Mr. Strangelove_ A Biography of Peter Sellers - Ed Sikov [128]
Dr. Fassbender’s lust-object patient, Renée (Capucine), paces the room while rattling off a lengthy speech, which ends, “You see, I can’t help it. I’m a physical woman! I feel guilty about it, but I come from a family of acute nymphomaniacs. That includes my father and my two brothers.” Dr. Fassbender (visibly aroused): “Vhy don’t ve all take off our clothes, it’s so modern. . . .”
But it is Liz (Paula Prentiss), the suicidal stripper, who takes it furthest. Profoundly unstable, she explains her “semi-virgin” status to Michael—“Here I’m a virgin, in America I’m not”—and suddenly announces, “I feel faint. Would you excuse me for a minute? I’m going into the bathroom to take an overdose of sleeping pills.”
“I thought she was joking,” Michael tells the doctor summoned to revive her. “It was all poems and ‘Don’t touch me’. . . .”
After her second suicide attempt (sparked by Michael’s having told her that no, he didn’t love her), the physician responding to the call presents her with a commemorative watch: “Mademoiselle, the boys of the Emergency Suicide Board voted you this gold watch for unusual devotion.”
• • •
With the strange and disturbing production of What’s New Pussycat? finally winding down just before Christmas and nobody having died, Charlie Feldman parceled out holiday gifts to the cast and principal crew—Hermes cigarette boxes all around. Peter had already received his own special present from Feldman two weeks earlier—a new red Rolls Royce Silver Cloud III.
Feldman had been growing worried about two things in particular: Peter was far exceeding his contractual obligations on What’s New Pussycat? by working longer hours than required and by substantially rewriting the script without additional compensation. He was also showing signs of depression. Feldman, telling United Artists that he had been anticipating problems and thought he’d found a way to circumvent them, voluntarily offered Sellers a new car to keep him happy. “His enthusiasm thereafter was incredible and he has worked like a dog since,” Feldman reported.
The Rolls was not Peter’s first choice. He had originally suggested a new Ferrari Superfast. But they couldn’t get one in time, so he settled on the cheaper Silver Cloud, which was available right away.
He had to have it.
• • •
“She looks just like her father!” Britt wrote to Charlie Feldman, thanking him for the congratulatory flowers he had sent to the proud parents of a baby girl. “As you can imagine, Peter and I are just thrilled with her!”
Victoria Sellers was born on January 20, 1965, at the Welbeck Street Clinic in London. Her parents had moved into the Dorchester after their return from Paris, specifically to be close to the clinic. “When my water went and I felt the first pangs,” Britt reports, “Sellers whisked me from the hotel to the clinic in a flash. My suitcase was already packed.”
Then Peter made his exit: “Unceremoniously he dumped me on the steps of the clinic and promptly disappeared without so much as taking one step inside the door.” Whatever the cause of this, his second birthing abandonment—fear, revulsion, somebody’s opening night at an exclusive club?—Peter once again proved unable to support his wife emotionally, particularly when she expected it.
But in the morning, with his daughter safely born, Peter was “proud as punch.” After scooping the tiny girl up in his arms, he was overcome by joy. “Thank God she is safely here,” he said.