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Sebastian Cabot (July 6, 1918 – August 22, 1977) was a film and television actor, best remembered as a gently composed "gentleman's gentleman" in the 1960s situation comedy Family Affair, but his sonorous voice and understated style belied his frequent typecasting as an Englishman trying to make sense of America.
Early career
Cabot was born in London, England. His career began with a bit part in Foreign Affaires (1935); his first screen credit was in Alfred Hitchcock's Secret Agent (1936). Other British films such as Love on the Dole, Pimpernel Smith, Old Mother Riley: Detective, and Old Mother Riley: Overseas followed. In 1946, he won the role of Iago in Othello. By 1947, Cabot had relocated to Hollywood, and landed roles in such films as They Made Me A Fugitive, Third Time Lucky, The Spider and the Fly, Ivanhoe, Babes in Baghdad, The Love Lottery, and the 1954 Italian version of Romeo and Juliet--as Capulet.
At about this time Cabot began taking on television work, appearing in such series as Along the Oregon Trail, The Adventures of Hiram Holiday, Checkmate (TV series), The Beachcomber, and an unforgettable appearance in The Twilight Zone,{aka A Nice Place to Visit} as the white-suited, courtly provider--who turns out to be the devil himself--of a vain but disillusioned man's every wish. In 1964, Cabot hosted the short-lived television series, Suspense, and voiced or narrated a few other film and television projects, before he was cast as Giles French in the CBS series Family Affair.
A Gentleman's Gentleman
Family Affair wasn't exactly a new concept; the bachelor uncle left to raise his suddenly orphaned nieces or nephews was as old as radio legend The Great Gildersleeve (1941-57) and as recent on television as Bachelor Father. But its comedy was gentle, sentimental, often saccharine but nevertheless written and acted sensitively enough to capture a wide audience for five years. Unlike The Great Gildersleeve, whose title character reined in his pomposity and learned to live with being the occasional fool; or, Bachelor Father's breezy suburban attorney Bentley Gregg, Family Affair's patriarchal, urbane uncle, William Davis (played by Brian Keith), understated the tension between his formerly swinging bachelor life and his on-the-job-training-like surrogate fatherhood, once he accepted the idea (it took about three episodes) that he'd be raising grade-school twins (Buffy and Jody Patterson, played by Anissa Jones and Johnny Whitaker) and a teenaged niece (Catherine "Cissy" Patterson, played by Kathy Garver), and discovered he had more to offer young parentally-bereaved children than just his tastefully arresting Manhattan penthouse apartment and his wealth.
Cabot as French balanced the tension with his rotund appearance, his genteel but slightly befuddled manner, and his occasionally implied romanticism, tending his bachelor employer and enduring his own growing pains as a surrogate parental figure. He was striking enough in that regard to help the show secure its audience---it was almost as much fun for viewers to anticipate his reactions as anything else on the show. Some of the show's most memorable sequences, in fact, involved French's relationships with various female housekeepers/nannies with whom he spent time as their employers' children played together in nearby parks, and there were hints throughout the series that French himself had a romantic interest (usually, with a "Miss Fabersham") that he was never quite able to let himself fulfill.
Typecast?
Cabot didn't cease his other film and television work during the series' run--in fact, he took a leave of absence (his stand-in: veteran British character actor John Williams, as French's brother Nigel, or Niles) from Family Affair at one point during the series' run--and he worked well in voice roles (Bagheera in The Jungle Book; the narrator of Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day; host of Journey to Midnight). But he was so vivid as French that he never shook the image even after Family Affair finally ended production in 1971. Perhaps Cabot's most memorable role following the series' demise was in the television remake of Miracle on 34th Street. On the one hand, Cabot lent the role of Kris Kringle a hinted depth that referenced old Giles French's maturing sensitivity, but on the other hand he wasn't enough to make viewers forget Edmund Gwenn's incomparable ownership of the role in the film that still receives an average thirty showings on Christmas-season television. In fairness, he couldn't possibly compete with that kind of saturation, but it was to his credit that he acquitted himself as he did.
Epilogue
Cabot appeared in another Christmas project, the television film The City That Forgot About Christmas (1974), and narrated two more Pooh projects, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, Too! and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, before his death of a stroke in North Saanich, British Columbia, Canada at age 59. He lived his final years near Sidney, British Columbia. Audiences almost three decades after his death remain familiar with Cabot, through periodic replays of his Twilight Zone appearance and, once in awhile, a syndicated revival of Family Affair reruns. A memorable career high point was his two-year stint as one of the three leads on Eric Ambler's superb 1960 detective show Checkmate (TV series).
Of the other Family Affair cast, Anissa Jones---whose off-camera life was as troubled as her character's became bucolic---died of a drug overdose at age 18. Brian Keith, depressed by a daughter's suicide and his own battle with lung cancer, committed suicide in 1997; he had previously starred in a 1980s TV series, Hardcastle and McCormick. Johnnie Whittaker acted in a few television and film roles following Family Affair, but has not been known to have acted since 1977's Mulligan's Stew. Kathy Garver has since made a low-keyed but respected career as an actress, particularly in voice-over work and in audio books.
Sebastian Cabot is interred in the urn garden in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, California near Brian Keith.
External links
1918 births | 1977 deaths | British film actors | British television actors | British voice actors | Deaths by stroke | Londoners | The Twilight Zone actors
"Sebastian Cabot (actor)"