Mr. Strangelove_ A Biography of Peter Sellers - Ed Sikov [211]
“ ‘This jacket is bulletproof,’ ” the weapons trader explained. “Peter was fascinated. ‘And these buttons are the shell casings of bullets that were shot into it.’ That knocked Peter out.”
From that point, spinning out script ideas with the gloriously warped Terry Southern must have been great fun—the scenes taking place in the international arms marketplace, for example. “As Peter explained it to Terry, it was just like going to a shopping mall,” says Gerber. On much the same wavelength as Peter and Terry, Hal Ashby expressed interest in directing Grossing Out, and the Hollywood trade papers reported that Peter would be getting $3 million for his appearance.
To the list was added The Ferret; written and directed by Blake Edwards, the comedy-on-the-drawing-boards was to be a spin-off of the Pink Panther series, still involving the character of Clouseau, but redefining the story that surrounded him.
“Without my work, life would be intolerable,” Peter said. “It is the only panacea I know.”
• • •
From Gstaad in early summer, Peter called his British lawyer, Elwood Rickless, and told him that he had finally agreed to the angiogram—an X-ray of one or more blood vessels of the cardiovascular system—that his cardiologist had recommended, the point being to determine whether his heart was strong enough to withstand surgery. He arranged to fly to London and then to Los Angeles, where he would check into Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for the exam. He chose Cedars-Sinai because of his positive experience there in 1964. If the cardiology team recommended it, Peter agreed that he would undergo immediate open-heart surgery.
“I was speaking to Peter on the phone,” Spike Milligan said. “The subject of children came up, and he said, ‘You know, I’m a bloody fool. I keep leaving them in and out of the will. Some weeks I put them in, others I take them out. It depends on how I feel.’ ” Spike offered his opinion—that he thought all children were entitled to inherit at least some of their father’s estate. “Yes,” Peter responded, “I really must change my will.”
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Malcolm McDowell ran into Lynne: “I was sitting in Ma Maison restaurant on Melrose Avenue in West Hollywood, and I looked over and there was Lynne Frederick Sellers. Because I had worked with her, of course, I went over to say hello, and she introduced me to her lawyer. We chatted for a minute, and I started to walk off, and then she came over and said, ‘Malcolm, I’m meeting with my lawyer because I’ve had it with Peter. It’s over.’ I said, ‘I’m very sorry to hear that, Lynne.’ She said, ‘I’m really sick of him. I’m sick of him! I mean, this has gone too far. I should have done this ages ago, and that’s it!’ ”
Peter had the same idea. “She annoys me,” he told his son in July, expressing in ever more distinct terms the ambivalence of his feelings all along. “I just wish the divorce was over and done with.”
• • •
The novelist Auberon Waugh interviewed Peter in Gstaad. Peter’s personal assistant, Michael Jeffery, was caring for him in Lynne’s customary absence. Stephen Bach’s trip to Gstaad had been business related, so Lynne had an interest in being present. Now she was in Philadelphia.
Waugh describes Michael Jeffery: “a young costume designer in tight corduroy trousers who wore a gold stud in one ear and walked with the unmistakable skip of a former ballet dancer. It is Mike who cooked him his meals, made sure he kept his appointments, and scolded him if he forgot to put his boots on when going out of doors. Without disrespect to either, one could say that he had found his mother-figure, although there seemed a certain amount of aggravation in the air between them.”
Peter was dressed for