I let it be known that I might consider playing the part

In 1949, hearing that Ezio Pinza was leaving the original Broadway cast of South Pacific, George Sanders campaigned heavily to replace him in the part of Emile de Becque. He auditioned for Rodgers and Hammerstein; he won the part. He was engaged to appear for fifteen months. And then he promptly gave himself an anxiety attack over whether he could carry a show for that long, convinced himself he couldn't, and dropped out. I have always considered this a great loss for musical theater. Sanders had a classically trained baritone; it's not especially apparent from the one album he recorded professionally, The George Sanders Touch . . . Songs for the Lovely Lady (1958),¹ but if you've ever seen his elegantly shy foreign minister romanced by Ethel Merman's hostess with the mostest in Call Me Madam (1953), it's right there in "Marrying for Love." And if his identification with the archetype of the cad made him counterintuitive casting for a full-blown romantic lead, emotionally open rather than cynically charming, the role that really got me to notice him as an actor was also against type; I don't doubt that he could have done it. But he didn't, and I consigned the possibility to the same wistful alt-history as Robert Newton in Wuthering Heights (1939).

I just learned from YouTube that there are recordings: "Some Enchanted Evening" and "This Nearly Was Mine." I'm guessing they're the two sides of the audition record he mentions in his memoirs; he slightly flubs a lyric at one point, but not his strength of tone. And they're good. I'd hear an audition from someone who sent me that tape. I might want to hear a lot more of them. In more than one show, even.

Dammit, Sanders.

1. The richness of his voice is displayed to advantage, especially on languorous numbers like "September Song" and "As Time Goes By," but the material is mostly romantic pop standards; it doesn't show off his range or his control the same way.