Mr. Strangelove: A Biography of Peter Sellers (66 page)

It was to be a satire based on someone Peter claimed to have met. Peter
had, the story goes, once been invited to the wedding of a Saudi princess
and found himself sitting on an Arabia-bound airplane next to a man who
appeared to be a fabulously dressed rock star but who turned out to be an
international arms dealer. “He had an accent that Peter couldn’t pin—Mediterranean, but you couldn’t tell where,” Southern’s companion, Gail
Gerber, relates.

“ ‘This jacket is bulletproof,’ ” the weapons trader explained. “Peter was
fascinated. ‘And these buttons are the shell casings of bullets that were shot
into it.’ That knocked Peter out.”

From that point, spinning out script ideas with the gloriously warped
Terry Southern must have been great fun—the scenes taking place in the
international arms marketplace, for example. “As Peter explained it to Terry,
it was just like going to a shopping mall,” says Gerber. On much the same
wavelength as Peter and Terry, Hal Ashby expressed interest in directing
Grossing Out
, and the Hollywood trade papers reported that Peter would
be getting $3 million for his appearance.

To the list was added
The Ferret
; written and directed by Blake Edwards, the comedy-on-the-drawing-boards was to be a spin-off of the
Pink
Panther
series, still involving the character of Clouseau, but redefining the
story that surrounded him.

“Without my work, life would be intolerable,” Peter said. “It is the
only panacea I know.”

• • •

From Gstaad in early summer, Peter called his British lawyer, Elwood Rickless, and told him that he had finally agreed to the angiogram—an X-ray
of one or more blood vessels of the cardiovascular system—that his cardiologist had recommended, the point being to determine whether his heart
was strong enough to withstand surgery. He arranged to fly to London and
then to Los Angeles, where he would check into Cedars-Sinai Medical
Center for the exam. He chose Cedars-Sinai because of his positive experience there in 1964. If the cardiology team recommended it, Peter agreed
that he would undergo immediate open-heart surgery.

“I was speaking to Peter on the phone,” Spike Milligan said. “The
subject of children came up, and he said, ‘You know, I’m a bloody fool. I
keep leaving them in and out of the will. Some weeks I put them in, others
I take them out. It depends on how I feel.’ ” Spike offered his opinion—that he thought
all
children were entitled to inherit at least some of their
father’s estate. “Yes,” Peter responded, “I really must change my will.”

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Malcolm McDowell ran into Lynne: “I
was sitting in Ma Maison restaurant on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood, and I looked over and there was Lynne Frederick Sellers. Because I
had worked with her, of course, I went over to say hello, and she introduced
me to her lawyer. We chatted for a minute, and I started to walk off, and
then she came over and said, ‘Malcolm, I’m meeting with my lawyer because
I’ve had it with Peter. It’s over.’ I said, ‘I’m very sorry to hear that, Lynne.’
She said, ‘I’m really sick of him. I’m sick of him! I mean, this has gone too
far. I should have done this ages ago,
and that’s it!
’ ”

Peter had the same idea. “She annoys me,” he told his son in July,
expressing in ever more distinct terms the ambivalence of his feelings all
along. “I just wish the divorce was over and done with.”

• • •

The novelist Auberon Waugh interviewed Peter in Gstaad. Peter’s personal
assistant, Michael Jeffery, was caring for him in Lynne’s customary absence.
Stephen Bach’s trip to Gstaad had been business related, so Lynne had an
interest in being present. Now she was in Philadelphia.

Waugh describes Michael Jeffery: “a young costume designer in tight
corduroy trousers who wore a gold stud in one ear and walked with the
unmistakable skip of a former ballet dancer. It is Mike who cooked him
his meals, made sure he kept his appointments, and scolded him if he forgot
to put his boots on when going out of doors. Without disrespect to either,
one could say that he had found his mother-figure, although there seemed
a certain amount of aggravation in the air between them.”

Peter was dressed for the interview in a “navy blue track suit with
various bits of string attached.” As for the house, Waugh writes, “The main
floor was like an open-plan bungalow, with sitting room, kitchen, and
dining areas, and another area where Mike Jeffery slept, his bed surrounded
by impressive photographic equipment.” Peter slept on the floor below. In
the basement was a bomb shelter, which came with the house.

At Waugh’s prompting, Peter named the four films of which he was
proudest:
I’m All Right, Jack
;
Dr. Strangelove
;
The Party
; and
Being There
.
Waugh noted that, for Peter, Spike “remained—usually by telephone, and
often at very long distance—the chief guru in his life.” The other, of course,
was Swami Venkesananda, who kept an ashram in Mauritius. But Waugh
was skeptical of Peter’s devotion to the swami: “I could not avoid the suspicion that part of his fascination is that Mr. Sellers could study his accents,
his intonations and gestures, and practice them quietly to himself in the
bathroom afterwards.”

• • •

On Monday, July 21, Peter and Michael Jeffery flew to London from Geneva in Peter’s private plane. They landed at Stansted Airport in Essex (Peter
preferred to avoid Heathrow), drove down to London, and checked into
the Dorchester. He wanted to stay in the Harlequin Suite, but it was already
booked, so he made do with the Oliver Messel suite, named for—and
designed by—the noted theater designer. In addition to his clothes, he made
sure to bring along the script-in-progress for
The Romance of the Pink
Panther
.

Peter had spoken to Spike before arriving in London, and Spike, rather
morbidly, had told him, “ ‘We’re all getting old. How about one more
dinner?’ ‘Yes, of course!’ he said. ‘One more dinner.’ ” Harry Secombe got
“a message from Spike saying ‘Let’s go and have dinner with Peter before
one of us is walking behind the coffin.’ ” The three old friends set up their
reunion for the following night.

Before turning in, Peter, accompanied by Jeffery, climbed into a
limousine, drove to North London, and paid his first visit to the Golders Green
crematorium and memorial garden where Peg and Bill’s ashes lay.

He woke up early the next morning, showered and shaved, put on his
loose blue workout suit, ordered some coffee and melba toast, called Michael Jeffery’s room, ordered a massage, and then called Sue Evans, who
arrived around 9
A
.
M
. Peter took a nap while Evans and Jeffery went over
the day’s affairs. His lawyer, Elwood Rickless, showed up and got Peter to
sign a document setting up the long-delayed trust for the fifteen-year-old
Victoria, and then it was time for lunch. Peter asked for a double order of
grilled plaice, a salad, and a little cheese; he requested the double order of
plaice because he was convinced that the Dorchester was stingy with its
fish. After finishing his meal, Jeffery helped Peter select his outfit for the
evening—black, black, and black (pants, shirt, lizardskin shoes)—topped
with a black and white check jacket. Sue Evans got ready to leave. “Sue,
don’t go yet,” he asked. “Sit on for a bit and talk to me.”

Then, “I do feel frail. Really, I feel faint,” he said, and before he got a
chance to get back into bed, his face turned deep purple and then very pale,
he closed his eyes, and he died.

• • •

“It’s hard to say this, but he died at the right time,” said Spike.

“Anything to avoid paying for the dinner,” said Harry.

• • •

To be pedantic about it, Peter’s clinical death was actually a more protracted
process. He was rushed to Middlesex Hospital and hooked up to machines
that kept him going for another thirty-six hours. Sue Evans called Michael,
who was in London. Sarah was in Portugal. Victoria was in Sweden with
her mother. They all had time to assemble at the hospital before the Widow
Sellers arrived in dark glasses, fresh from the Western Hemisphere.

Peter’s body didn’t give up easily, but this time it had no choice. A
little after midnight on July 24, it was over.

• • •

“Peter was a well-loved actor in Britain,” Burt Kwouk observes. “The day
he died, it seemed that the whole country came to a stop. Everywhere you
went, the fact that Peter had died seemed like an umbrella over everything.”

The headlines screamed, the newscasters intoned. And in a bit of irony
both gruesome and cruel, thieves stole Lynne’s crocodile handbag and
matching wallet—they were gifts from Peter, she said—while she was shopping for a black dress the next day.

• • •

Peter’s funeral was held at Golders Green on Saturday, July 26.

Anne was in Portugal with Ted Levy when Peter died. She didn’t return
to London, she says, “because I knew it would be a circus.”

She was correct. The surge of fans, reporters, photographers, and morbid sightseers was magnificent in the pouring rain.

Britt made a discreet entrance in a blue Rolls Royce. Miranda, after
placing a sympathy telephone call to Lynne (a call answered by Sue Evans)
stayed away.

Peter’s aunties, Ve and Do, were there, along with Spike, Harry, Michael Bentine, his cousins Ray Marks and Peter Ray, Canon John Hester,
Lord Snowdon, Brother Cornelius, Dennis Selinger, Graham Stark, David
Lodge, and Baron Evelyn de Rothschild.

• • •

As one of the Ray cousins said of the funeral, the wives were crying and
the Goons were laughing. This was especially the case after Canon Hester,
at Michael’s suggestion, made an announcement at the end. Just before
Peter’s body was wheeled away to the furnace room to be turned into ash,
Canon Hester solemnly told the assembled mourners that Peter wanted
them to listen to one last song.

And so it was that Peter Sellers exited the world, riding in swingtime
into the flames, to the tune of Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood.”

Ever drifting down the stream—

Lingering in the golden gleam—

Life, what is it but a dream?

A
memorial service for Peter Sellers took place at St. Martin in the Fields
on September 8, 1980. It would have been Peter’s fifty-fifth birthday.

In addition to Lynne, Michael, Sarah, Victoria, Spike, Harry, David
Lodge, Graham Stark, and Michael Bentine, guests included Lord Snowdon, David Niven, Michael Caine, Sam Spiegel, Herbert Lom, and about
490 less famous people.

Snowdon recited the twenty-third Psalm. Harry sang “Bread of
Heaven.” Niven offered the eulogy. “It was a joy and a privilege to have
known him for so long,” Niven said. “Yet how many of us really did know
Peter? After twenty-five years of friendship, I had to ask myself.” Niven
noted with candor that some of Peter’s many obituaries described him as
having been “difficult, ungracious, despotic, bitter, depressed, lonely, in a
constant state of turmoil, vexatious, quarrelsome, and neurotic.” Niven acknowledged that, well, yes, Peter had been some of those things at least
some of the time. But, he went on to say, “luckily he was not all these
things all of the time, because if he had been, St. Martin’s and the surrounding fields would be empty this morning instead of full.”

According to the terms of Peter Sellers’s last will and testament, 50,000
Swiss francs was to go to the city of Gstaad, £5,000 to his lawyer Anthony
Humphries, £5,000 to his accountant Douglas Quick, and $2,000 each to
Michael, Sarah, and Victoria Sellers. The rest of Peter’s estate would proceed
to Lynne Frederick.

Thanks to his tax lawyers and accountants, Peter’s British estate was
virtually worthless. His foreign estate hovered in the neighborhood of $9.6
million.

On behalf of Michael, Sarah, and Victoria, Spike Milligan appealed
personally to Lynne’s sense of decency, but since she had none, she had
none of Spike’s appeal, so Peter’s children were forced to contest his will
in court, where they eventually lost. Lynne’s point was simple: “Why can’t
they leave his memory alone?”

Six months after Peter’s death, Lynne Frederick married David Frost.
Then she divorced Frost and married a cardiologist. She got all the money.

“It all went up her nose,” Anne Levy once said with uncharacteristic
spite, not to mention exaggeration. Anne was referring to the fact that
Lynne developed severe addictions to drugs and alcohol and died in 1994
at the age of thirty-nine. Yes, there was a lot of cocaine in the later years
of Lynne Frederick. But there was even more money.

Lynne’s mother, Iris, found the body. It was taken to the Los Angeles
County Morgue, where it became Case Number 94-3840 and was tagged
with a note reading, “history of alcohol and seizures.”

Then Iris got the money.

Iris Frederick lives in a lovely home in Cheviot Hills, California. She
controls all access to Peter Sellers’s papers and personal effects, she has
trademarked his name, and she is currently developing his property in the
Seychelles as a high-end resort.

When Iris dies, Peter Sellers’s fortune will all go to a girl named Cassie,
the daughter Lynne had with the cardiologist.