Mr. Strangelove_ A Biography of Peter Sellers - Ed Sikov [213]
The headlines screamed, the newscasters intoned. And in a bit of irony both gruesome and cruel, thieves stole Lynne’s crocodile handbag and matching wallet—they were gifts from Peter, she said—while she was shopping for a black dress the next day.
• • •
Peter’s funeral was held at Golders Green on Saturday, July 26.
Anne was in Portugal with Ted Levy when Peter died. She didn’t return to London, she says, “because I knew it would be a circus.”
She was correct. The surge of fans, reporters, photographers, and morbid sightseers was magnificent in the pouring rain.
Britt made a discreet entrance in a blue Rolls Royce. Miranda, after placing a sympathy telephone call to Lynne (a call answered by Sue Evans) stayed away.
Peter’s aunties, Ve and Do, were there, along with Spike, Harry, Michael Bentine, his cousins Ray Marks and Peter Ray, Canon John Hester, Lord Snowdon, Brother Cornelius, Dennis Selinger, Graham Stark, David Lodge, and Baron Evelyn de Rothschild.
• • •
As one of the Ray cousins said of the funeral, the wives were crying and the Goons were laughing. This was especially the case after Canon Hester, at Michael’s suggestion, made an announcement at the end. Just before Peter’s body was wheeled away to the furnace room to be turned into ash, Canon Hester solemnly told the assembled mourners that Peter wanted them to listen to one last song.
And so it was that Peter Sellers exited the world, riding in swingtime into the flames, to the tune of Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood.”
EPILOGUE
Ever drifting down the stream—
Lingering in the golden gleam—
Life, what is it but a dream?
A memorial service for Peter Sellers took place at St. Martin in the Fields on September 8, 1980. It would have been Peter’s fifty-fifth birthday.
In addition to Lynne, Michael, Sarah, Victoria, Spike, Harry, David Lodge, Graham Stark, and Michael Bentine, guests included Lord Snowdon, David Niven, Michael Caine, Sam Spiegel, Herbert Lom, and about 490 less famous people.
Snowdon recited the twenty-third Psalm. Harry sang “Bread of Heaven.” Niven offered the eulogy. “It was a joy and a privilege to have known him for so long,” Niven said. “Yet how many of us really did know Peter? After twenty-five years of friendship, I had to ask myself.” Niven noted with candor that some of Peter’s many obituaries described him as having been “difficult, ungracious, despotic, bitter, depressed, lonely, in a constant state of turmoil, vexatious, quarrelsome, and neurotic.” Niven acknowledged that, well, yes, Peter had been some of those things at least some of the time. But, he went on to say, “luckily he was not all these things all of the time, because if he had been, St. Martin’s and the surrounding fields would be empty this morning instead of full.”
According to the terms of Peter Sellers’s last will and testament, 50,000 Swiss francs was to go to the city of Gstaad, £5,000 to his lawyer Anthony Humphries, £5,000 to his accountant Douglas Quick, and $2,000 each to Michael, Sarah, and Victoria Sellers. The rest of Peter’s estate would proceed to Lynne Frederick.
Thanks to his tax lawyers and accountants, Peter’s British estate was virtually worthless. His foreign estate hovered in the neighborhood of $9.6 million.
On behalf of Michael, Sarah, and Victoria, Spike Milligan appealed personally to Lynne’s sense of decency, but since she had none, she had none of Spike’s appeal, so Peter’s children were forced to contest his will in court, where they eventually lost. Lynne’s point was simple: “Why can’t they leave his memory alone?”
Six months after Peter’s death, Lynne Frederick married David Frost. Then she divorced Frost and married a cardiologist. She got all the money.
“It all went up her nose,” Anne Levy once said with uncharacteristic spite, not to mention exaggeration. Anne was referring to the fact that Lynne developed severe addictions to drugs and alcohol and died in 1994 at the age of thirty-nine.