John Sutton(1908-1963)
- Actor
Of British parentage, John Sutton was born in Rawalpindi, India (now
part of Pakistan), on October 22, 1908. After graduating from
Wellington College, he spent a decade or so working in various British
colonies, including several in Africa, as a hunter, rancher and tea
plantation manager. An avid wanderlust adventurer in the same vein as
Errol Flynn (with whom he worked in
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938))
during his pre-Hollywood days, Sutton lived all over the world,
including China, Malaya and the Philippines. He somehow arrived in
Hollywood in the mid-'30s as a technical consultant on films with a
British Empire background. He was a dark, handsome man and, eventually,
this caught directors' eyes and he was placed in front of the camera.
Making an unbilled debut in
The Last of the Mohicans (1936),
he apprenticed in a number of bit roles for a couple of years,
including a minor running part in the "Bulldog Drummond" series from
1937-1939. Unlike Flynn, however, this slick-looking actor had more
slivery eyes to match his slivery mustache and a shadier countenance.
For most of his career he would find himself more on the cruel end of a
romantic triangle. As the "other man" or hero's adversary, he was shown
at his best as flashy, slimy swashbucklers who met their fate at the
end of the sword in the final reel. He peaked in the 1940s at 20th
Century-Fox, where he carved out quite a nasty niche for himself in
such films as Hudson's Bay (1940),
Jane Eyre (1943),
Captain from Castile (1947),
Adventures of Casanova (1948),
The Three Musketeers (1948),
Bride of Vengeance (1949) and
The Fan (1949). Occasionally he was asked
to play a lead, particularly at a time when all the romantic male stars
were serving their country during WWII, in films such as
Moon Over Her Shoulder (1941)
and
Tonight We Raid Calais (1943).
In the 1950s his film career waned and he took on TV roles. Sutton died
suddenly in August of 1963 of a heart attack in Cannes, France, at the
age of 54, shortly after finishing work on
Of Human Bondage (1964) in
England.
