Father and son actors in the film profession is not unique – I can think of Kirk Douglas and and Michael,  James Brolin and his son Josh and John Carradine and his son David – and a different relationship would be George Sanders and his Brother Tom Conway.

However Geoffrey Keen and Malcolm Keen being English both featured in mainly British films although on checking further it seems that Malcolm Keen had a few years in Hollywood and appeared in a number of films there.

It appears that Malcolm was successful on stage in New York in the late fories and early fifties and from 1950 to 1952 seems to have done his films there also.

They did appear in the same film a few times – one being Rob Roy The Highland Rogue and later than that ‘Fortune is a Woman’ where I think they played father and son.

Now on to George Sanders his Brother Tom Conway

That highly underrated actor, Tom Conway — was the older brother (by two years) of the Oscar-winning, George Sanders.

Tom Conway was born in St Petersburg in Russia – as was his brother – in 1904 under the name Thomas Charles Sanders.  When he followed George to Hollywood, he changed his surname to Conway. After a while  the likeable Conway was referred to as “the nice George Sanders.”

Comparisons with his much more successful younger brother apparently never bothered Conway as the two got on well.  It was George who persuaded his brother to try Hollywood after his radio and stage appearances in their adopted country.

The Sanders came from a wealthy St. Petersburg family who had fled the Russian revolution to England.

In Hollywood, George Sanders was a supportive brother.  The fact that Tom made an unsuccessful (screen) test should not depress him, he wrote in a 1937 letter to their father. I have made plenty of unsuccessful tests, and so has everyone else in the business, and the fact they said Tom did not photograph well should be no cause for alarm, since they said precisely the same thing to Ronald Colman!

After a stint at MGM, Conway shifted to RKO where he made his most memorable film appearances. He starred in 10 titles of the studio’s profitable Falcon mystery series, taking over the lead abandoned by brother George — who was on his way to bigger things.