Mr. Strangelove_ A Biography of Peter Sellers - Ed Sikov [143]
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As early as June 1966, with Casino Royale still stumbling forward in production, Variety reported that two Hollywood producers, Jerry Gershwin and Elliott Kastner, had grown so skeptical of Peter’s Hollywood agent Harvey Orkin’s dismissive treatment of them—Orkin told the producers that Peter was booked solid for the measurable future—that they had taken it upon themselves to get on a plane, fly to London, and deliver a new screenplay to him personally, and that Peter had agreed to do the picture. One week later, everybody having been sufficiently embarrassed by the story, Variety noted that Gershwin and Kastner vehemently denied the whole thing. No, the producers categorically stated in Hollywood’s trade paper of record; they had made Peter’s deal for The Bobo (1967) directly with Harvey Orkin.
Bobo means fool in Barcelona. The script had much to recommend it, including a European location, an accent, a bizarre sight gag, and a role for Britt. The ridiculous yet somehow suave Juan Bautista arrives in Barcelona from a remote village and bills himself as the greatest singing matador in all of Spain. (“I sing before, after, and during, but not so much during, as it is difficult to sing when I am running.”) A corpulent impresario agrees to book him in his theater on one condition: that he conquer and humiliate the greatest blond in all of Spain—Olimpia (Britt), a spoiled, capricious, voluptuous ball-breaker who has, of course, spurned the impresario. An elaborate masquerade ensues before Olimpia discovers Juan Bautista’s true identity and exacts her strange revenge by dyeing him blue from head to toe. He ends up in a Barcelona bull ring as “the singing blue matador” and performs before a cheering crowd. She drives off with a genuinely rich suitor, a man more her speed.
Originally, Peter hoped to direct as well as star in The Bobo, which was scheduled for production at Cinecittà in the fall. But by the middle of the summer he’d decided to limit himself to performing, and Robert Parrish took over as the film’s director. “The trouble is,” Peter explained, “my role starts early in the movie and goes right through to the end. So does Britt’s. In order to make the most of my role and the scenes with Britt, I’ve had to concentrate on acting, not directing, this time.”
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The Bobo became, as Parrish’s widow, Kathleen, describes it, “a disaster that we considered a death in the family and never mentioned.” Parrish himself told one comparatively benign tale in his memoirs: “After three weeks’ shooting in Rome, Peter called me aside and whispered, ‘I’m not coming back after lunch if that bitch is on the set.’ ‘Tell me which one and I’ll take care of it,’ I cringed. He had already had the script girl fired. I figured it was the makeup girl’s turn. ‘The one over my left shoulder, in the white dress. Don’t look now,’ he said, and slinked away to charm the cast and crew. The girl in the white dress was his wife and costar, Britt.”
To Parrish’s surprise, he ran into the couple an hour or two later. They were lunching together at the Cinecittà commissary. “As I passed their table they raised their glasses to me.”
One piece of information unavailable to Parrish is supplied by Michael Sellers, who reports that a few days before shooting began on The Bobo, Peter “got his solicitors to write to Britt and tell her that he intended to file for divorce.”
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Peter took a few days away from The Bobo and flew to Paris to film a scene with Shirley MacLaine in MacLaine’s multicharacter comedy Woman Times Seven (1967). Directed by Vittorio De Sica, Woman Times Seven features MacLaine as the eponymous number of characters opposite an array of costars including Alan Arkin and Michael Caine. Peter’s scene was simple; there was little room for arguments with De Sica, and besides, his wife