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Richard Henry "Peter" Sellers, CBE (8
September 1925 24 July 1980) was an English comedian, actor, and
performer, who came to prominence on the BBC radio series The Goon Show
and later became a film star. He is regarded by many as one of the best
actors of his generation.[citation needed]
****
Birth name Richard Henry "Peter" Sellers
Born 8 September 1925
Portsmouth, Hampshire, England
Died 24 July 1980, age 54
London, England
****
Biography
Sellers was born in Southsea, Portsmouth,
England, to a family of entertainers. Despite his real name being
Richard Henry Sellers, his parents called him "Peter" from an early age,
in memory of his older still-born brother of that name.[citation needed]
He attended a Roman Catholic school, although his father Bill was
Protestant and his mother Agnes ("Peg") was Jewish.
Probably following his family in the
variety circuit,[citation needed] Sellers learnt this popular yet
difficult art and the immediate instinct of the "gag". He was an
incredibly versatile artist: an excellent dancer, a drummer good enough
to tour with several jazz bands (an excellent clip of him drumming
exists when he was a guest on the Steve Allen show in 1964), and a
skillful player of the ukulele and banjo (family legend has it that
Sellers' father actually taught George Formby to play the
ukulele)[citation needed]. He is known to have performed at the Windmill
Theatre.[citation needed]
During World War II, Sellers was an airman
in the Royal Air Force, rising to corporal by the end of the war. During
his leisure periods, he did impersonations of his superiors.[citation
needed] This helped Sellers in his later film Dr. Strangelove.
His success was quite slow in coming. He
phoned up a television producer pretending to be Kenneth Horne, who was
currently in the show Much Binding in the Marsh, in order to get them to
speak to him. Success came as one of the Goons on the radio programme
The Goon Show with fellow comedians Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and
Michael Bentine and was followed by early television work.
Sellers' first film successes were in
British comedies, including The Ladykillers (1955), I'm All Right Jack
(1959) and The Mouse That Roared (1959). On the international scene, in
1962 he portrayed an Indian doctor in The Road to Hong Kong, the seventh
and last in the Bing Crosby/Bob Hope/Dorothy Lamour "Road" series.
Sellers was launched internationally with
the hit The Millionairess which inspired the UK top ten George Martin
production"Goodness Gracious Me" with co star Sophia Loren (1960). He
was in Stanley Kubrick's Lolita in which he played Clare Quilty. After
Stanley Kubrick decided to make his next film Dr. Strangelove a comedy,
Columbia Pictures insisted on Sellers being cast. In Stanley Kubrick's
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
(1964) he notably played a triple role, comprising U.S. President Merkin
Muffley, Dr. Strangelove, and Group Captain Lionel Mandrake of the RAF
(the first two appearing in the same room throughout the film). Sellers
was also originally cast in the role of Major T. J. 'King' Kong. At
first, he had trouble perfecting a Southern accent, but a member of the
crew made a recording of a Texan accent[citation needed] and Sellers was
able to master it. However, during a scene, Sellers fell 15 feet from a
cockpit and broke his leg preventing him from climbing in and out of the
cockpit so Kubrick replaced Sellers with Slim Pickens.
Preceding his roles in Dr. Strangelove,
Sellers is most famous for his role as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau,
the role that Peter Ustinov had declined in the Pink Panther movies,
which gave him a worldwide audience, first in The Pink Panther in 1963
and then its sequel, the superior A Shot in the Dark in which he is
featured far more prominently in 1964. He returned to the character for
three more sequels from 1975 to 1978. The Trail of the Pink Panther was
released after his death in 1982, containing previously unused footage
of Sellers. His widow Lynne Frederick later successfully sued the film's
producers.
He was a remarkably versatile actor,
switching easily from broad comedy as in The Party (1968), to more
intense performances, as in Lolita, where he played Clare Quilty, the
nemesis of the film's (and novel's) principal protagonist, Humbert
Humbert.
Sellers' career had slumped by the early
1970s (he was dubbed "box office poison")[citation needed], but, after
reviving the Clouseau character, he was able to produce his
cherished[citation needed] project Being There in 1979, winning his best
reviews since the 1960s. This brought him his second Academy Award
nomination. He was unsuccessful on both occasions, although he did win a
Golden Globe for Being There and a British Academy Award (BAFTA) for I'm
All Right Jack. Commonly[citation needed] considered a master actor and
sometimes described[citation needed] as an "obsessive perfectionist",
Sellers found in Blake Edwards a devoted director who could delicately
underline and follow his comic rhythms. Edwards defined Sellers as a
"mercurial clown" who could turn comedy into drama, and vice-versa, in
an instant.[citation needed] He could also be cruel, as he demonstrated
in his treatment of actress Jo Van Fleet on the set of I Love You, Alice
B. Toklas (1968), when she made a slight faux pas and offended
him.[citation needed]
Sellers had casual friendships[citation
needed] with two of the Beatles, George Harrison and Ringo Starr.
Harrison told occasional Sellers' stories in interviews, and Starr
appeared with him in the anarchic movie The Magic Christian (1970),
whose theme song was Badfinger's cover version of Paul McCartney's "Come
and Get It". Starr also gave Sellers a rough mix of songs from the
Beatles' White Album, and the tape was auctioned (and bootlegged) after
his death. Perhaps his more famous association with The Beatles is his
cover of "A Hard Day's Night" (1965)in the style of Laurence Oliver's
interpretation of Richard III.
Sellers was also a close friend of Princess
Margaret.[citation needed] He loved cars: he was believed to have owned
and sold many different models by the 1960s. This was briefly parodied
in a fleeting cameo in the short film Simon Simon[1], which was directed
by his friend Graham Stark. It was also mentioned in the The Goon Show
episode "The Space Age", where Harry Secombe introduces Sellers with the
comment: "Good Heavens, it's Peter Sellers, who has just broken his own
record of keeping a car for more than a month".
Sellers was the first man to appear on the
cover of Playboy he appeared on the April (1964) cover with Karen
Lynn.
Sellers played ukulele-banjo on the New
York Girls track for Steeleye Span's 1975 album, Commoner's Crown.
Much of Sellers' genius however was greatly
marred by his personal life. Sellers could be a difficult person. He was
extremely eccentric and hurt many people throughout his life, including
his first three wives.[citation needed] For instance he told his eldest
child that his first wife was having an affair with the decorator when
the child was only 8.[citation needed] No such affair was ever going
on.[citation needed] When his second wife Britt Ekland brought their
child onto the set of one of the films they starred in together he would
often go into a rage and demand the child be taken off set.[citation
needed] During a speech on the day of the release of one of his films
with director and friend Blake Edwards he publicly attacked
Edwards.[citation needed] After the death of his mother Sellers would
often hit Ekland.[citation needed] He also often sniffed alkyl
nitrites.[citation needed]
Marriages
Sellers was married four times:
Actress Anne Howe (19511961). They had two
children, Michael and Sarah, together. This marriage ended after she
claimed he was having affairs with Wanda Jackson and Sophia
Loren.[citation needed]The latter is disputed: Loren has maintained that
Sellers had become obsessed with her, but she did not respond to his
advances.[citation needed]
Swedish actress Britt Ekland (19641968).
Peter and Britt had a daughter, Victoria, together. The couple appeared
in two films together: After the Fox (1966) and The Bobo (1967).
Australian model Miranda Quarry (now the
Countess of Stockton) (19701974)
English actress Lynne Frederick
(19771980), who later married Sir David Frost.
Premature death and legacy
In 1964 at the age of 39, Sellers had
suffered a near-fatal heart attack. This seriously damaged his heart and
affected his health for the rest of his life. Sellers' condition
worsened when he decided to put off seeking proper medical treatment,
instead opting for "treatment" from psychic healers. [2] He also wore a
pacemaker which caused him considerable problems. [citation needed]
A reunion dinner was scheduled to take
place in London with Goon Show partners Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe
in the latter part of July, 1980. This reunion never took place: on 22
July Sellers suffered a massive heart attack and collapsed in his London
Dorchester hotel room. He died 36 hours later in a London hospital just
after midnight on 24 July 1980, at the age 54. He was survived by his
fourth wife, the English actress Lynne Frederick and his three children
Michael, Sarah and Victoria. Ironically, at the time of his death he was
due to undergo heart surgery within the month in L.A. The only personal
item in his wallet was a photo of his first wife, Anne Howe.[citation
needed]
On the day of his heart attack, Sellers had
apparently meant to sign divorce papers and write his fourth wife out of
his will.[citation needed] This did not take place, and she subsequently
inherited most of his estate. His children Michael and Sarah received
only ฃ800 (less than two thousand American dollars) each.[citation
needed]
In his will, Sellers explicitly requested
that Glenn Miller's song "In the Mood" be played at his funeral. The
request is considered his last touch of humour: his friends knew he
hated the song. [citation needed] His body was cremated, and he was
interred at Golders Green Crematorium.
Roger Lewis wrote about the madness and
bizarre behaviour of Sellers in his biography, The Life and Death of
Peter Sellers (Applause Books, 1997). Lewis' biography was adapted for
the HBO/BBC movie, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004), with
Geoffrey Rush in the title role.
In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's
Comedian, Sellers was voted among the top 20 greatest comedy acts ever
by fellow comedians and comedy insiders.
Sellers' only son, Michael, died of a heart
attack at age 52 during surgery on 24 July 2006, 26 years to the day
after his father died of the same cause. He is survived by his second
wife Alison, whom he married in 1986, and their two children.
Filmography
v d e Main Filmography
The Ladykillers (1955) | The Smallest Show
on Earth (1957) | The Naked Truth (1957) | The Mouse That Roared
(1959) | I'm All Right Jack (1959) | The Millionairess (1960) | Two Way
Stretch (1960) | Battle of the Sexes (1960) | Only Two Can Play (1962) |
The Wrong Arm of the Law (1962) | Lolita (1962) | The Pink Panther
(1963) | Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love
the Bomb (1964) | The World of Henry Orient (1964) | A Shot in the Dark
(1964) | What's New, Pussycat?(1965) | Casino Royale (1967) | The Bobo
(1967) | The Party (1968) | I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (1968) | The
Magic Christian (1969) | There's a Girl in My Soup (1970) | The Return
of the Pink Panther (1975) | Murder by Death (1976) | The Pink Panther
Strikes Again (1976) | The Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978) | The
Prisoner of Zenda (1979) | Being There (1979) | The Fiendish Plot of Dr.
Fu Manchu (1980)
Other Scripts
The Romance Of The Pink Panther was a
script that Peter Sellers was working on at the time of his death. He
had planned to complete the film without Blake Edwards. (More
information can be found in the book Peter Sellers - A Celebration)
Comedy Singles
Sellers released several comedy singles
many of them produced by George Martin and released on the Parlophone
record label. These include the following hits:
"Any Old Iron" (1957) UK # 17
"Goodness Gracious Me" (1960) with Sophia
Loren UK # 4
"Bangers and Mash" (1961) UK # 22
"A Hard Day's Night" (1965) UK # 14
This was re-issued in 1993 and reached
Number 52 in the UK Top 75 Singles chart. He covered several other
Beatles hits, including Help! and She Loves You.
Albums
Peter Sellers Hit Discography is as
follows:
The Best of Sellers (1959) UK # 3
Songs For Swinging Sellers (1959) UK # 3
Peter & Sophia (1960) UK # 5 with Sophia
Loren
Fool Britania (1963) UK # 10 with Anthony
Newley and Joan Collins.
How To Win An Election (1964) UK # 20 with
Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan (Note: unlike The Last Goon Show Of All
this release was not credited to The Goons.)
****
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