Mr. Strangelove_ A Biography of Peter Sellers - Ed Sikov [186]
But Grade placed a call to Peter anyway, met with him for several hours, and got him to agree. On one point at least, it seems, Edwards and Sellers were absolutely in tune with each other, particularly in the downer period of 1974. Clouseau, Edwards once said, “is a man who eventually survives in spite of himself, which is, I guess, a human condition devoutly to be wished.”
• • •
It’s another jewel heist. The “Pink Panther” diamond goes missing. Sir Charles Litton, the gentleman thief from the original Pink Panther, is the prime suspect.
Edwards asked David Niven to reprise his role as Litton, but he had already committed himself to film Paper Tiger (1975) in Malaysia. Then Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was announced and dropped before the role was taken by Christopher Plummer. Catherine Schell costarred.
Peter was by all accounts astoundingly cooperative during the production of The Return of the Pink Panther, a fact Edwards later attributed to a certain penitence mixed with revived ambition: “If you caught Peter when he was on a downgrade, he’d be okay. He was manageable and rational. He wanted it to be successful so he could get back up on top again. I was able to negotiate almost for him. There was a certain amount of risk taking, but if it worked, the rewards would be enormous. Peter was extremely happy. He got quite wealthy from that project. We had a fun time—really enjoyable.”
The Return of the Pink Panther begins with a magnificent credits sequence (by the British animator Richard Williams) in which the luridly coated panther’s ass swings back and forth in a gesture of jaunty pride. But Sellers’s Clouseau is even more cartoonish than the cartoon. For one thing, the accent has become extreme—a parody of Peter’s own parody.
At the beginning, while Clouseau concerns himself with a street accordionist and his accompanying pet, thieves rob the bank next door. In the following scene, Chief Inspector Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) is outraged. Clouseau explains:
CLOUSEAU: I did not kneau ze benk was being reubbed because I was en-gezhed in my sworn duty as a police officer. . . . Z’ere was some question as to whez’er ze beggar or his minkey was breuking the lew!
DREYFUS: Minkey?
CLOUSEAU: What?
DREYFUS: You said “minkey”!
CLOUSEAU: Yes, shimpanzee minkey! So I left them beuth off with a warning-ge.
DREYFUS: The beggar was the lookout man for the gang.
CLOUSEAU: Zat is impossible! He was blind! How can a blind man be a lookout?
DREYFUS: How can an idiot be a policeman?! Answer me that!
CLOUSEAU: It’s very simple, all he has to do is enlist.
Dreyfus soon seeks the healing wisdom of a psychoanalyst.
• • •
Even more than A Shot in the Dark, the comedy is grisly. Clouseau’s loyal servant, Cato (Burt Kwouk), reappears—Clouseau calls him his “little yellow friend” with “little yellow skin”—only to get blown up by the insanely commonsensical Clouseau. The doorbell rings and Clouseau opens it, graciously accepts the burning bomb that a masked visitor hands him, calmly closes the door, comprehends, and tosses it away from himself—toward Cato, thereby blowing Cato into the next apartment, whereupon a little old lady bashes him on the head with her handbag.
A cigarette lighter in the shape of a gun finds its way to Dreyfus. He then picks up the wrong “lighter” and shoots his nose off.
On a more benign note, in one sequence Clouseau was shown to a terrible and tiny hotel room by an obnoxious concierge and manic bellhop. The three men could barely move, at which point the chambermaid walked in. Peter loved what he called “that strange, ‘wild peasant’ look” on Julie Andrews’s face when she made her entrance as the rustic servant, complete with chunks of apple stuck into her cheeks to create an air of Alpine plenitude. At the end of the scene, when the maid began softly