Mr. Strangelove_ A Biography of Peter Sellers - Ed Sikov [15]
Pete’s stint in Asia was necessarily his first extended separation from Peg. Psychologically, he took a notable turn. She remained on his mind, of course, but he wrote to her rarely, if ever. Earlier, when he left her behind to tour around England with his father, ENSA, or the Gang Shows, he’d had no need of pen and paper; the telephone was easier. But now, given the choice between letter writing and nothing, Pete, conspicuously, chose nothing.
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One reason was that Peter was necessarily thrown together with his fellow Gang Show performers, billeted in close quarters, and was rarely alone. One new acquaintance ended up sticking with him for the rest of his life, though with a few years’ hiatus after the war.
Dennis Selinger was a theater manager turned RAF gunner. Peter’s sharply drawn double nature struck Selinger quickly, just as it struck almost everyone with whom Sellers ever became close: “He was affable, easy, very funny when the mood was on him; at other times withdrawn, uncommunicative.”
They met in overheated, overstuffed Calcutta, Sellers fresh from a gig in the jungle, when a turn of events occurred that would seem absurd if not for the anything-might-happen disorder of wartime: The two English nobodies suddenly found themselves treated to dinner by the American movie star Melvyn Douglas, who, being there, was happy to distract two war-weary soldiers.
The Gang Shows provided a good diversion for worn-out, homesick troops, and Pete was getting the attention he required. With Reader the impresario saving the best for last, Sellers’s drumming closed the show. A reviewer in the Bombay Sunday Standard was impressed with him to the point of clairvoyance: “The ‘baby’ of the show is Peter Sellers, aged 19, the boy-drummer and impressionist. A big future lies before him.”
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“He was a big, fat, curly-haired boy” with “a big, hairy body—like a monkey,” says Peter’s friend David Lodge, describing the way Sellers looked when they met. They were in Gloucester at the time, fellow Gang Show performers. Lodge recalls their meeting as having occurred just after Sellers returned from Asia, which would place it in 1945. Then again, on another occasion Lodge dated it as occurring in 1944. More important than the exact date is the fact that they got along beautifully, amused each other greatly, and remained the best of friends for the rest of Peter’s life.
Given the fact that tense and frustrated men are thrown together during wartime with other tense and frustrated men, military theater often leans in the direction of gender humor. In short, Pete’s dress-up routines included drag. Lodge himself made a point of growing a mustache to prevent his own forced march in gowns, but he notes that young Pete’s “peaches-and-cream” complexion—a strange contrast to the hairy body—produced a “very convincing woman.” But it was Sellers’s talent as a drummer more than as a comedian that impressed Lodge: “He was a great drummer—as good as Buddy Rich.” His were showman’s performances, complete with flamboyant riffs and the confident tossing and catching of drumsticks in midair. Aging drummers in Britain may disagree; rumors of Pete’s lack of aptitude have surfaced. Unsung English drummers seem to resent the one among their ranks who achieved vast wealth and fame as a movie star, and apparently they denigrate his drumming talent. It doesn’t matter. The winner writes the history.
“He behaved like a boy—a rascal, actually,” says Lodge, who necessarily got to see Sellers’s selfish streak at close range but who, like the other men Sellers grew to trust, saw the tender and vulnerable side as well. They were bunked next to each other in Gloucester. Lodge couldn’t help but notice that Pete