'A helper method that does the actual sending.'

def _send(self, email_message):

    if (not email_message.recipients()):
        return False
    encoding = (email_message.encoding or settings.DEFAULT_CHARSET)
    from_email = sanitize_address(email_message.from_email, encoding)
    recipients = [sanitize_address(addr, encoding) for addr in email_message.recipients()]
    message = email_message.message()
    try:
        self.connection.sendmail(from_email, recipients, message.as_bytes(linesep='\r\n'))
    except smtplib.SMTPException:
        if (not self.fail_silently):
            raise
        return False
    return True
