Peter Sellers

Actor

  • Born: September 8, 1925
  • Birthplace: Southsea, England
  • Died: July 24, 1980
  • Place of death: London, England

British actor

One of the greatest improvisational actors of all time, Sellers entertained with the memorable, bumbling Inspector Clouseau in the beloved Pink Panther films. He also moved easily between comedy and drama, showing his acting versatility in films such as Being There and The Party. He added a new dimension to acting and to film by playing as many as four parts in a given movie.

Areas of achievement Film, theater and entertainment

Early Life

Peter Sellers made his stage debut at the age of two weeks, crying and fussing before an audience attending a performance by his stage-acting parents. Richard Henry Sellers was named Peter for an older stillborn brother. Show business had been in his family for three generations. His parents, Bill and Agnes “Peg” Sellers, were stage actors and on the variety circuit. They worked seven days a week. Bill worked on Sundays as assistant organist and Peg worked in the family antique-junk shop when not on the stage.

Sellers’s first paid job, at the age of four, was as a child model for a series of electric lightbulb advertisements. He had no trouble posing, nor did he shy from taking orders from the photographer. He had a lifelong allergy to strong odors, and hated the odors of the stage, including makeup, sawdust, paint, and mothballs.

It was in school that Sellers discovered and honed his natural gift for mimicry. He was in school with students from Scotland, continental Europe, and the United States, including one student from the Deep South, whom Sellers imitated perfectly. After some time, Sellers became enthralled with the stage, so much so that he did not bother to return to school after age thirteen.

Sellers became fascinated with watching the great drummer Joe Daniels and, at one time, sneaked up on the empty stage and played Daniels’s drum set. Rather than being mad, Daniels paid him the compliment of teaching him the rudiments of playing along with other instruments. Daniels said later that Sellers was a natural on the drums. Sellers quickly formed a four-piece jazz band, and he was its drummer.

On his eighteenth birthday, Sellers was conscripted into the Royal Air Force (RAF), becoming an airman second class. It was in the service that Sellers began his life’s work as an entertainer.

Life’s Work

Sellers’s prewar variety work led a friend to urge him to audition for the RAF’s entertainment section, the Entertainments National Service Association, which conducted what came to be called Gang Shows. Sellers played the drums in a dance band, played the ukulele and banjo, and did impressions. Working as an entertainer, even in the RAF, had considerable appeal for Sellers, even during “extreme” times. At one time the entertainment company was so desperate for accommodations that its members stayed for several nights in the home of a local undertaker.

Sellers began to add to his already-impressive list of voices by impersonating high-ranking officers from around the world who were in the same transit camp as Sellers. No one believed Sellers could imitate each so well. He later said that these experiences inspired him, as they revealed that no one could recognize him in character. On a dare, and risking a five-year sentence if caught, Sellers dressed in a squadron leader’s uniform, spoke to the regular RAF men in a high-class British voice, and fooled them all.

After the war Sellers was working with a group of former servicemen who called themselves the Goons. Sellers eventually contacted a senior BBC producer, Kenneth Horne, and imitated Horne’s voice over the telephone so well that he landed an audition, a five-minute radio spot. He also did radio commercials as the character Thrifty McTravel for Trans World Airlines (TWA).

Beginning around 1950, Sellers became obsessed with films and did extremely small parts like the voice of Humphrey Bogart for a few lines when the actor was not available during filming. He mimicked a parrot and even impersonated the extremely well-known voice of Winston Churchill in the World War II film The Man Who Never Was (1956). Newspapers were beginning to call Sellers the Man of Many Voices. The broadcasts of the comedy revue “Goon Show” were bringing in considerable money to the young actor. He ended up by buying a new car almost every week, and would own forty-one at one time.

In the early 1950’s a friend found a magnificent wonder, Laurel and Hardy films, from the early silent film era. To bring the classic up to date they only needed sound, and Sellers jumped at the chance to work with his comedic idol, Stan Laurel. Sellers also worked with Terry-Thomas in a satire, I’m All Right, Jack (1959), on British management and labor practices. Sellers stole the show by playing his character, Fred Kite, as an everyman so the British public could sympathize and laugh with him. The film that introduced Sellers to American audiences was The Mouse That Roared (1959), which presented a theme often repeated in several later films: small country takes on big country and wins. In the film Sellers played three roles: prime minister, grand duchess, and shy military commander in chief.

Sellers made several more films before working with Stanley Kubrick on Dr. Strangelove (1964). He was given a small part of no more than five minutes. A chance injury to his ankle, however, made that role impossible to perform, so he was offered other roles: He acted brilliantly as U.S. president, an English group captain, and Dr. Strangelove himself. His next big film was The World of Henry Orient (1964), a work that American audiences did not care for but British audiences loved. He played an avant-garde pianist-cum-composer.

The role for which Sellers is best remembered, especially among American audiences, was his brilliant portrayal of Inspector Jacques Clouseau in the comedic Pink Panther films, which debuted in 1963 with The Pink Panther. (Another actor, Peter Ustinov, originally was offered the role.) Sellers, who had always wanted to work with actors from around the world, was cast in the Pink Panther with an international lineup of actors, including David Niven, Robert Wagner, and Claudia Cardinale. Sellers, given leeway in how he would play Clouseau, decided to play him with great dignity, since Clouseau considered himself the world’s greatest detective. Sellers, who spoke not a word of French, gave Clouseau his odd-sounding “French” accent. Blake Edwards, the director, gave the character his clumsiness.

Shortly after working with Kubrick and Edwards, Sellers made an American film, Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), with director Billy Wilder, who was the antithesis of Kubrick and Edwards in style and approach. He was known for being a tyrant. Sellers, who had looked forward to working with him, ended up hating the picture.

While preparing for another film, Sellers had his first heart attack on April 7, 1964. He recovered and soon worked on the film version of Jerzy Kosinski’s novella, Being There, with Shirley MacLaine and Melvyn Douglas. It took six years just to get the film started. Sellers died after another heart attack in London on July 24, 1980, six weeks shy of his fifty-fifth birthday.

Significance

Unlike Sellers, most comedians and entertainers live private lives. They know themselves as individuals and as family men or women. Sellers, however, said that he was never closer to finding out about himself than when he played a role. To him it was not acting, it was himself. He once was asked to read a passage from the Bible in his own voice, but Sellers said he did not know his own voice and that he did not know himself well enough to know his own voice. He did not recognize his own voice when taped. As an actor, Sellers “spoke” French, Italian, and German well enough in his films to convey a given character’s style, but he knew no other language than English.

Sellers was ever the comic, even after death. In the middle of his funeral service, one could hear Glenn Miller’s classic theme song “In the Mood” coming from stereo speakers. Those who knew Sellers well broke out in laughter because Sellers detested the song.

Bibliography

Evans, Peter. The Mask Behind the Mask: A Life of Peter Sellers. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1968. A secondary source, useful for its chapter-by-chapter look at the people in Peter’s life and the major roles he played. Illustrated.

Rigelsford, Adrian. Peter Sellers: A Life in Character. London: Virgin Books, 2004. A hilarious pictorial life of Peter Sellers from his earliest radio shows to the films, television, theater and records he made. Also many interviews with those who worked with the actor over the years.

Sikov, Ed. Mr. Strangelove: A Biography of Peter Sellers. New York: Hyperion Books, 2002. Traces the cinematic world of Peter Sellers from The Goon Show to the Pink Panther films. Emphasis is on the improvisations and the individual parts played in all his films. Illustrated, detailed bibliography and index.

Walker, Alexander. Peter Sellers: The Authorized Biography. New York: Macmillan, 1981. Describes in detail the comic genius without and the child within the comedic actor. The loves, laughs and originality is detailed in anecdotal form. Includes very detailed filmography.

1941-1970: October 5, 1962: Dr. No Launches the Hugely Popular James Bond Series; January 30, 1964-1971: Kubrick Becomes a Film-Industry Leader; October 5, 1969: Monty Python’s Flying Circus Prompts a Cult Following.