Mr. Strangelove_ A Biography of Peter Sellers - Ed Sikov [134]
PAUL: What’s all this, John?
JOHN: It’s Peter Sellers!
Cut to a stark Shakespearean set with incidental madrigal music on the sound track. Peter, dressed as Richard III, sits on an Elizabethan chair and, in the voice of Laurence Olivier, begins reciting the lyrics of “A Hard Day’s Night.” It is indescribably hilarious.
Peter had done the routine for release as a record earlier in the year, with Martin acting as producer, but it’s the televised visuals that push the bit onto the level of Olympian comedy. The combination of Sellers’s petulant, mad Olivier imitation with his near-instinctive talent for striking wildly funny facial expressions, made Peter’s brief TV appearance in November not only the highlight of the program but also the best nugget of work he did that year.
During the taping, he had had some difficulty with his lines and called, rather saltily, for cue cards. No one seems to have minded, however, since Peter lightened the mood by abruptly launching into “A Hard Day’s Night” as recited by Spike Milligan’s goofy Eccles. Then he did it as Fred Kite.
The final, taped product, however, was pure, leering Olivier. With a declamatory and nasal delivery, Sellers barks certain words and bites others, glances out of the corners of his slitty eyes, and brings out in full force the song’s underlying filth. The Beatles themselves couldn’t get away with it; Peter could—and did:
A grumpy dog and log. A sly, insinuating do. A most self-satisfied everything. And, with a final smirk, alright.
Then Richard stands and delivers his outraged plea: “Can I do all this, yet cannot get a hit?”
The wish was granted within a month. Peter Sellers’s recording of “A Hard Day’s Night” reached number fourteen on the British pop charts in December.
• • •
“He could write his own ticket with me if he’d write and direct Casino Royale.”
This was Charles K. Feldman talking to Variety in June 1965. Feldman had a dream—to produce a big, splashy James Bond spoof in Technicolor and Panavision, with lots of gaudy sets and costumes and mid-sixties psychedelic wackiness and gorgeous babes and multiple 007s and a roster of glamorous international movie stars. Peter would be perfect for it, he thought.
They had been talking since late April. First it was on, then it was off, then it was maybe—Peter kept changing his mind—and by June, Feldman had taken to wooing his star in the press as well as through cajoling telephone calls and flattering letters. Peter wasn’t the only one to respond to Feldman’s entreaties by hesitating. Bryan Forbes had been very close to agreeing to be the film’s director, but he backed out before signing anything.
By late August, Casino Royale was on again. Columbia Pictures was putting up the money, and Peter, in Rome, was finally agreeing to terms: $750,000 plus $10,000 expenses. This time, Feldman got the insurance he needed to cover Peter—$5 million worth—and Peter seemed happy. He insisted that his friend Joe McGrath be the film’s director, and Feldman approved. Peter had had an idea for a costar, too.
Sophia.
• • •
Everybody liked Joe McGrath, Feldman told Peter in the fall, but McGrath wasn’t much help to Feldman in terms of convincing top-of-the-line performers like Sophia to sign onto the project since McGrath had never directed a feature film before. (McGrath had considerable television experience, but no movies.) If Feldman had been able to present McGrath to Sophia as an important director, then some of her reluctance might have been assuaged. But he couldn’t, he was sad to say, so Miss Loren had declined the chance to appear with Peter in Casino Royale.
There were still script problems, too, Feldman told him. The first three drafts had been written by the veteran