Peter Sellers, CBE (born Richard Henry Sellers; 8
September 1925 – 24 July 1980) was an English film actor, comedian and singer.
He performed in the BBC Radio comedy series The Goon Show, featured on a number
of hit comic songs and became known to a worldwide audience through his many
film characterisations, among them Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther
series of films.
Born in Portsmouth, Sellers made his stage debut at the
Kings Theatre, Southsea, when he was two weeks old. He began accompanying his
parents in a variety act that toured the provincial theatres. He first worked
as a drummer and toured around England as a member of the Entertainments
National Service Association (ENSA). He developed his mimicry and
improvisational skills during a spell in Ralph Reader's wartime Gang Show
entertainment troupe, which toured Britain and the Far East. After the war,
Sellers made his radio debut in ShowTime, and eventually became a regular
performer on various BBC radio shows.
The Goons (Spike Milligan; Sir Harry Donald Secombe;
Peter Sellers;
Michael Bentine) with Ray Ellington and his band 1952
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During the early 1950s, Sellers, along
with Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine, took part in the
successful radio series The Goon Show, which ended in 1960. Emerging as the star of the series with his repertoire of
eccentric characters, Sellers also dominated the Goons’ film projects,
including the short subject Let’s Go Crazy (1951) and the feature-length Down
Among the Z Men (1952).
On his own, he played a handful of supporting film
roles before his breakthrough appearance as a doltish crook in The Ladykillers
(1955). Following the advice of that film’s star, Alec Guinness, Sellers strove
to avoid playing the same character twice. He especially enjoyed disappearing
into characters much older than himself (The Smallest Show on Earth, 1957;
Battle of the Sexes, 1959) and playing multiple roles (The Mouse That Roared,
1959).
Peter Sellers did some of his
best work for the Boulting Brothers in the late 1950s and early ’60s, notably
his characterization of obstreperous union shop steward Fred Kite in I’m All
Right Jack (1959); it was also during this period that he made his feature
directorial debut with Mr. Topaze (1961). Many British observers of the period
dismissed Sellers as a glorified radio mimic, while Americans lauded him as a
genius. One such American was director Stanley Kubrick, who cast Sellers as the
treacherous Clare Quilty in Lolita (1962) and in three superbly defined roles
in the brilliant “doomsday comedy” Dr. Strangelove (1964). The role that earned
him superstar status was the magnificently inept Inspector
Clouseau in The Pink
Panther and A Shot in the Dark (both 1964), both directed by Blake Edwards.
The World of Henry Orient (1964) was the first
"American" movie that Sellers made and was the official U.S. entry in
the Cannes Film Festival. He played a vain and lecherous pianist being chased
by two teenagers. But his visit to Hollywood was cut short: he had divorced his
first wife, Anne Howe, and married 19-year old Britt Ekland, a rising Swedish
film star, in February 1964; and he had the first of his heart attacks in April
at the age of 38.
Upon his recovery, the quality of his films became wildly
erratic, his mercurial offscreen temperament reflected by the unevenness of his
cinematic output. He would not truly hit his stride again until the mid-1970s,
when he repeated the role of Inspector Clouseau in three profitable Pink
Panther sequels.
In 1979 he delivered what many consider his finest
performance, as the simpleminded gardener Chance in Being There. This
Oscar-nominated triumph was followed by one of his worst films, The Fiendish
Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980). Suffering a series of heart attacks his final
“performance” in Trail of the Pink Panther (released posthumously in 1982) was
a hodgepodge of outtakes from earlier films.
On 21 July 1980 Sellers arrived in London from Geneva. He
checked into the Dorchester hotel, before visiting Golders Green Crematorium
for the first time to see the location of his parents' ashes. He had plans to
attend a reunion dinner with his Goon Show partners Spike Milligan and Harry
Secombe, scheduled for the evening of 22 July. On the day of the dinner,
Sellers took lunch in his hotel suite and shortly afterwards collapsed from a
heart attack. He was taken to the Middlesex Hospital, London, and died just
after midnight on 24 July 1980, aged 54. Sellers had a script for a revival,
called The Romance of the Pink Panther, in his possession at the Dorchester
Hotel on the day of his death.
Peter Sellers was married four times: to Anne Howe
(1951-1964), an English actress with whom he had two children, Michael and
Sarah; to Britt Ekland (1964-1969), a Swedish actress with whom he had a
daughter, Victoria; to Miranda Quarry (1970-1974), a stepdaughter of an English
peer; and to Lynne Frederick, an actress whom he married in 1977 (She turned 26
the day after Sellers died). He fell in and out of love with unexpected
impetus: he surprised even himself. Sellers himself said: I seem to marry young
people. I never grew up, you see—I'm still the same idiot I was at 18 or
20."
(Edited mainly from Wikipedia & Your Dictionary)
5 comments:
For “The Best of Peter Sellers (Full Album Plus Bonus Tracks)” go here:
https://www.upload.ee/files/10457460/Peter_Sellers_-_Best_Of.rar.html
1 The Trumpet Volunteer
2 Auntie Rotter
3 All The Things You Are
4 We Need The Money
5 I'm So Ashamed
6 Party Political Speech
7 Balham - Gateway To The South
8 Suddenly It's Folk Song
9 Any Old Iron
10 Boiled Bananas And Carrots (Boiled Beef & Carrots)
11 Unchained Melody
12 Dance With Me, Henry
13 Dipso Calypso
14 Never Never Land
15 A Drop Of The Hard Stuff
16 Jakka And The Flying Saucers (An Interplanetary Fairy Tale) Parts 1 & 2
Thanks! Love Sellers' cockney in the video!
Thanks!
Thank you very much!
I really appreciate this
Thanks
Harvey
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