Mr. Strangelove_ A Biography of Peter Sellers - Ed Sikov [47]
• • •
Just as he was assuming responsibility as the father of a newborn son, Peter’s professional life was becoming a whirlwind. The Goon Show’s fifth series began recording on the last Sunday in September and continued nearly every week for the next twenty-five weeks. He did guest spots on the BBC television show And So to Bentley (starring Dick Bentley). And on November 1, Peter performed for Elizabeth II. The Royal Variety Show was certainly prestigious; it brought Peter into the company of the show’s headliners, Noel Coward and Bob Hope.
Peter, Spike, and Harry continued to tour. Their acts couldn’t use the words Goon Show in the title, since the BBC owned the copyright, but audiences all over Britain knew precisely who they’d come to see and why. Pleasing provincial audiences was even more of a strain, however, and not only for Peter. In December 1954, Spike once again reached the end of his rope, this time literally.
They were doing a mock-acrobatic act in Coventry. Billed as “Les Trois Charleys,” Peter, Spike, and Harry wore gold headbands and flaming red capes. The audience was already confused by the three comedians’ scattershot antics, but when Milligan appeared alone onstage and proceeded to blow a series of off-key trumpet solos, the audience rebelled with catcalls. Spike responded by clomping down to the edge of the stage and shouting, “You hate me, don’t you?!” The audience roared back its unanimous affirmation. And with that they Coventrated him.
Spike ran to his dressing room and locked himself in. Harry and Peter, knowing Spike well, understood that he might well be killing himself. They broke down the door and found Spike putting the noose around his neck.
For Peter, this incident was the last straw in an ugly pile that had been growing in size since he was three, and so he decided to quit doing music hall shows. It wasn’t just Spike’s suicidal state that convinced him. These tours were simply too grueling, too awful and demeaning. But he still had a contractual obligation in Coventry to fulfill, and thus he had a chance to effect vengeance.
The morning after Spike’s episode—they saved him, he continued writing and acting, somebody finally invented Lithium, and decades later he took it—Peter bought one of the Goon Show conductor’s records (Wally Stott’s Christmas Melodies) along with a record player, and that afternoon, at a reduced-price matinee for an elderly crowd, he appeared onstage clad in an oversized leopardskin leotard. He put the record on the record player, stood there, and played three songs straight through, not saying a word. At the end of each song, he led the audience in a round of hearty applause and then he left the stage.
Strangely, the audience appreciated the joke and applauded happily when Peter’s essentially Dadaist routine concluded. The theater management was not nearly as entertained, however, and a furious manager challenged Peter on the basis of the “as known” clause. He had “performed”—no one disputed that—but not “as known.”
“I’m going into films,” the fed up comedian told his agent. “Not as a sideline, but all the way. This life is too bloody impossible. It’ll kill me if I don’t get out now.”
SIX
Peter Sellers was safely back in London in late December 1954, appearing at the Palladium in a stylish riff on Mother Goose. Written by Phil Park and Eric Sykes, the comedy was a top-notch production—the antithesis of “Les Trois Charleys,” with its headbands and capes and trumpets. The director was Val Parnell, a fixture of West End theater, and in fact, the production was officially billed as Val Parnell’s Seventh Magnificent Christmas Pantomime, “Mother Goose.” Erté codesigned the costumes. There was a Goose, a Vulture, a Bailiff, and a Policeman. There was a Sammy, a Donald, and the Pauline Grant Ballet. There was an evil Squire, too; that was Peter.
The actor-comedian Max Bygraves, who played Sammy,