was also prominently cast in two of RKO's British-filmed Saint series entries, The Saint in London (1939) and The Saint Meets the Tiger (1954). In films until 1958, Ben Williams' range of characters included detectives, butlers, German soldiers, and one or two Beefeater guards.

Trivia: A former civil engineer, Charles Carson established himself on the London stage of the 1920s as a superlative Shakespearean actor. In films from 1932, Carson seemed most at home in costume roles, appearing in such historical dramas as Fire Over England (1937), Victoria the Great (1937) and 60 Glorious Years (1939). He also flourished in contemporary roles such as "R" in Hitchcock's Secret Agent (1936), and on at least one occasion leaped some 100 years into the future, as the Great Grandfather in Things to Come (1936). During the war years, he directed at starred in ENSA productions on behalf of the British military troops, then settled into a long second career of playing distinguished elders. Charles Carson made his farewell film appearance in still another historical epic, Lady Caroline Lamb (1972).

Trivia: Ballard Berkeley went from a successful if somewhat undistinguished career as a theatrical leading man to a long and lucrative career in movies and television playing memorable character roles and closed it out with a part on television that made him famous on both sides of the Atlantic. Born in Margate, Kent, England, in 1904, he was the son of a theatrical manager with the family name Blascheck. He aspired to an acting career and made his London theatrical debut in 1928. Berkeley was the understudy to the lead in Counsel's Opinion (the play that became the movie The Divorce of Lady X). He also appeared with Fred Astaire and Adele Astaire in Stop Flirting and, over the next decade did a string of appearances opposite some of the top leading ladies of the day, including Dame Edith Evans and Fay Compton. His work as a theatrical leading man, however, was rather forgettable in the eyes of most critics, next to the actresses with whom he worked. But the movies beckoned after the advent of sound, and from 1930 -- with London Melody and The Chinese Bungalow -- Berkeley regularly appeared in features, often in leading or major supporting roles. His performances may have been fine, but the movies he did failed to have a major impact; the most widely seen of the early features was The Saint in London (1939), part of a series of films about the fictional Leslie Charteris-created sleuth. His career was interrupted at that point by the outbreak of the Second World War, rather ironically, considering the path of his subsequent career. Berkeley didn't serve in combat or even in the armed forces, but worked as a special constable, often in tandem with his fellow thespian Jack Hulbert. His presence was a big boost to the morale of their fellow officers, as he would organize entertainment in his off-duty hours.Berkeley sole wartime film appearance was a small but memorable part, as the HMS Torin's engineer-commander, in Noel Coward and David Lean's In Which We Serve (1942). And in 1947, after the war's end, he made his New York stage debut in the musical comedy Under the Counter. But theater receded in significance as part of his career during the postwar era, as Berkeley moved into character roles in film playing army officers (and, later -- and more notably -- retired army officers), police inspectors, and the occasional villain. During the 1950s, he also increasingly began to be seen on television as that medium took root in England, especially in crime programs like Dixon of Dock Green and action-adventure series such as The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, and The Invisible Man. He remained busy on both the big and small screens and became a popular and familiar presence in British entertainment. Finally, in the mid-'70s, as he reached his own seventies, he was cast in the perfect role, a part that took advantage of his comically officious, Colonel Blimp-ish persona, which he cultivated in his portrayal of many a military officer, and also of his advancing age: Major Gowen on Fawlty Towers. As one of the long-standing residents at the broken-down hotel owned by Basil Fawlty (John Cleese), the Major -- who sometimes seemed comically disoriented -- was the most memorable of the guests whose presence vexed Fawlty, and Berkeley brought a great deal of humanity to the role without ever losing the opportunity for a laugh. And the series' success in America made him a familiar name to television viewers across the Atlantic for the first time. He continued working for another nine years, right up to his death in 1988, even making it into National Lampoon's European Vacation. Most of his appearances were in productions aimed at British viewers, such as The Wildcats of St. Trinian's (1980), alongside such long-serving acting talents as Michael Hordern and Thorley Walters, in what was the last of the "St. Trinian's" films.

Trivia: Scottish character actor, onscreen from the '30s. He often played jovial characters.

Trivia: While studying art in his native London, John Abbott relaxed between classes by watching rehearsals of a student play. When one of the actors fell ill, Abbott was invited to replace him, and at that point he switched majors. He became a professional actor in 1934, joined the Old Vic in 1936, and made his first film, Mademoiselle Docteur, in 1937; later that same year he made his first BBC television appearance. Turned down for military service during World War II, Abbott joined the Foreign Office, working as a decoder in the British Embassy in Stockholm and working in similar capacities in Russia and Canada. In 1941, he took a vacation in New York, leaving his resumé and photo with various producers, just in case something turned up. On the very last day of his vacation, he was hired for a small role in Josef von Sternberg's The Shanghai Gesture (1941), thus launching the Hollywood phase of his career. Generally cast as a fussy eccentric, Abbott was seen at his very best as whining hypochondriac Frederick Fairlie in Warner Bros.' The Woman in White (1948). He also received at least one bona fide starring role in the 1943 quickie London Blackout Murders. In the late '40s, Abbott began amassing some impressive Broadway credits in such productions as He Who Gets Slapped, Monserrat, and Waltz of the Toreadors. He also appeared in 1950's Auto da Fe, which was specifically written for him by Tennessee Williams. Though still active in films and TV into the 1980s (he played Dr. Frankenstein in the ill-fated 1984 cinemadaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick), John Abbott spent most of his twilight years as an acting teacher. Abbott died in a Los Angeles hospital on May 24, 1996, after a prolonged illness.

Trivia: British actress Athene Seyler began her career on-stage in 1908 and made her first silent film in the 1920s. Usually cast in comedies, Seyler's characters were notorious scene stealers. Toward the end of her career, she was designated a Commander of the British Empire. In 1944, she and co-writer Stephen Haggard published the still-popular guide The Craft of Comedy. Seyler died in 1990 at the age of 101.