Mr. Strangelove_ A Biography of Peter Sellers - Ed Sikov [75]
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By 1960, the British and American press were industriously setting up a competition of the sort no one can possibly win:
“There have been rumors (unsubstantiated) that he wants to do an Alec Guinness.”
“He may even be crowding his idol, Sir Alec Guinness, with his mixed bag of characterizations and multiple roles.”
“There’s no doubt about it—Alec Guinness stands in clear peril of losing his eminent position as Britain’s most distinguished film comedian.”
Peter himself played it up: “I work from the voice inward—probably from being in radio—instead of going for the physical characteristics first. Then I figure out what they’re going to look like. Guinness, who of course is wonderful, works from the body outward and plans every movement in advance. I play a scene the way I feel it.” And: “Alec likes to use technique to work out just what he will do before he starts. I use technique too but I have to get into the part—feel it from the inside, you know. I think that’s why his characters sometimes seem cool, if not cold.”
It was in this context that Peter ignored the advice of his close friends and made the decision to appear as a ruthless criminal mastermind in John Guillermin’s Brit noir, Never Let Go (1960). Like Guinness, he’d already played multiple characters in the same film, and he could do practically any voice he wished, but he was remaining, after all, just a comedy star, albeit the greatest in the United Kingdom. As such he considered his art “puny.” Heavy drama beckoned. Never Let Go was not going to be funny on any level, and Peter’s character—the car-thieving, girlfriend-slapping, murderous Lionel Meadows—appealed to his sense of challenge. He would actually be doing the Guinness if the now-retired Major Bloodnok and Bluebottle turned himself into an unremittingly vicious thug.
Shooting began at Beaconsfield in late November 1959. The story is bleak and simple: A failing salesman (Richard Todd) leaves his office one day to find that his car is stolen. His life unravels, and his obsession with finding the car consumes him. He traces the theft first to the young punk who actually pinched it (the heartthrob Adam Faith), and then to Lionel Meadows (Peter) and his chippie girlfriend, Jackie, played by the nubile Carol White.
According to White, Peter started out as an avuncular figure: “When I stepped in front of the cameras at Beaconsfield, my self-confidence deserted me. Peter Sellers saw me wobbling like a jelly and quickly came to the rescue. He cracked jokes and went into his ‘Ying tong iddle I po’ routine, my moment of anxiety passed, and we were soon whistling through the takes.” White also reports that her mother and Peter quickly developed a friendship. Their discussion centering on dieting techniques, Peter was soon wearing pink plastic sweat bags under his clothes, convinced that pounds of fat were melting away every day.
His attitude toward Carol White shifted as shooting progressed. It remained warmly protective, but the tone darkened. Everyone involved with Never Let Go knew that the two hottest youths in the cast, White and Faith, were privately conducting themselves in the manner expected of hot youths, and Peter grew jealous—so much so that when he had to slap White’s face in one scene he really whapped her hard with his palm. For whatever reason, the director, John Guillermin, ordered about a dozen takes of the action.
Characteristically, Peter soon appeared, contrite and amorous, at the door of White’s dressing room. Yes, he confessed, he had indeed become insanely jealous of Adam Faith. “I was sleeping with Adam,” White observes in her memoirs, “and there was superstar Peter Sellers telling me that I filled his every dream.” White decided,