Mr. Strangelove_ A Biography of Peter Sellers - Ed Sikov [205]
The best track, though, is “The Cultural Scene: The Compleat Guide to Accents of the British Isles,” in which an American professor, Don Schulman (Sellers) tours the United Kingdom and finds a wide variety of rhythms and inflections, all done by Sellers: London (Cockney), Surrey (Russian), Birmingham (Indian), Wales (lilting singsong), Edinburgh (kilty), and Glasgow (virtually incomprehensible and belligerently drunk).
He kept himself occupied in other ways, too. He had several new film projects in mind: The Romance of the Pink Panther, to be directed by Sidney Poitier; Chandu the Magician for Orion; The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu, also for Orion; and a remake of Preston Sturges’s classic 1948 screwball comedy Unfaithfully Yours for Twentieth Century-Fox. He even talked about making a science-fiction film with Satyajit Ray.
The Romance of the Pink Panther would be different than the other Panthers, Peter told the Hollywood columnist Marilyn Beck. Clouseau will “expose a side of himself no one has seen. He’s going to be involved with a woman who’s deeply in love with him, and we’ll see his reaction to that.” There was still no word on who would play the woman, Anastasia Puissance. In fact, the script was not yet completed at the time. According to Peter, production wouldn’t begin until August 1980, at the earliest. Reportedly, Peter would be getting $3 million up front for the film—half of which, he claimed, had already been paid. He would also get 10 percent of the gross. Estimating from the financial success of the last Panther, The Romance of the Pink Panther alone might earn him $8 million.
That Sidney Poitier rather than Blake Edwards was set to direct The Romance of the Pink Panther seems not to have been the result of animosity between Peter and Blake. He’d filmed a cameo for Edwards’s latest picture, 10 (1979), which starred Dudley Moore, Julie Andrews, and Bo Derek. Peter played drums in a jazz band, but the scene was cut before the film’s release.
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In the beginning of August, Rolling Stone’s Mitchell Glazer conducted his interview with Peter in Gstaad. He found the words “Om Shanti” inscribed over the front door of Peter’s chalet and an autographed photo of Stan Laurel hanging on the wall. “It’s nice to walk around here and get stoned,” Peter told Glazer for publication. “This place is so beautiful even I can relax.”
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In December 1979, when the latest issue of Britain’s Club International magazine hit the stands, readers and gossip columnists were delighted to find what the magazine billed as “exclusive” nude photos of Britt Ekland and Lynne Frederick. Britt’s were full-frontal, Lynne’s simply bare-breasted. “It’s gossiped that Sellers himself snapped the pics, but not for publication,” the Hollywood Reporter noted.
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In January 1980, Being There was screened for President Jimmy Carter and the first lady, Rosalynn, at the White House. President Carter particularly enjoyed the exchange between Chance and the president—the one during which the president thinks he is getting political advice but in fact is receiving the basic facts of plant life. “That’s better advice than I get,” said President Carter.
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Before embarking on The Romance of the Pink Panther, Unfaithfully Yours, Chandu the Magician, or the unlikely space alien picture for Satyajit Ray, Peter made The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980) with Helen Mirren and Sid Caesar.
Roman Polanski had once been mentioned as a director for the film, but nothing came of it. John G. Avildson spent