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Peter’s card game with Orson is pretty much the disaster it promised to be, given that the two actors appear together in only one setup, with the rest of the sequence being filmed in individual shots. The characters look like they’re worlds apart; even with the flagrantly artificial mise-en-scène of Casino Royale the camera doesn’t lie. And despite some marvelous special effects, the subsequent scene in which Le Chiffre tortures Tremble is obviously filmed not only in separate shots but in separate sets. “The most exquisite torture is all in the mind,” Le Chiffre tells Tremble before pulling the switches. He may be right, but by the time the spaceship lands in Trafalgar Square, one just doesn’t care anymore.

Casino Royale opened in April 1967, with a royal command performance in London. Kathy Parrish remembers the queen sitting in one row laughing and enjoying herself and Feldman sitting in the row behind her, knowing the gargantuan thing just wasn’t any good. Notices were mixed, but the film did find its audience and made at least some of its money back. It has but a few critical defenders today. One is the film scholar Robert Von Dassanowsky, who sees in its fragmented pastiche a grander philosophy: “The failure of modernity and a celebration of what Umberto Eco would call the postmodern ‘crisis of reason’ permeates nearly every scene of Casino Royale.” If Von Dassanowsky is right, then Peter Sellers himself really may turn out to be the quintessential postmodern man.

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Fragmentation reigned, as it must for every postmodernist. Peter’s constant dieting continued, as did his marital discord and bad-tempered parenting, all broken up with pleasant evenings spent around a piano with friends, singing, laughing, and being the man he could have been if he hadn’t been so many other less agreeable people in the meantime.

Joe McGrath and Peter Sellers made up after Peter himself walked away from Casino Royale. McGrath reports: “I got a letter from Peter later, apologizing, saying, ‘I’m terribly sorry about what happened, I was wrong. We will work together again, I promise you.’ ” They were having drinks at the Dorchester bar soon thereafter when a Columbia executive came by the table. “Joe!” he cried. “God! I’m so sorry that you left the film! It was that bastard Sellers that fucked everything up. And it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Allen.”

To keep the weight off, Peter ate nothing but spaghetti for a time. There was also a Chinese vegetable diet, a macrobiotic diet, and a yoga diet. There was a wine-and-steak diet, too. For a while he consumed only bananas.

The children continued to find life with their father to be difficult. Spike once commented that “he used the children as pawns. He loved them, but on his own terms. They had to love him when he demanded it.”

“He threw me out of home for the first time when I was eight or nine,” Michael Sellers says. “He asked us who we loved more, our mother or him. Sarah, to keep the peace, said, ‘I love you both equally.’ I said, ‘No, I love my mum.’ He threw the two of us out and said he never wanted to see us again.” But of course he did, and of course their encounters were just as troubled, if not quite so memorable. Michael was shuttled around a lot, and not only between his parents. “By the time I was twelve I’d been to about eight or nine different schools.” He and Sarah liked their stepmother, though. “Britt was interested in us,” says Sarah. “None of his other women was.”

As for Peg, her hostility to Britt seemed to wane a bit over time, perhaps in response to Britt’s obvious affection for Michael and Sarah. Baby Victoria didn’t get much affection from Grandma, though. “Peg did not like the role of Grannie,” says Ekland. “And she would always refer to Victoria as ‘it.’ ”

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Peg Sellers, the former vaudeville showgirl, cut an increasingly bizarre figure around mod, swinging London in the mid-1960s. “She liked to wear little-girl dresses and even flaunted mini-skirts although she was well past sixty,” Britt