Mr. Strangelove_ A Biography of Peter Sellers - Ed Sikov [70]
Kite takes Stanley in as his lodger and suggests that he read some Lenin. “I see from your particulars,” he tells his perplexed guest, “you was at college in Oxford. I was up there meself. I was at the Baliol summer school in 1946. Very good toast and preserves they give you at tea time, as you probably know.” Kite’s English-heimish wife (the marvelous Irene Handl), and his voluptuous daughter, Cynthia (Liz Fraser), welcome him with open arms—particularly Cynthia. She quickly whisks poor Stanley away to a necking session in a garbage dump.
By the end, Stanley has succeeded in driving all of British industry to its knees by causing a national labor strike. He becomes a national hero, briefly, and eventually exposes the various scam artists on a televised debate led by Malcolm Muggeridge (playing himself), only to find that the keystones of British power are not so easily dislodged. Told by a judge to acknowledge his own mental illness, Stanley withdraws to the nudist camp.
The film’s editor, Anthony Harvey, believes that Peter’s performance in I’m All Right, Jack is due in large measure to his trust in John Boulting, who “had the most wonderful rapport with Peter, I think, of all the directors” for whom Harvey witnessed Peter performing. (This is quite a claim, for Harvey went on to edit Lolita and Dr. Strangelove, among other films.)
Ian Carmichael, who plays Stanley, found Peter both easy to work with and companionable in their off-hours. “During I’m All Right, Jack he seemed to get on terribly well with everybody. He was a very amusing man. He could be amusing sitting in his chair in the studio waiting for takes. He was always amusing. I like peace and quiet when I’m working; I don’t like to be distracted by a lot of loose gossip. But Peter was very light and frothy with everybody all the time. Of course it all changed later.
“He was a zany sort of chap in many ways. He would have great fun with a tape recorder, and he had great fun in sort of recording things and conversations with you. Also, he played the ukulele, singing songs into his microphone and then playing them back at different speeds. That gave him enormous pleasure.
“He had a cinema in the attic in his house, where he had a 16mm projector,” Carmichael recalls. “And a couple of times he said, ‘Come and have a meal on Saturday night and see a film. What would you like to see?’ ”
(Anne has a rather different memory of St. Fred’s: “a house with cameras, lights, and lots and lots of cable all over the place. And drawers and cupboards full of cable, and plugs and lamps, and everything.”)
Carmichael continues: “He had a set of drums there, too. [But] his main fixation really was motor cars. He used to change his cars about as often as he changed his socks.” Still, Peter liked to give others gifts as well as himself. “He was very generous with his money,” Carmichael points out. “His makeup man was Stuart Freeborn, and as the picture was coming to an end, he bought him a real top-of-the-range tape recorder with huge speakers and everything—the Rolls Royce of tape recorders.”
There was some tension involving Terry-Thomas, however: “Peter hated a lot of takes. I mean, he would [want to] print the first and second take if possible and not go on. He thought that by every take his performance diminished. He had a bit of a problem with Terry-Thomas because Terry had a problem with lines. I’d been with Terry when he’d gone through thirty and thirty-five takes.” With Carmichael’s comments in mind one can’t help but notice that Anthony Harvey has edited Peter and Terry’s first scene together in such a way that the two actors are mostly in separate shots, and that when they do appear onscreen together, Terry is for the most part