Mr. Strangelove: A Biography of Peter Sellers (63 page)

This painful episode brought into stark relief the challenge Peter faced
in reciting
any
of his lines, of which “now get this, honky,” and so on, was
only the most overtly ludicrous. Throughout
Being There
, Peter achieves
the pinpoint-sharp exactitude of nothingness. It is a performance of extraordinary dexterity. As the critic Frank Rich wrote in
Time
when
Being There
was released, “The audience must believe that Chance is so completely blank
that he could indeed seem to be all things to all the people he meets. Peter
Sellers’ meticulously controlled performance brings off this seemingly impossible task; as he proved in
Lolita
, he is a master at adapting the surreal
characters of modern fiction to the naturalistic demands of movies. His
Chance is sexless, affectless, and guileless to a fault. His face shows no
emotion except the beatific, innocent smile of a moron. . . . Sellers’ gestures
are so specific and consistent that Chance never becomes clownish or arch.
He is convincing enough to make the film’s fantastic premise credible; yet
he manages to get every laugh.”

As Rich astutely observes, Chance is a modern, absurdist human vacuum, but a genial and naturalistic one—a schismatic personality that Peter
had to convey with strenuous vocal and gestural technique. To break
Chance’s strict, meditation-like state would be to destroy Chance’s being.
A lesser actor would have made the character’s mental dysfunction flamboyant and drastic. A Hollywood ham, all but winking directly at the camera, would find a way to reiterate soundlessly what a magnificent
performance the audience was lucky enough to witness—how fantastically
smart the actor had to be to play a dullard. Think of Dustin Hoffman in
Rain Man
(1988). Peter Sellers’s intelligence was always deeper, his onscreen
confidence greater, his technique much more finely honed.

• • •

The President of the United States (Warden) shows up at the mansion to
marshal Ben Rand’s political and financial support. There he meets Chance.
As the three titans discuss national affairs, the conversation turns to the best
way to stimulate economic growth. Chance pauses for a moment, moves
his eyes slightly, pauses again—all meaningless gestures that register as cogitation—and says, “As long as the roots are not severed, all is well—and all
will
be well—in the garden.”

The president is taken aback, forced to regard Chance’s remark as a
metaphor in order for the statement to make any sense at all. Chance follows
through: “In a garden, growth has its seasons. First comes spring and summer. But then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer
again.”

T
HE
P
RESIDENT:
(
confused
) Spring and summer?

C
HANCE:
(
flatly
) Yes.

T
HE
P
RESIDENT:
(
as if speaking to a cretin
) And fall and winter?

C
HANCE:
(
delighted to be understood
) Yes!

Rand, the cadaverous multibillionaire, is truly overjoyed with Chance’s
pointless words. “I think what our young friend is saying is that we welcome
the inevitable seasons of nature, but we’re upset by the seasons of our
economy!” “Yes!” Chance cries. “There will be growth in the spring!” The
president is duly convinced. “Well, Mr. Gardiner, I must admit that is one
of the most refreshing and optimistic statements I’ve heard in a very very
long time.” Rand applauds. “I admire your good, solid sense,” the president
continues, obviously pleased to be receiving a cretin’s wisdom. “That’s precisely what we like on Capitol Hill.”

Later, a book publisher responds to Chance with a similar sense of
spiritual kindredness by greeting him warmly and offering him a book
contract with a six-figure advance. “I can’t write,” says Chance. “Well, of
course not!” the publisher replies with a hearty laugh. “Who can nowadays?”

The president mentions the sage advice of Mr. Chauncey Gardiner at
a televised speech at the Financial Institute, whereupon Chance is hurried
onto a talk show. His dopey remarks, delivered with a sort of puckish grin,
begin as standard, late-night, getting-to-know-you comedy banter. Chance
clearly knows the drill, having spent his life watching television. Ashby cuts
to Ben and Eve Rand watching proudly from Ben’s bed and the president
and first lady watching nervously from the White House. Things turn more
sober on television when Chance opines that “it is possible for, uh, everything to grow stronger. And there is plenty of room for new trees and new
flowers of all kinds.” The audience applauds enthusiastically.

“It’s for sure a white man’s world in America,” Louise snaps, watching
him from the lobby of her apartment building.

As the president, the CIA, the FBI, and countless newspaper reporters
attempt to find any information whatsoever on the nonexistent Chauncey
Gardiner, Chance lies in his lavish bed eating breakfast from a tray and
watching the happy, happy opening number of
Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood
.
With Fred Rogers singing a song about his special friend, Eve arrives and
climbs into bed with Chance. He continues to watch Mister Rogers as
Mister Rogers sings the spelling of the word
friend
, whereupon Eve misinterprets Chance’s babylike indifference to sex by attributing it to gallantry.
“A long time ago, people didn’t have television,” Mister Rogers tells his little
viewers. “But they still liked to look at interesting pictures.” Eve departs.

Fortunately for Eve, Chance happens to be viewing a steamy romantic
scene on TV when she returns to his room late at night. He grabs her and
begins kissing her passionately in direct imitation of the images he is watching at the time. When the onscreen kissing stops, so does Chance.

E
VE:
Chauncey! What’s wrong? What’s the matter, Chauncey? I don’t
know what you like!

C
HANCE:
I like to watch, Eve.

And so she performs for him on a bearskin rug. Switching channels to
a yoga program, he does a handstand on the bed while Eve moans and
comes to her own relaxed and delighted laughter.

Throughout
Being There
, but here in particular, Shirley MacLaine’s
performance is as exceptional as Peter’s. A scene that could have turned
farcical, grotesque, or pathetic—the vivacious wife of a decrepit old man
masturbating before a brainless cipher—becomes instead distinguished,
compassionate. MacLaine invests Eve with a mix of sophistication and innocence, delicacy and fresh sexual passion. Though it might seem to have
been Peter’s due to play opposite great actresses throughout his career, the
fact was that he rarely did; Peter was lucky to have one more chance to act
alongside a bona-fide star.

• • •

The film ends with Ben Rand’s burial. The president delivers a platitudinous eulogy (the selected quotations of Ben) as Chance wanders into the
seemingly unending forest of the Rand estate. As Ashby himself described
Being There
’s original ending, “Shirley MacLaine goes after Peter Sellers
when he leaves the funeral and goes into the woods. She finds him and she
says she was frightened and was looking for him. He says, ‘I was looking
for you, too, Eve.’ And they just walk off together.” Ashby had already
filmed that scene when a friend of his, the screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer,
asked him how the
Being There
shoot was progressing. “It’s wonderful,”
Ashby replied. “Peter Sellers and Melvyn Douglas are achieving such clarity,
such simplicity, it looks like they’re walking on water.” It was a moment
of inspiration.

Ashby shot a new ending.

Chance wanders through the snowy woods while the president continues with his platitudes and Ben’s pallbearers whisperingly agree to
nominate Chance for the presidency. On the edge of a lake, Chance
straightens a sapling that has been weighed down by an old, broken
branch. He moves toward the shoreline and walks into—rather, on top
of—the lake. He pokes his umbrella gently in, plunges it down, looks up
and around in characteristic incomprehension, and continues strolling on
the surface of the cold winter water. What choice did Peter Sellers have,
let alone Chauncey Gardiner?

Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise

than what it might appear to others that what you were

or might have been was not otherwise

than what you had been

would have appeared to them to be otherwise.

O
n April 18, 1979, the last day of shooting
Being There
, MacLaine and
Sellers were filming the scene set in the backseat of Eve Rand’s limousine. “Peter had been to a numerologist the night before,” Shirley reports.
“Looking into my eyes, he told me that the numerologist had warned him
that his wife’s numbers didn’t match his own numbers. Peter was clearly
most concerned about this information.”

He was worried about his mind as well as his heart; the actual, blood-pumping muscle was giving him as much cause for concern as his love life.
He found himself musing over the possible effects of his two minutes of
clinical death in 1964. “I think I’m probably going a little soft in the head,”
he told
Time
magazine a little later, “which is why I have something in
common with Chance.”

Peter’s renewed obsession with Sophia Loren did not help his deteriorating marriage with Lynne. Thoughts of Sophia had resurfaced because
Sophia had just published her memoirs, and the name “Peter Sellers” had
not appeared therein. Peter was shocked and hurt. “Our relationship was
one of the things that helped break up my first marriage!” he complained
to the columnist Roderick Mann. Referring to Sophia with icy formality,
Peter continued: “Miss Loren was always telephoning me, and I’d go rushing all over Italy to be with her. It’s odd that someone who apparently
meant so much in her life—or so she said—should not figure in her life
story. The only reason I can think is that she was married at the time. But
it’s not as if her husband didn’t know. Carlo knew very well.”

Peter’s remarks became a scandal, one which did not please Sophia,
who was swiftly pestered to respond to Peter’s public despair. “I could not
write about every partner I have had in the movies,” she told one reporter.
“It would have taken volumes. I only wrote about the most important events
of my life. Peter lived in Los Angeles and it was too far to go to see him
from Italy.” At this point Sophia became angry: “I will not answer any more
questions about Peter Sellers! I wrote the book to tell the truth about my
life, not for gossip columnists!”

“I know the men I’ve slept with,” Sophia told Shirley MacLaine
privately. “And Peter, bless his phantasmagorical mind, was not one of
them.”

MacLaine was soon surprised to find herself in the same phantasmagorical boat. During the production of
Being There
, she later wrote, “He
did tell me in detail of his love affairs with Sophia Loren and Liza Minnelli.
I wondered about his lack of discretion but sometimes found his reenactments very funny.” Then she discovered, after filming had concluded, that
Peter was describing to others the details of his torrid affair with Shirley
MacLaine. In fact, one Hollywood producer reported that he had been in
the same room with Peter when Peter was “whispering sweet nothings” to
MacLaine on the telephone. “Then he was whispering to a dial tone,” is
MacLaine’s response.

• • •

His fourth marriage’s denouement seemed inevitable to the point of redundancy. Just before
Being There
began shooting, Peter was asked about
Lynne. “I’m so lucky,” he answered. “She’s a beautiful girl in every sense.
I just wish I’d met her long ago. It’s been a long, bumpy road to find her,
but God at last has smiled on me. . . . Lynne is exactly the kind of girl
whom Peg would have wanted for me. She [Peg] is always around, always
giving me help and advice. . . . She loves Lynne and wants us to be happy
together.”

Lynne’s own mother, Iris, still hadn’t spoken to her daughter since the
marriage, though she did continue speaking to the press. “What mother
can be expected to approve of the marriage of her daughter to such a man?”
Mrs. Frederick declared to the
Los Angeles Times
in late January. “Their
marriage was doomed from the start.”

Iris was right.

Lynne saw a shrink. The doctor’s diagnosis was one to which Peter
failed to cotton. “A psychiatrist she went to was crazy enough to suggest
that because I loved my mother I was still looking for another mother
figure!” he declared in exasperation. “When my mother was alive,” he explained, “she did everything she could in her life to help me. She was
content and always there, both for my father and me. I said to Lynne one
day that because of her kindness, she reminded me of my mother. . . .
Sometime later she went to a psychiatrist in Hollywood. Those shrinks are
awful! What he told Lynne was that the trouble between us—the strain
which I hadn’t noticed—was caused by my looking for another mother
figure. And it was that incestuous feeling that prevented us from having
children. Now that is mad, isn’t it? Quite mad!”