Tom Conway
Tom Conway (born September 15, 1904 in Saint Petersburg , Russia , † April 22, 1967 in Culver City , Los Angeles County ) was a British actor and radio play speaker.
Life
Tom Conway was born Thomas Charles Sanders in Saint Petersburg, the first of three children. His parents, Henry Sanders (1873-1961) and Margaret Sanders (1875-1967), were British. He lived with them in Russia until the outbreak of the Russian Revolution in 1917. In England, Conway attended Brighton College with his brother George Sanders . After completing his training, Conway went to Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia ), where he worked in gold, copper and asbestos mines. He also tried his hand at being a farmer. However, since he was not successful in any of these professions, he returned to England and started as an engineer at a carburetor manufacturer. He later became a seller of safety glass.
While his younger brother George was already enjoying success in film, Conway began to appear with a small theater company from Manchester. At the same time he had the first radio play roles for the BBC . George Sanders persuaded him to come to Hollywood, so he arrived there in 1940 and started working for MGM . By 1942 he starred in twelve films for MGM. When his brother George wanted to leave the B-movie series The Falcon ( RKO ) in 1941 , he successfully proposed Conway as his successor, and another ten Falcon films followed by 1946. Allegedly, with a tossed coin, the Sanders brothers drew lots to see which of the two should change its name so as not to irritate the audience; George Sanders won, and Tom Conway went on to use his pseudonym. The main actor changed in 1942 in The Falcon's Brother , where Conway appears as Tom Lawrence, whose brother Gay Lawrence is murdered.
On August 10, 1941, he married Lillian Eggers (they divorced on July 24, 1953). In 1942 and 1943 he played supporting roles in three horror classics by the screenwriter Val Lewton : Cat People (1942), The Seventh Victim (1942) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943).
In addition to the Falcon series, Conway had radio appearances in 1947 as Sherlock Holmes , which he took over as the successor to Basil Rathbone . But the public did not accept him, and so he was replaced by John Stanley that same year . On television he played the role of Mark Saber in the detective series of the same name in 1951 . Conway used the crisis in the Hollywood studios in the early 1950s for films in Great Britain, for radio and television appearances. He replaced Vincent Price in his radio role as The Saint , which his brother George Sanders had played in the film a few years earlier.
However, his film appearances became less and less over the years. He played an exceptional role in October 1957 as ventriloquist Max Collodi in the thriller story The Glass Eye in the series Alfred Hitchcock Presents . He also made regular appearances on the Betty Hutton Show (1959). On February 11, 1958, he married the actress Queenie Leonard (they divorced on February 11, 1963). His last two films were a speaking role in the Disney film One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961) and a supporting role in What a Way to Go! (1964).
Although Tom Conway is said to have made more than a million dollars in his 24-year career, he ended up running into financial difficulties. Binge drinking led to the breakdown of his second marriage and increasingly to health problems such as visual disturbances. His brother George also broke off contact with him. At the end of 1964 he had cataract surgery , but from then on he had to wear thick glasses. When newspaper reports announced in September 1965 that he was living in a cheap shack in Venice , he received a little support from various quarters . During one of his increasingly frequent hospital stays, his former sister-in-law Zsa Zsa Gabor visited him in April 1967 . She slipped him $ 200 and allegedly said, "Give the nurses a little tip so they'll treat you well." The next day, Conway left the hospital on his own, went to his girlfriend's apartment, and died there on April 22nd Cirrhosis of the liver .
Filmography
- 1940: The Great Meddler - Director: Fred Zinnemann (short film)
- 1940: Her First Husband ( Waterloo Bridge ) (narrator) - Director: Mervyn LeRoy
- 1940: Sky Murder - Director: George B. Seitz
- 1941: The Wild Man of Borneo - Director: Robert B. Sinclair
- 1941: The Trial of Mary Dugan - Directed by Norman Z. McLeod
- 1941: Free and Easy - Directed by George Sidney
- 1941: The Bad Man - Directed by Richard Thorpe
- 1941: Dr. Kildare: On Trial ( The People vs. Dr. Kildare ) - Director: Harold S. Bucquet
- 1941: Lady Be Good - Director: Norman Z. McLeod
- 1941: Tarzan's Secret Treasure ( Tarzan's Secret Treasure ) - Director: Richard Thorpe
- 1942: Mr. and Mrs. North - Directed by Robert B. Sinclair
- 1942: Rio Rita - Director: S. Sylvan Simon
- 1942: Grand Central Murder - Directed by S. Sylvan Simon
- 1942: Mrs. Miniver - Directed by William Wyler
- 1942: The Falcon's Brother - Director: Stanley Logan
- 1942: Cat People ( Cat People )
- 1943: The Falcon Strikes Back - Directed by Edward Dmytryk
- 1943: I Walked with a Zombie ( I Walked with a Zombie ) - Director: Jacques Tourneur
- 1943: The Falcon in Danger - Director: William Clemens
- 1943: The Seventh Victim - Director: Mark Robson
- 1943: The Falcon and the Co-eds - Directed by William Clemens
- 1944: The Falcon Out West - Director: William Clemens
- 1944: A Night of Adventure - Directed by Gordon Douglas
- 1944: The Falcon in Mexico - Directed by William Berke
- 1944: The Falcon in Hollywood - Director: Gordon Douglas
- 1945: Two O'Clock Courage - Director: Anthony Mann
- 1945: The Falcon in San Francisco - Directed by Joseph H. Lewis
- 1946: Whistle Stop - Directed by Léonide Moguy
- 1946: The Falcon's Alibi - Director: Ray McCarey
- 1946: Criminal Court - Director: Robert Wise
- 1946: The Falcon's Adventure - Director: William Berke
- 1947: Lost Honeymoon - directed by Leigh Jason
- 1947: Fun on a Weekend - Directed by Andrew L. Stone
- 1947: Repeat Performance - Director: Alfred L. Werker
- 1948: 13 Lead Soldiers - Directed by Frank McDonald
- 1948: The Challenge - Directed by Jean Yarbrough
- 1948: The Checkered Coat - Directed by Edward L. Cahn
- 1948: Venus makes fling (One Touch of Venus) - Director: William A. Seiter
- 1948: Bungalow 13 - Directed by Edward L. Cahn
- 1949: I Cheated the Law - Directed by Edward L. Cahn
- 1950: The Great Plane Robbery - Director: Edward L. Cahn
- 1951: Painting the Clouds with Sunshine - Directed by David Butler
- 1951: Bride of the Gorilla - Director: Curt Siodmak
- 1952: Confidence Girl - Directed by Andrew L. Stone
- 1953: Peter Pan's cheerful adventure ( Peter Pan ) (speaking role) - directed by Clyde Geronimi , Wilfred Jackson
- 1953: Tarzan breaks the chains ( Tarzan and the She-Devil ) - Director: Kurt Neumann
- 1953: The Blonde Spy ( Park Plaza 605 ) - Director: Bernard Knowles
- 1953: Blood Orange - Directed by Terence Fisher
- 1953: Paris Model - Director: Alfred E. Green
- 1954: Prinz Eisenherz ( Prince Valiant ) - Director: Henry Hathaway
- 1955: Breakaway - Directed by Henry Cass
- 1955: Barbados Quest - Directed by Bernard Knowles
- 1956: The She-Creature - Director: Edward L. Cahn
- 1956: The Last Man to Hang? - Director: Terence Fisher
- 1956: Death of a Scoundrel - Director: Charles Martin
- 1957: Operation Murder - Directed by Ernest Morris
- 1957: Voodoo Woman - Directed by Edward L. Cahn
- 1959: All hell breaks loose on U-17 ( The Atomic Submarine ) - Director: Spencer Gordon Bennet
- 1960: 12 to the Moon - Director: David Bradley
- 1961: 101 Dalmatiner ( One Hundred and One Dalmatians ) (speaking role) - Director: Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Luske
- 1964: Always with someone else ( What a Way to Go! ) - Director: J. Lee Thompson
Web links
- Tom Conway in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Pictures and short biography on tvspielfilm.de
- Pictures and short biography on saint.org
personal data | |
---|---|
SURNAME | Conway, Tom |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Sanders, Thomas Charles (real name) |
BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British actor and radio play speaker |
DATE OF BIRTH | September 15, 1904 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Saint Petersburg , Russian Empire |
DATE OF DEATH | April 22, 1967 |
Place of death | Culver City , Los Angeles County , California , United States |