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Paranoia about his wife, paranoia about his performance. . . . At one point in late December 1967, Peter demanded that the Alice B. Toklas set be closed. Apparently it was for a love scene with Leigh Taylor-Young; Peter may have worried about becoming overenthusiastic. But whatever the cause, two police officers stood guard at the outer door of the sound stage as nonrequired technicians were ushered away and screens were arranged tightly around the set.

Photoplay got the scoop: “Peter Sellers has his cast, crew, and friends so confused with his demands. Sellers, I’m told, ‘is behaving like a brat.’ Most popular joke on the Warners lot is when someone asks, ‘Was that a sonic boom?’ Answer: ‘No, that’s Sellers blowing his top.’ ”

While Peter was filming I Love You, Alice B. Toklas! in Hollywood, Britt was in New York filming The Night They Raided Minsky’s, which left Peter more than enough room to come on to Leigh Taylor-Young. And yet Peter sent Britt at least twenty benevolent telegrams while they were separated. One was signed “Elizabeth and Philip,” another “Margaret and Tony.” “Richard and Elizabeth,” “John, Paul, George, and Ringo,” “Carlo and Sophia,” “Alec Guinness and Peter O’Toole,” and “Maharishi Yogi” were also among the well-wishers.

Despite the violence and the grilling, Britt was still making an effort, however doomed, to be the wife Peter wanted, or claimed to want, so she shuttled back and forth between the Minsky’s shoot in New York and Peter in Los Angeles. Some weekends, one of her costars, Elliot Gould, would fly with her to Hollywood to spend two days with his wife, Barbra Streisand, who was filming Funny Girl (1968). The two couples sometimes had dinner together at Barbra’s beach house in Malibu.

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On the set, Peter Sellers continued to live up to the gossip, but his brilliance when the camera was running kept striking his colleagues as well. He was “a magnificent artist,” declares the actor Salem Ludwig. “It was a pleasure to be on the set with him. Once the camera was on, you wouldn’t want more from an actor. He was really with you. He was so supportive on camera—he did everything to make you comfortable.”

Then comes the inevitable caveat. Ludwig also had the opportunity to view Peter at his temperamental worst when he caused an incident with Jo Van Fleet on the day the pot brownies scene was scheduled to be shot. Though no one realized it at the time, the contretemps had actually begun brewing the day before. Knowing that one of the film’s key scenes would occupy them the following morning and afternoon, the actors, director, and crew wrapped up quickly, and everybody left the set except for the four brownie principals (Peter, Van Patten, Van Fleet, and Ludwig), the director Averback, and the two writers, Mazursky and Tucker. Ludwig recalls that a vague conversation began to arise—few words but lots of implications—but nobody said anything explicit until finally it had to be spelled out for Ludwig and Van Fleet: Everybody was supposed to head over to Peter’s place and get stoned. The plan was to use their experiences when the cameras rolled in the morning.

Van Fleet and Ludwig each expressed concern about the illegality of smoking marijuana. Van Fleet was especially nervous about it and begged off, claiming to be allergic to the stuff. Besides, the two older actors said, they were actors. They could pretend. As Ludwig made a point of observing at the time, “You don’t have to actually explode an atomic bomb to get the effect of a mushroom cloud.” And so neither Ludwig nor Van Fleet went to Peter’s house to get high.

There was a 7:30 A.M. call the next morning, but Peter didn’t show up. Everybody sat around waiting until finally, at about 11:30, Peter surfaced, smiling very broadly and greeting almost everyone with unusual effusion. (Ludwig figures the delay cost at least $40,000, but Sellers was characteristically unperturbed by that kind of expense.) The crew then launched into what Ludwig describes as the standard routine of filming with Peter,