Mr. Strangelove_ A Biography of Peter Sellers - Ed Sikov [94]
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“At the moment I’ve got a South African architect working on my new flat in Hampstead,” Peter told Playboy. It was affecting his personality: “I tend to speak in a South African accent all the time.”
The designer, Ted Levy, was hauling his clients out of the Tudor era by way of a preciously masculine, Euro-Beverly Hills style—High Sixties early in the decade. The Hampstead apartment was large, polished, and very rich—five bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a fully equipped recording studio. Many of the rooms were fully paneled in opulent, garnet-dark rosewood. No hoi-polloi drapes here; Levy designed the windows to be covered by moveable leather panels.
Anne worked closely with the architect. “They kind of overruled me, always around, the two of them buying wallpaper and wood and stuff,” Peter later complained. Michael Sellers reports that it was Peter who convinced Anne to take Ted along on the shopping trips, it was Peter who “encouraged Ted to take Mum out for lunch,” and it was Peter who suddenly turned on his interior designer one day and “ordered Ted to take my mother away.” “I don’t want her!” Peter shouted.
What with Peter and Anne’s affectionate hand-holding and public solicitousness, all of Peter’s pecking of Anne’s cheek when the couple and Levy were together (two captivating performances by actors, after all), it was only when Peter broke down and shrieked at him that Ted Levy finally comprehended that his clients’ marriage was a sour charade.
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Peter went off to Paris to film John Guillermin’s adaptation of Jean Anouilh’s play The Waltz of the Toreadors (1962). A period-piece costume comedy scripted by Wolf Mankowitz, it’s Millionairess-like in its grand oversizing of a small satirical idea. The beautiful French actress Dany Robin takes the Sophia role, with the requisite breathtaking costumes and hats. Peter, instead of playing a low-key Indian doctor, reverts to Bloodnok for his characterization of the aging general who pursues his old flame (Dany) in the face of his equally aging and shrewish wife (Margaret Leighton). Owing to the requirements of the script, however this Bloodnok is a satyr in a fat suit, and the effect is a little jarring.
“Wolf Mankowitz was a friend of mine, and Wolf wrote the script in about two weeks, and we made the picture,” says John Guillermin. It wasn’t easy, and it didn’t turn out well, especially from Guillermin’s perspective. The director maintains his respect for Peter Sellers, however, as many directors continue to do despite the troubles they faced with him. “Based on the scores of people I’ve worked with over the years, I think Peter was an outstanding artist who worked in a very eccentric and curious way. It’s rare that you find people who come out of radio and adapt to the screen successfully. To me, he was unique in that sense.
“Whether or not he was taking lessons from Stanislavsky, he had an instinct that was totally Method. The very fact that he started with an actorly tangible, the voice, and then built from it—that’s a very sound way of going about it.”
Kenneth Griffith provides another colorful description of Peter’s approach to performing. “Once we discussed acting,” Griffith says, “and we came to the agreement that what we were both trying to achieve was a mushroom in its prime—beautiful rounded top, stem, febrile roots. I always started from the febrile roots, built up, and finished, I hoped, with a polished clear top. He started with the top—because he saw it. But it would be very wrong to say that’s where he stopped. He wasn’t just a brilliant impersonator. He worked from the top down—to what made that top tick.”
Guillermin continues: “In Toreadors he started with the voice—it was a neighbor of his, an old boy in his sixties, a retired Army man. Once he got the voice, his whole body followed. But when I said, ‘Okay, it’s terrific, Peter, but