In the course of his 36-year-career, Sanders appeared in 111 films, starring in 30. The following is a small selection.

"Lloyd's of London" (Henry King, 1936). The birth of the Cad. In his first Hollywood role, Sanders played the villainous Lord Everett Stacy, a haughty 18th century aristocrat in skin-tight breeches who shoots the film's hero (played by Tyrone Power, a lifelong friend).

Lounge-lizard line: "I've recently come into a sum of money from my grandmother. Far less than I'd expected, I must own, but the old harridan was shamefully extravagant."

"Rebecca" (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940). The Cad in brutally frank sexual mode in the Hitchcock classic. In one of his sleaziest parts (the Cad was always unethical, but not usually an actual criminal), Sanders plays the blackmailing playboy Jack Favel, former lover of the deceased, unpleasant Rebecca. Sanders is first seen climbing with debonair malevolence through a window, after which he leers lasciviously at quaking field-mouse Joan Fontaine. Later he forces his way into Laurence Olivier's carriage, where he insolently takes a drumstick from Sir Larry's hamper.

Lounge-lizard line: (Blackmailing Olivier while chomping on drumstick) "I'd like to have your advice on how to live comfortably without hard work."

"The Falcon's Brother" (Stanley Logan, 1942). Between 1939 and 1942, Sanders played the lead, an irreverent private eye with an eye for the ladies, in five "Saint" and four "Falcon" films. Sick of the role, he demanded out and was replaced as the Falcon by his real-life brother, Tom Conway. This feeble film is noteworthy only for its sort-of-ingenious role hand-off: George conveniently slumbers in a coma for most of the film, allowing Tom to take center stage before George is killed off at the end. In several amusing scenes, the older brother uses ventriloquism to imitate Sanders' sonorous voice.

"The Moon and Sixpence" (Albert Lewin, 1942). This unjustly neglected little gem, from the Maugham novel, features one of Sanders' most memorable performances as the brilliant, misogynistic, self-inventing painter Charles Strickland, a thinly disguised Gauguin. Sanders' Nietzschean persona blows away wimpy modern versions.

Insights into the social construction of gender: "Do you think I'd be such a fool as to leave my wife for a woman? I want to paint."

"Women are so unintelligent."

"Love is a disease, it's weakness. Women can do nothing but love, so they think it's all of life."

"Women have small minds and a concern with safety and security."

(Dying, just before he tells his Tahitian wife he loves her): "Women are strange little beasts ..."

"The Private Affairs of Bel-Ami" (Albert Lewin, 1946). This somewhat flat adaptation of the de Maupassant novel does capture something of the original's coldly obsessive allure. Sanders plays a ruthless, mustache-twirling cruiser who uses dastardly sexual treacheries (he discards a mother to marry her daughter) to make his way in the world, only to be gunned down by his dying adversary in the longest duel before the "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly."

Lounge-lizard line: (after seducing the aforementioned mother, a hitherto virtuous married woman) "I have lit a fire in an old, smoky chimney."

Insights into the social construction of gender (responding to the question as to whether the Venus de Milo is superior to living women): "I confess a preference for the living woman. A woman possesses one obvious advantage over a statue. She turns herself in the direction you desire, while with a statue you have to walk around her to get the right point of view, and that is tiring."

"The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry" (Robert Siodmak, 1945). Sanders shows his underutilized range, bringing dignity and tenderness to his portrayal of a meek, aging bachelor under the thumb of his twisted sister in this incest-tinged psychodrama. (The tacked-on happy ending, made in deference to the Hays Code stipulation that no crime go unpunished, led producer Joan Harrison to quit Universal.)

"Forever Amber" (Otto Preminger, 1947). A bowdlerized Restoration-era tale of a saucy wench's invincible lust for life, liberty and the pursuit of men in large wigs. Sanders is terrific as the cynical, sensual, not-so-merry monarch Charles II.

Lounge-lizard line: "No gesture of loyalty touches me so much as a husband's generosity."

Insights into the social construction of gender: "Your mind is like your wardrobe, my dear -- many changes but few surprises."

"All About Eve"(Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950). "Probably the best picture I have appeared in," mused Sanders in his autobiography. He was right. Sanders was born to play Addison DeWitt, the theater critic whom Bette Davis describes as "that venomous fishwife."

Lounge-lizard line (to Eve, as she tells him an outrageously obvious lie): "You know, Eve, sometimes I think you keep things from me."

"Death of a Scoundrel" (Charles Martin, 1956). Bel-Ami goes to New York. This mediocre morality fable about am emigree who becomes a tycoon -- and steps on four women doing it -- is the only film in which Sanders and Zsa Zsa Gabor, his second wife, appear together.

Lounge-lizard line (as he dances with a married woman who has told him "I'm already taken"): "I don't want to take, I just want to borrow."