Erskine Sanford

Erskine Sanford

Birth : 1885-11-19, Trinidad, Colorado, USA

Death : 1969-07-07

History

Erskine Sanford was an American actor on the stage, in radio and motion pictures. As a member of Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre company he appears in several of Welles's films, most notably as the bumbling, perspiring newspaper editor Herbert Carter in Citizen Kane!

Profile

Erskine Sanford

Movies

Too Much Johnson
Frederick
This film was not intended to stand by itself, but was designed as the cinematic aspect of Welles' Mercury Theatre stage presentation of William Gillette's 1894 comedy about a New York playboy who flees from the violent husband of his mistress and borrows the identity of a plantation owner in Cuba who is expecting the arrival of a mail order bride. The film component of the performance was ultimately never screened due to the absence of projection facilities at the venue. Long-believed to be lost, a workprint was discovered in 2008 and the film had its premiere in 2013.
Sierra
Judge Prentiss
Ring Hassard and his father Jeff, wild horse breakers, live in a hidden mountain eyrie as Jeff is wanted for a murder he didn't commit. Things change when they take in a lost young lady, Riley Martin, who finds that Ring has "never seen a woman close up." Jeff is injured, Ring runs afoul of horse thieves and the law, and Riley (who is a lawyer) labors to clear the Hassards (who others would prefer dead).
Night Unto Night
Dr. Gallen Altheim
A bleak mansion sits ominously on a cliff above the sea somewhere on Florida's east coast. In its shadows, two people meet: a scientist haunted by incurable illness and a beautiful woman haunted by the voice of her dead husband. Ronald Reagan and Hollywood-debuting Viveca Lindfors star in an eerie drama steeped in religious faith and supernatural fear, in the destructive power of sexual jealousy and the redemptive power of love. In one of his earliest directorial efforts, Don Siegel (Dirty Harry, The Shootist) displays his command of pacing and camerawork, building the action to a climactic hurricane that parallels the tumultuous emotions of characters precariously balanced between now and the hereafter.
Impact
Dr. Henry Bender
After surviving a murder attempt, an auto magnate goes into hiding so his wife can pay for the crime.
Wake of the Red Witch
Dr. van Arken
Captain Ralls fights Dutch shipping magnate Mayrant Sidneye for the woman he loves, Angelique Desaix, and for a fortune in gold aboard the Red Witch.
Kidnapped
Rankeillor
In Scotland in 1752, seventeen-year-old David Balfour is cheated out of his birthright by his evil uncle Ebenezer.
Macbeth
Duncan
A Scottish warlord and his wife murder their way to a pair of crowns.
Texas, Brooklyn & Heaven
Dr. Danson (uncredited)
Eddie Tayloe's grandfather leaves him six thousand dollars and the money belt it came in, freeing Tayloe to leave his dull newspaper job in Texas and move to New York to become a playwright. Along the way, his car breaks down and a girl walking along the highway asks for a lift. It turns out she's a nice girl, named Perry, running away from a job at a gasoline station. Soon they're off to New York together, but part ways once they arrive. Time passes and Eddie is failing to sell his play; Perry is failing to find a job. Odd circumstances, involving an old pickpocket named Mandy, bring them together again.
Letter from an Unknown Woman
Porter
A pianist about to flee from a duel receives a letter from a woman he cannot remember. As she tells the story of her lifelong love for him, he is forced to reinterpret his own past.
You Were Meant for Me
Frank Smith (uncredited)
A bandleader falls in love and marries a small town girl.
The Voice of the Turtle
Storekeeper
An aspiring Broadway actress falls in love with a soldier on leave during a weekend in New York City.
The Lady from Shanghai
Judge
A romantic drifter gets caught between a corrupt tycoon and his voluptuous wife.
Possessed
Dr. Sherman - Graham's physician at inquest
After being found wandering the streets of Los Angeles, a severely catatonic woman tells a doctor the complex story of how she wound up there.
The Best Years of Our Lives
Bullard
It's the hope that sustains the spirit of every GI: the dream of the day when he will finally return home. For three WWII veterans, the day has arrived. But for each man, the dream is about to become a nightmare.
Angel on My Shoulder
Minister
The Devil arranges for a deceased gangster to return to Earth as a well-respected judge to make up for his previous life.
Crack-Up
Museum Director Barton
Art curator George Steele experiences a train wreck...which never happened. Is he cracking up, or the victim of a plot?
The Stranger
Party Guest (uncredited)
An investigator from the War Crimes Commission travels to Connecticut to find an infamous Nazi, who may be hiding out in a small town in the guise of a distinguished professor engaged to the Supreme Court Justice’s daughter.
Without Reservations
Timothy Helgelander (uncredited)
Kit Madden is traveling to Hollywood, where her best-selling novel is to be filmed. Aboard the train, she encounters Marines Rusty and Dink, who don't know she is the author of the famous book, and who don't think much of the ideas it proposes. She and Rusty are greatly attracted, but she doesn't know how to deal with his disdain for the book's author.
From This Day Forward
Higgler
A young American soldier, with an honorable discharge, returns home from World War II to his bride, whom he married after a short courtship and has not seen for several years. The two come together with many trials and tribulations in trying to preserve their marriage in the post-war years.
Spellbound
Dr. Galt (uncredited)
When Dr. Anthony Edwardes arrives at a Vermont mental hospital to replace the outgoing hospital director, Dr. Constance Peterson, a psychoanalyst, discovers Edwardes is actually an impostor. The man confesses that the real Dr. Edwardes is dead and fears he may have killed him, but cannot recall anything. Dr. Peterson, however is convinced his impostor is innocent of the man's murder, and joins him on a quest to unravel his amnesia through psychoanalysis.
Girls of the Big House
Professor O'Neill
A women's prison provides the setting for this drama that centers around a naive small-town woman framed by a man whom she met in a nightclub in the big city. She is not welcomed by the inmates and immediately the prisoners are divided.
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Undertaker (uncredited)
In Brooklyn circa 1900, the Nolans manage to enjoy life on pennies despite great poverty and Papa's alcoholism. We come to know these people well through big and little troubles: Aunt Sissy's scandalous succession of "husbands"; the removal of the one tree visible from their tenement; and young Francie's desire to transfer to a better school...if irresponsible Papa can get his act together.
Mr. Skeffington
Dr. Fawcette
A beautiful but vain woman who rejects the love of her older husband must face the loss of her youth and beauty.
Ministry of Fear
George Rennit, private investigator
Stephen Neale is released into WWII England after two years in an asylum, but it doesn't seem so sane outside either. On his way back to London to rejoin civilization, he stumbles across a murderous spy ring and doesn't quite know to whom to turn.
Jane Eyre
Mr. Briggs (uncredited)
After a harsh childhood, orphan Jane Eyre is hired by Edward Rochester, the brooding lord of a mysterious manor house to care for his young daughter.
The Magnificent Ambersons
Roger Bronson
The spoiled young heir to the decaying Amberson fortune comes between his widowed mother and the man she has always loved.
The Wife Takes a Flyer
Jan
Christopher Reynolds, an American flying with the R.A.F, is shot down over German-occupied Holland and is given shelter by a Dutch family. Posing as the insane husband of the daughter of the house, Anita Wolverman, Reynolds convinces the German officer quartered there, Major Zellfritz, with the necessity for her divorce decree to be granted. After the court-hearing, Anita, goes to manage a home for retired ladies and, persuaded by Reynolds, tries to gain military information from the German Officer. When her former husband escapes from the insane-asylum his exploits are blamed on Reynolds. With the help of the old ladies and Anita, who "remarries" him, Reynolds escapes to England in a stolen German airplane.
Appointment for Love
Hastings' Butler (uncredited)
Charming Andre Cassil woos physician Jane Alexander and the two impulsively get married. The honeymoon ends very quickly when Jane voices her progressive views on marriage which include the two having separate apartments. Andre then tries to make his wife jealous in order to lure her into his bedroom.
Citizen Kane
Herbert Carter
Newspaper magnate, Charles Foster Kane is taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. As a result, every well-meaning, tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event.
Pop Always Pays
John Hayes
A businessman boasts he'll give his daughter a large amount of cash for her wedding, and then frantically tries to raise the money. This 1940 comedy stars Leon Errol, Marjorie Gateson, Dennis O'Keefe, Adele Pearce and Walter Catlett.