Mr. Strangelove: A Biography of Peter Sellers (31 page)

The cops are onto him. An officer played by Lionel Jeffries conveys the
news in a scene of dueling accents:

J
EFFRIES:
Well gor bilmey, it’s “Pearly” Gates!

S
ELLERS:
I’m delighted to meet you, but there mus’ be some meestek! My nem is Sharls Jewlz.

J
EFFRIES:
Oh don’t gimme that. When I took you in in 1948 you was “Pearly” Gates, an’ “Pearly” Gates you’ll always be.

S
ELLERS:
Inspecteur, 1948 was a long time ageu. Theengs shenge.

J
EFFRIES:
Look, mite, jus’ ’cause you sell a few women’s frocks in the
West End it does not mean to say that things change.

S
ELLERS:
[Enraged, and thus reverting to Pearly-speak]: I do not sell
“women’s frocks” in the West End. I sell
gowns
,
mite
.”

The Wrong Arm of the Law
opened in the United Kingdom in March
1963, and in New York the following month. What’s most curious about
the film is not its gimmick (because a rival gang of Australian crooks dresses
up as cops and steals from “Pearly,” “Pearly” teams up with the real cops),
nor the fact that the film was cowritten by several of the writers of
Idiot
Weekly, Price 2d
(Ray Galton, Alan Simpson, and John Antrobus), but this:
At this point in his career, Peter was attracting directors of the stature of
Stanley Kubrick, not to mention the Boultings and Anthony Asquith, and
still he ended up taking on another role in another small-scale movie
made by a competent but undistinguished director (Cliff Owen).

Why wasn’t an actor of Peter’s caliber more discerning? For one thing,
he liked money. He certainly wasn’t born to it, and he enjoyed his wealth.
But financial desire (to the unsympathetic, the word would be
greed
) seems
secondary to the emotional gratification he seized from the roles into which
he threw himself. Work was essential, it was sport; work was a necessary
distraction,
it was simply what he did
. Performing filled him in a way the
rest of the world could not. Without constant filming and recording, Peter
Sellers was simply unable to stand it.

• • •

Naturally, he found his way to Hollywood. After
Waltz of the Toreadors
opened in London in mid-April, Peter embarked on his first trip to Los
Angeles, with a weeklong stopover in New York on the way. There was
also a brief side trip to Washington.

In New York, he received his many supplicant flacks and hacks in a
Hampshire House suite. He had much to report. Larry had offered him
the Shakespeare role, after all; his car collection made its prolix appearance;
he had no personality of his own; he was quite boring, really; and so on.
He was a heavy smoker, readers learned. His cigarettes were described as
“oversized,” the normal length apparently not able to provide the necessary
jolt. And he told the
New York Times
of his experiences in Burma during
World War II: “As a corporal I had the completely unglamorous job of
arming up fighter planes with shells and bombs.”
A corporal?
When Peter
Sellers was in Burma—briefly—he was drumming and telling jokes.

With
Lolita
about to open, Peter announced to the public that he
wasn’t happy with it. And he was particularly nervous about how his American accent would come off to Americans.

But he seemed giddy with the imminent prospect of Tinseltown: “I
can’t wait to see Hollywood! It may sound a bit silly, but I almost feel I’d
like to have an autograph book along.” He actually did take one.

• • •

On Friday, April 27, at the annual black-tie White House Press Dinner at
Washington’s Sheraton-Park Hotel, Peter Sellers of North London and
Ilfracombe met John F. Kennedy of the White House and Hyannisport as
well as Harold Macmillan of 10 Downing Street. Kennedy and Sellers impressed each other; Macmillan’s response remains less clear.

Benny Goodman, Elliott Reid, Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon (who
performed bits from
Damn Yankees
), and Peter provided the evening’s entertainment. Among the fifteen hundred guests were Vice President Lyndon
Johnson, Chief Justice Earl Warren, seven Cabinet members, the entire
White House press corps, and enough British reporters to cover any little
scandal that might helpfully occur. Elliott Reid did his impersonation of
Kennedy. Peter began by announcing that he never consciously tried to be
funny, after which he did a hilarious impression of Macmillan.

Responding with characteristic warmth and laughter, Kennedy, who
had recently ripped into the American steel industry for raising prices, said
of Sellers and Reid (whose impersonation consisted of Kennedy ripping
into the steel industry), “I’ve arranged for them to appear next week on the
U.S. Steel Hour.” Kennedy then clarified the issue for the crowd: “Actually,
I didn’t do it. Bobby did it.”

But with Peter’s Macmillan imitation, the British press got its scandal.
It was not newsworthy for an American comedian to mimic his president’s
distinctive Bostonian accent; everyone in America was doing it. And Kennedy, as his friend and aide Ted Sorensen recalls, “loved to laugh.” But a
British half-Jew mocking his conservative prime minister’s patrician voice—to the prime minister’s face—was apparently unconscionable. Hungrily,
British newspaper reporters forced Peter to justify himself.

In the first place, he said,
they
had asked
him
. “The Office of the prime
minister called me in London,” Peter explained under pressure, “and I told
them they wanted Mort Sahl. I’m no stand-up comic. They insisted, and I
finally agreed to do five minutes of mild political joking, on the condition
I could have my picture taken with the leaders.

“
He
was on home ground,” Peter said, referring to Elliott Reid. “And
he knew already how much the President enjoyed his take-off.” Sellers went
on to explain that he’d met Macmillan at the reception before the dinner
and that Macmillan told him to go ahead and do it. “Don’t forget,” the
prime minister told the comedian—“No holds barred.” “So I barred no
holds,” said Peter. “And Mr. Macmillan took it as sportingly as President
Kennedy took the Elliott Reid skit.” If only the British press had been as
sporting.

For his part, JFK told Sellers that he’d loved several of his films, though
Sellers didn’t want to bring up the subject of
Lolita
’s looming release, apparently for fear of offending Kennedy by mentioning a sex story.

• • •

Three days later Peter Sellers was in Hollywood, lunching with an MGM
executive on the Culver City lot in the afternoon and dining with the
director Billy Wilder in Beverly Hills at Chasens that night.

Offers were already pouring in. For example, they wanted him for
Peter
Pan
. George Cukor would direct.

If it hadn’t been for his body, about which he could only do so much,
Peter Sellers would not have made a bad Peter Pan. But in this proposed
production the role of Peter was to go to Audrey Hepburn, with Peter as
Captain Hook. Hayley Mills would be Wendy.

As with most business in Hollywood, there was a lot of buzz and very
little action, and Peter found it frustrating. “I know it’s exciting to have an
idea,” he told a reporter some months later, “but it’s more exciting to have
a screenplay. Take
Peter Pan
. All I’ve ever done is to say I like the idea of
playing Captain Hook, but I’ve never even seen a script, and everybody
seems to think it’s all set up. And it isn’t.”

It turned out to be the fault of the Great Ormond Street Hospital for
Sick Children in disharmonious concert with the Walt Disney Company.
Peter Pan’s creator, the playwright James Barrie, had left the rights to the
play to the hospital. Disney wished to make the film on its own terms.
Thus did Sick Children wage war against the mouse, and by the fall of
1962 the project was in full collapse.

• • •

Billy Wilder had more luck than George Cukor. At first.

Producers were practically dumping scripts on Peter’s doorstep during
his stay in Hollywood, but very few of them caught his attention. Wilder’s
idea did, however, as did Wilder himself. It was to be an adultery comedy,
and it would be directed by the acerbic and blazingly funny writer-director
of such films as
Double Indemnity
(1944),
The Lost Weekend
(1945),
Sunset
Boulevard
(1950), and
Some Like It Hot
(1959). The costars Wilder managed to mention were also enticing. If he accepted the role, Peter was told,
he might be playing opposite Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, and Shirley
MacLaine.

Wilder’s films generally bore a bitter edge with raunchy undertones,
but by the early 1960s, with the Production Code seemingly in full retreat,
Wilder was itching to push things a little further. In the new film he was
thinking about making, Peter would play an insanely jealous husband. Sinatra would be a Sinatra-like star who gets headaches if he doesn’t get laid
once a day. MacLaine would be Peter’s long-suffering wife. Marilyn would
be the local hooker. Irresistible.

The movie wouldn’t be filmed right away, however; the as yet untitled
comedy wouldn’t go before the cameras for at least another year.

Other directors, writers, and producers could scarcely compete with the
package of Wilder, Monroe, Sinatra, and MacLaine. Peter turned down
twenty-seven other film roles in the first week he spent in Hollywood.

But there was one other idea that interested him:
Ulysses
.

This was neither a joke nor a fabrication: Peter Sellers wanted to play
Leopold Bloom. Jerry Wald would produce the picture, Jack Cardiff would
direct it. “Bloom could be the ultimate in characterization,” Peter told
Hedda Hopper. “I have great faith in Jack Cardiff’s intuition and good
taste, and he can do it if anyone can.” Unfortunately, Jerry Wald died of a
heart attack two months later.

Peter was upbeat about his trip, but there was a dark foreshadowing.
“I shall enjoy working in Hollywood,” he told the British scribes upon his
return to London, “but I could never
live
there.”

• • •

Even in the context of Peter Sellers’s previously frenetic work schedule and
tension-filled private life, 1962 was ridiculous. The year his marriage collapsed and he was jettisoned out on his own for virtually the first time in
his life (David Lodge and others shepherded him through the war),
six
of
his films played in the United States:
Only Two Can Play
(which opened
in March),
Mr. Topaze
(May),
Lolita
(June),
Road to Hong Kong
(June),
Waltz of the Toreadors
(August), and
Trial and Error
(November). These
were accompanied by the personal interlude of Peter and Anne officially
announcing their separation in July.

He had an overly spacious den-like penthouse in Hampstead and an
office on Panton Street in Soho. He had Bert, Hattie, and two children he
saw less and less. He had his cars, the charlatan psychic Maurice Woodruff,
a lot of publicity, and an enormous amount of money. He became so
depressed that Bert Mortimer, fearing for his boss’s life, moved into the
penthouse to be at his side all the time. As Bert recalls it, Bryan Forbes and
Nanette Newman used to come over and “hold his hands as he went to
sleep.”

Forbes is succinct: “In many cases, Peter was, uh, slightly mad, shall
we say?”

• • •

Peter was back in New York at the end of September and continued to be
starstruck. “Peter Sellers, who claimed to have always ‘dreamed’ of knowing
me, finally arranged a meeting,” Myrna Loy wrote in her autobiography.
“He took me to Peter Duchin’s opening at the Maisonette [at the St. Regis
hotel], where he was rather shy and as full of wonder about my career as
any fan. He even asked for an autographed picture.”

But Peter was himself a star trying to navigate a course toward international superstardom, and the split between shyness and celebrity was
becoming nearly impossible for him to sustain. The fault lines scraped more
noticeably.

He was getting tired of being hammered by British journalists, who,
then as now, enjoyed the moist sensation of blood on their fangs. “The
more success you have,” he complained, “the more people want to have a
go at you in the press. And I just haven’t got the confidence to shrug off
what is said about me.” He was making £150,000 a year, but money itself
didn’t seem to help.

To be more precise, Peter’s wealth didn’t help his emotional state. It
did, however, aid Harold Pinter. In December, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard
Burton, Noel Coward, Leslie Caron, and Peter Sellers announced that they
were among the unlikely financiers of Pinter’s
The Caretaker
(1962).

Peter spent money on less flashy causes as well. According to Bert
Mortimer, he liked to prowl London’s parks at night looking for homeless
people. When he found an appropriate one, he’d stuff a £5 note in his
pocket. Bert witnessed these transactions: “You’d see the man flinch back,
thinking he was going to be hit, then fish out the note and stare in utter
disbelief at it.”