• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Later, Peter periodically told people he carried some of Peg’s ashes around with him on his travels. Joe McGrath finds it hard to believe. “He would make up a lot of it, you know. I mean, if he thought that somebody would believe he was carrying his mother’s ashes around, it would be very funny. I know he told people stories about his death experiences—when he had his heart attacks and stuff like that—but he never told me any of that, and I know he never told Spike Milligan. Spike said, ‘No—he’d never tell us any of that because we’re gonna say, “You’re putting me on—don’t give me any of that shit.” ’ ”

• • •

Peter Sellers was in such terrible emotional shape during the production of The Bobo that even his close friend Kenneth Griffith felt the sting. At Peter’s insistence, Griffith played the role of Pepe, one of Olimpia’s discarded lovers. “I came on the set one day and Robert Parrish was sitting like Little Jack Horner in the corner of the studio. Peter was directing.

“The scene I had was with Britt Ekland. I thought, ‘Geez, somebody could have warned me. Well, perhaps they forgot.’ So I did the scene, which was quite difficult, with Miss Ekland. She always showed goodwill and tried very hard, but she was having problems. I think we were into forty-odd takes—which was quite difficult for me because if she got it right it would be printed and that’s it. But we went on. At the end of the day I got my makeup off and got changed and sought Robert Parrish—nice man, lovely man. He was sitting alone. I said, ‘Robert, you didn’t tell me what was going to happen this afternoon.’ He said, ‘I’m sorry, Kenneth.’ I said, ‘Is it all with your agreement?’ I thought maybe Peter had said, ‘Look, I can handle it.’ But Robert very quietly said, ‘No. He just announced that he was taking over, and I felt that I had a duty to sit quietly and be a servant to the film. You know, the number-one job is to get this film finished.’

“When the film was finished, the big man in film publicity here [in London] asked if he could come and see me. He said, ‘You know Peter wants everyone on the film in a significant capacity to write a piece about what they think of him as a director’ [for use as publicity]. I said, ‘I can’t do that, because it would imply that I supported what happened. And I don’t.’ And he got up—because he’d had orders from Peter—and said, ‘Well, Kenneth, you know everybody on the film has done it. You are the only one who has said no.’ I said, ‘Look, I love Peter dearly, but I can’t be a party to this.’ After that Peter cut me dead for six months.”

Actually, Robert Parrish never left the picture entirely in Peter’s hands. In late November, with the production still grinding on—Peter was by that point insisting on reshooting scenes without even seeing the rushes—Parrish told his London-based agent that he was getting along “as good as ever” with Peter and with Elliott Kastner as well. “Peter leans on me when he needs to and flails out on his own when he doesn’t. Elliott holds his stomach and says, ‘Bob, what am I going to do?’ ”

Then Harvey Orkin showed up in Rome and helpfully told Peter that he, Orkin, didn’t like Peter’s interpretation of his role.

Orkin’s asinine remark—had he never met his client?—sent Peter into a tailspin so predictable that one wonders if there was malicious intent on Orkin’s part. Like most artists, Peter needed a constant, smooth flow of reassurances, not a sudden stab of criticism, which human beings generally take badly and actors and writers take even worse. Unfortunately, Peter’s response to Orkin’s insensitivity was not to question his relationship with Orkin but rather to insist on reshooting even more scenes in a desperate attempt to develop an entirely new character.

They were all still at it in late January when Peter demanded a codirecting credit. First he fought with Kastner about it—Kastner told Peter he was “full of shit”—and then he approached Parrish, who patiently