MEMOIRS OF A PROFESSIONAL CAD

by George Sanders ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 24, 1959

Sardonic, world-weary, urbane, the tone of this autobiography is more suggestive of a White Russian emigre than of the suave Englishman George Sanders generally portrays. And although the actor's origins are remotely Scottish, his family has lived in Russia since the seventeenth century, members of the self indulgent and cultivated upper class. Sanders, whose professional background is varied--he is a trained bass, worked in commerce in South America--does not consider himself a star, but admits to a secure position of second magnitude. Wearily, he laments the hardships of maintaining a yacht, a glamorous wife--Zea Zea Gabor--and all the other paraphernalia associated with the Hollywood fable. By his own description, a sensitive, diffident man, Sanders writes of his celebrated colleagues with compassion, deploring the cancer of materialism which destroys lives and threatens to destroy Western civilization. And finally in a welding of seriousness and sarcasm, a tone characteristic of his writing, he advocates for the salvation of the world a grand orgy of love-making, all done in the spirit of a universal life wish, an orgy which will release the aggressive instincts of man into channels which are not destructive. More literate, more self-conscious than the autobiography of the late Errol Flynn, the Memoirs of a Professional Cad suggest an entertaining personality without being in themselves essentially interesting.

Pub Date: March 24, 1959

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Putnam

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1959

Categories: NONFICTION