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Britt Ekland, who had kept a near-constant vigil at the hospital, found herself the object of morbid curiosity and fashion scrutiny. The press duly reported that Peter’s twenty-one-year-old bride of less than two months had arrived at Cedars of Lebanon on Friday morning cutting a “wistful figure” in a tailored blue-green suit. Forced by circumstances into a brief news conference that day, she thanked Dr. Kennamer; the chief of cardiology, Dr. Clarence Agress; and a senior resident physician, Dr. Robert Coblin, for saving her husband’s life. What she didn’t mention was that Peter, for whom work was life, was already insisting on talking to his agents and managers and accountants and had to be sedated.

• • •

Peter Sellers’s deaths in April 1964 were by far the most adult experiences he had ever had, with the possible exception of facing hostile audiences as a stand-up comedian. Involuntary though coronaries are, they evidence more maturity than did Peter’s two marriages, in which he often behaved like a child, or his forays into fatherhood, his love for his children being solipsistic and abstract. Dying changed him.

The doctors told him that he’d suffered no discernable mental deterioration despite the lack of oxygen to the brain when his heart kept stopping. Peter himself wasn’t so sure.

“He told me that he wasn’t afraid of dying after that,” David Lodge declares. “Obviously it did have something to do with his way of life, with his attitude. It did affect him. I’m not saying he was mental, but it mentally affected him.”

Harry Secombe agreed: “Perhaps he realized his own mortality then and decided to make the most of life before it happened again. That could have been some of the reason behind his behavior afterward.”

The Goons, of course, took a jocular approach to Peter’s health crisis. Secombe claimed that “when he was getting better, Spike and I sent him a wire saying ‘You swine! We had you heavily insured.’ ”

Peter and Britt necessarily had to cancel their appearance at the Oscars party Harold Mirisch planned to throw in their honor on April 13. In fact, Peter remained at Cedars of Lebanon for a solid month, only making his exit, in a wheelchair, on May 7. The crowd of reporters and photographers swarming around outside the hospital noted that he was wearing a yellow T-shirt, jeans, and a blue-denim jacket. He was also chewing gum. Peter said very little on his way to the waiting ambulance that took him back to the rented mansion, but he did toss off one good line: “When you come out of the hospital, you want to look as nonchalant as possible.”

His recovery was quiet and uneventful over the next four weeks, and on June 3, he was ready for his first public appearance. With Britt at his side, he stuck his hands and shoes in wet cement at Grauman’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. Privately, he also ventured out to a Santa Monica apartment to pay a visit to an aging star he had long admired. He signed Stan Laurel’s guest book “To Dear Stan—with my greatest admiration. Peter Sellers, June 1964.”

On June 7, Peter and Britt ended their catastrophic trip to Hollywood and flew back to London; they were accompanied by a British physician who had flown to California specifically to be at Peter’s side for the duration of his flight home.

• • •

A week and a half later, from the apparently safe distance of 5,500 miles, Peter casually mentioned to Alexander Walker of the Evening Standard that, in his opinion, the Hollywood studios “give you every creature comfort except the satisfaction of being able to get the best work out of yourself.” He didn’t like all the hangers-on who had crowded around the Kiss Me, Stupid soundstages, he said. He hadn’t had a good time in L.A.

It was a mild interview, but it hit a nerve back in Hollywood. Billy Wilder, Dean Martin, Kim Novak, and Felicia Farr sent him a terse and testy wire: “Talk about unprofessional rat finks.”

The following day, Peter announced that he had officially dropped out of Wilder’s