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Offscreen, Peter Sellers was earnestly repeating himself. “He asked me to marry him, believe it or not,” Elke Sommer says, “even though no physicality, nothing had passed between us.

“I think he was just desperate to marry. I said, ‘Peter, I like you very much as a person, but I don’t love you.’ He said, ‘But that’ll come.’

“I always got the feeling of a very lonely man who would do practically anything to have somebody who was his.”

Moving along to his next target, in early February 1964, Peter, still ensconced in his Dorchester suite, sent Bert around to a young starlet’s room to issue a dinner invitation by proxy. Perhaps the girl would consent to having some photographs taken as well, Bert asked. She would. Britt-Marie Eklund, a twenty-one-year-old pouty-lipped blond, had just arrived in London courtesy of Twentieth Century-Fox, which had cast her in a new action-adventure film, Guns at Batasi (1964), in the process forcing her to shorten her name to Britt Ekland. Thanks to the studio’s publicity machine, London’s playboy elite was already in the know about her arrival. Michael Caine had issued an invitation but hadn’t called back yet as he’d promised to do, so Britt was free to join Peter, who by that point had started in on the room-service sweet and sour pork. He took some photos of Britt after dinner, after which they drove by limousine to see The Pink Panther, returning afterward to the Dorchester, where Peter and Britt capped their night with caviar, champagne, and Peter’s new toy, marijuana. Over the next few days he sent flowers, took her to Trader Vic’s, where they shared a drink with a floating gardenia; gave her a diamond and gold brooch from Asprey; and bought her a dachshund. Before the week was over, she flew to New York on Guns at Batasi business, but he called her often during her brief stay in America. In one call, he mentioned some news: “I’ve told everyone in London we’re going to marry. Is that all right by you?” Britt flew back to London. After her plane landed at Heathrow at 7:40 A.M., one of the many aggressive journalists who had congregated for the event shouted, “Where’s your engagement ring, Britt?” whereupon Peter pulled her into a nearby broom closet and presented her with a triple-banded Victorian ring (emeralds, diamonds, rubies) he’d picked up at Garrards. They emerged from the closet for a photo op and got married the following Wednesday.

The wedding took place in Surrey at the Guildford registry office, which Peter’s wedding planner had transfigured into what Britt later called “a chamber of spiritual beauty.” There were fifty burning candles and bowls and bowls of lilacs and roses, creamy white and pink. The bride wore a Norman Hartnell gown. Peter had chosen the designer; Hartnell also happened to make dresses for the queen. Draped across Britt’s shoulders was a $15,000 black mink coat, her wedding present from the groom. (A red Lotus sports car had served as an engagement gift.) Peter wore a simple blue suit and overcoat.

David Lodge and Graham Stark were Peter’s best men for the brief ceremony. There were only a handful of guests, but fifteen hundred fans reportedly cramped themselves around the front of the building as an icy wind blew snow in their faces. The newspapers were ecstatic: “They outdid the Beatles fans in their shrieks. . . . Babies were abandoned in their prams on the lawns!”

It was an unusual day for Michael and Sarah Sellers. “I was at boarding school,” says Michael. “I was told to get my stuff together because I was going out for the day. But nobody told me [for] what. The driver picked me up and said it was because Father was getting married.” Sarah adds, “We didn’t actually get to go to the wedding ceremony, which I remember I would have liked to have done.”

At least they made it to the reception at Brookfield.

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Peter insisted that Maurice Woodruff had predicted the whole thing. Someone with the initials B.E. would have a great influence