I’d read a snippet on IMDB that George Sanders had actually participated in a duel of pistols with a rival over a paramour, but no details were given. Does anybody on the SDMB know the details leading up to this duel as well as the aftermath?
It’s detailed in his autobiography, Memoirs of a Professional Cad.
He was working as a promoter for a tobacco company in Chile. Instead of a hotel, he found more comfortable rooms in a villa outside of town with a wealthy widow. She was engaged to be remarried to a lawyer from Temuco, a city 400 miles from Santiago. The fiance resented Sanders, and took to marching out there every night and banging on the shutters. (Yes, I know this wouldn’t make an sense even if the lawyer was a local, but it’s Sanders’ story.) One night Sanders was too drunk to put up with such effrontery and threw open the window and confronted him, pistol in hand. The fiance, just as blind drunk, challenged him to a duel.
Sanders dropped to the ground. This was suburban Santiago in the 1930s. There were no lights. They could not even see one another. He heard a crunch on the gravel and fired in that direction. Apparently, the bullet hit the man in his neck, was deflected downward, and wound up in his back, giving him a permanent limp. (See comment above.)
Sanders was immediately tossed in the local clink. And the company just as immediately got him free. This rings true, because that’s what companies regularly finagled in those days. But as part of the deal, the company kicked him out… of the country.
He never went back, and also said that he never picked up a gun since, because that was too close to a stupid and fatal end.
This is of course the same man who published two mystery novels that he never wrote a word of. Feel free to take this story with the Bonneville Salt Flats.
Thank you for the information. As a storyteller myself, I know how easy it is to embellish an actual incident for “dramatic effect” but as you point out, it’s probably a good idea to take Mr. Sanders’ version of this with a big grain of salt.