Mr. Strangelove_ A Biography of Peter Sellers - Ed Sikov [71]
Liz Fraser, who played Kite’s daughter, had troubles of a different sort: “I do remember some scenes—and I don’t mean film scenes—that he and I had, and which I tried to extricate myself from. In retrospect he wasn’t so much a nasty man as a childish one.”
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At home during the holiday season each year, Peter and Anne set up a classic Christmas negativity scene. At 1 P.M. on Christmas Day, a full holiday luncheon was served to the kids and Anne’s parents, who, according to Michael, “would have to vacate the house” by 5 P.M., at which time Peg and Bill arrived for an equally elaborate Christmas dinner. Peg, by this point, was smoking two packs a day and drinking heavily, even to the point of hiding fifths of gin under the mattress. Whenever she greeted Michael and Sarah, she kissed and hugged them both. The trouble was, these fierce displays of grandmotherly love often lasted for ten minutes at a time.
Anne and Peter had begun to argue. A lot. When they fought, Peter tended to grab Anne’s left hand, pry her wedding ring off her finger, and throw it in whatever direction was handiest. One flew out of a Paris window.
Then the Sellers family moved into a twenty-room Elizabethan estate after Peter nearly torched St. Fred’s.
The move to Chipperfield had been planned, of course. One can scarcely trade in a fire-damaged fake Tudor for a much larger real one—one of England’s legendary stately homes, a seven-acre park, a tennis court, a swimming pool, paddocks, and two Tudor barns—without some advance planning. In fact, Peter had sold St. Fred’s by early November 1959, though he and Anne and the children were still living in it, when he decided to throw a party on Guy Fawkes Day. (On November 5, 1605, thirteen profoundly aggrieved Roman Catholics attempted to blow up Parliament in an attempt to launch a Helter Skelter–like uprising against King James I and the Anglican church. The conspirators got as far as loading thirty-six barrels of gunpowder into a cellar under the House of Lords, but at nearly the last minute the plot was foiled. Guy Fawkes, one of the conspirators, was in the cellar when the king’s soldiers burst in. He was tortured and killed, of course, and ever since, Guy Fawkes Day has been celebrated each year by British pyromaniacs, though it remains unclear whether they are honoring Guy’s death or his urge to blow up the government.)
Wally Stott was one of the horrified guests: “I had nearly bought Peter’s house! I paid a deposit on it, but after we were in escrow I decided I didn’t want to buy it. It was a long way from the center of London—it was on the outer fringe, and I’d always lived in town. So I backed out. After that [Peter’s friend, the actor] Alfred Marks bought it. But Peter was still living in it for a short time, because his new house wasn’t finished.
“During this time, November 5 came around. On Guy Fawkes Day there are always a lot of fireworks and bonfires. Peter loved fireworks—this was the very, very childish element in him, like the walkie-talkies and the cars—and of course he had to have fireworks. He got some of his friends around, and they were letting off rockets in the garden. Peter’s living room had a big plate glass door that opened onto the garden, and on the inside he had his Arriflex movie camera on a tripod, and he was taking movies of the fireworks. There was a rogue firework, which instead of going up went straight at the house, into the living room, and set fire to it. It caused tremendous destruction. I thought, ‘My gosh, that could have been my house!’ ”
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“I wanted a place I could walk around without crossing any streets. It is a very civilized exile,” Peter said of his new £17,500 estate. Twenty-three miles north-northwest of London on the border of Hertford and Buckingham, Chipperfield was magnificently excessive. “You’ve bought bleeding Buckingham Palace!” Graham Stark exclaimed on his first visit. Peter also