b. Southsea, UK, 1925

In depth review of The Ladykillers added with photos of UK Dvd.

When commercial cinema was breaking down in the late fifties, it adopted many novelties in a frenzied search for security. One of them was Peter Sellers. He was, beyond argument, a brilliant radio comedian, capable of inventing vivid fantasy characters with his great flair as a mimic. But cinema flinches from mimicry and peels away bogusness. Moreover, as Sellers became world famous, so strains of vanity and neurosis arose, so close to madness that his real heart disease seemed incidental.

He became an international figure without ever apparently considering the nature of acting. Darting in and out of comic personae could seem slippery or chronic on screen. He was often funny—though on film he was broader than he had been on radio—but he was too evidently a virtuoso, and little else. His comedy never helped him find a character—as happened with Fields, Groucho, and so many others. There was no attitude there in Sellers: his deftness was ghostly; yet he could be very dull when some serious 'fancy took him. His health was poor, but his ego was very strong and as wide as the Grand Canyon. He was not easy to work with, and he was very self-indulgent as Inspector Clouseau.

After many years on radio in Ray's a Laugh and The Goon Show (which revolved around him), he played supporting parts in British films: The Ladykillers (55, Alexander Mackendrick); The Smallest Show on Earth (57, Basil Dearden); and The Naked Truth (57, Mario Zampi). He rose to leading parts, but seldom appeared without some disguise: Carlton-Browne of the F.O. (59, Roy Boulting); The Mouse That Roared (59, Jack Arnold); I'm All Right, Jack (59, R. Boulting); Battle of the Sexes (59, Charles Crichton); Two-Way Stretch (60, Robert Day); as a gangster in Never Let Go (60, John Guillermin); as his caricature Indian in The Millionairess (60, Anthony Asquith); in his one direction of himself, Mr. Topaze (61); and Only Two Can Play (61, Sidney Gilliat).

His elevatlon to major stardom began with the part of Quilty in Lolita (62, Stanley Kubrick) and Waltz of the Toreadors (62, Guillermin). Then came the three parts—British flier, U.S. president, and evil genius— in Dr Strangelove (63, Kubrick), in which his own pretensions vied with those of the director. The "international comedian" label was now pinned on him: as Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther (64, Blake Edwards) and A Shot in the Dark (64, Edwards); and The World of Henry Orient (64, George Roy Hill). He had a heart attack before Kiss Me, Stupid could get under way, and soulfully declared his regeneration. But there was no firmer grip on a character for himself, and the films got worse: What's New, Pussycat? (65, Clive Donner); The Wrong Box (66, Bryan Forbes); After the Fox (66, Vittorio de Sica); The Bobo (67, Robert Parrish); Woman Times Seven (67, de Sica); I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (68, Hy Averback); The Party (68, Edwards); The Magic Christian (69, Joseph McGrath); Hoffman (69, Alvin Rakoff); There's a Girl in My Soup (70, R. Boulting); Soft Beds, Hard Battles (73, R. Boulting); The Optimists of Nine Elms (73, Anthony Simmons); as Queen Victoria in The Great McGonagall (74, McGrath). He stayed loyal to Clouseau, but came close to being surpassed by the great Herbert Lom's Dreyfuss in The Return of the Pink Panther (74), The Pink Panther Strikes Again (76), and The Revenue of the Pink Panther (78)—all by Blake Edwards. He was another comic policeman in Murder by Death (76, Robert Moore), and the traditional double-act in The Prisoner of Zenda (79, Richard Quine).

He was wonderfully well used as the empty vessel who rises to command in Being There (80, Hal Ashby)—its hard to think of another actor who could have played the vital yet elusive role so well, and perhaps he was all the better in it because illness kept him quiet, still, and impassive. His last film was The Fiendish Plot of Fu-Manchu (80, Piers Haggard), but Trail of the Pink Panther (82, Edwards) used old footage from Clouseaus of the past.