Mr. Strangelove_ A Biography of Peter Sellers - Ed Sikov [126]
The heart attack survivor then breezed out of New York and returned to London, where, on October 29, he and Britt accompanied Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon to the Variety Club of Great Britain’s Royal Gala performance, the beneficiary of which was the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. The event was a circus, literally. As one of the highlights, a group of children had to lie very still on the ground while an elephant stepped over them. A few days later, Peter flew to Paris and began shooting his next feature film.
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What’s New Pussycat?’s opening credits are historic. In lurid, squiggly cartoon script, the typographic equivalent of sixties’ paisley, they read: “Charles K. Feldman / presents / Peter Sellers / Peter O’Toole / Romy Schneider / Capucine / Paula Prentiss / and introducing Woody Allen.”
What’s New Pussycat? was the former television writer and diffident stand-up comic Allen’s first appearance on film as well as being his first screenplay. Characteristically, it was all about sex and the mind. O’Toole plays Michael James, the disturbed editor of a fashion magazine. Michael considers himself to be sexually compulsive, so he seeks the aid of a Viennese psychiatrist, Dr. Fritz Fassbender—Peter Sellers in a Prince Valiant wig and maroon velvet suit. “My job is a lecher’s dream,” Michael confesses during their first session. Dr. Fassbender leans in very close, his interest more than piqued. Very soon he takes Michael’s place on the couch and confides with a rutting tone, “I like thighs. Do you like thighs?”
Romy Schneider is Michael’s long-suffering girlfriend; Capucine, Prentiss, and Allen are ancillary neurotics.
Sellers had been friendly with O’Toole for some years. “I introduced those two,” says the actor Kenneth Griffith. “O’Toole wanted to meet Sellers, and he wanted to meet him right away. Peter was going to see a play at the Duchess Theater, I think, so he said ‘Well, if it’s today, it will have to be when I come out of the theater.’ ” Then, says Griffith, “a strange thing happened. The play ended, and all the people came out, and there was no Sellers. As I recall it, he was virtually hiding inside. There was great unease about meeting O’Toole. We went to a restaurant in Chelsea, which had just shut because it was rather late at night. They said, ‘Oh, we just shut, Mr. Griffith.’ I said, ‘I’ve got a couple of friends outside—have a peek.’ They opened up quick. It was a great evening. I remember Sellers helping with the cooking.”
“We were totally comfortable together,” O’Toole once said of Peter. “Not cozy—it was far from cozy. It was sometimes downright edgy, but it was the sharp edginess of stimulation and exploration. I found myself completely eaten up by Pete’s personality.”
Siân Phillips, who was married to O’Toole at the time, recalls that Sellers’s casting in What’s New Pussycat? was problematic from a financial standpoint, since his heart attacks had rendered him uninsurable. “O’Toole, out of the kindness of his heart, said, ‘No, I must, must, must have Peter Sellers.’ ” The result was that Charlie Feldman, the film’s producer, essentially self-insured Peter by casting him without outside indemnification. Siân Phillips goes on: “Sellers insisted on top billing, and O’Toole said, ‘Oh, give it to him.’ I thought that was ungrateful, actually. I didn’t think it was very chic.” Feldman, on the other hand, told United Artists’ Arthur Krim that “O’Toole had insisted on flipping a coin to decide whether he or Sellers should get first billing, [and] Sellers won the toss-up.” Whatever the circumstances, Peter Sellers’s name did come first.
Peter’s doctors, meanwhile, were insisting that he not go beyond a five-hour working day. To ease Peter’s mind even further, Feldman had sent