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Like Errol Flynn, John Sutton led an adventuresome pre-Hollywood life in the British colonies, working at various junctures as a hunter, plantation overseer and rancher. Unlike Flynn, Sutton was not immediately perceived as the dashingly heroic type; thus, when he finally made his way to Tinseltown in 1936, he worked not as an actor but as a technical consultant in films with British themes. First appearing before the cameras in 1937, Sutton found himself ideally suited for costume villainy, barking out such dialogue as "After them, you fools!" and "Now I shall deal with this so-called Masked Avenger!" He spent most of the 1940s as a "utility Englishman" at 20th Century-Fox, essaying both sympathetic and sneering roles: he was seen as Lord Crewe in Hudson's Bay (1940), Dr. Rivers in Jane Eyre (1943), and Cecil Graham in The Fan, a 1949 adaptation of Wilde's Lady Windemere's Fan. He also played leads in the Fox programmers Moon Over Her Shoulder (1942) and Tonight We Raid Calais (1943), and was cast as the Duke of Buckingham in MGM's 1948 remake of The Three Musketeers. Contrary to previously published reports, Sutton did not play soldier-of-fortune Bulldog Drummond in Paramount's "Drummond" series of the 1930s, though he did have minor roles in Bulldog Drummond's Revenge and Bulldog Drummond Comes Back (both 1937). John Sutton died of heart failure at the age of 54, shortly after finishing work on 1964's Of Human Bondage.