Mr. Strangelove: A Biography of Peter Sellers

by Ed Sikov

  Finally, in mid-January 1979, Peter Sellers began to make the film of his life. Literally, he thought.

  • • •

  Being There is the story of a man named Chance, a mindless, nearly emotionless middle-aged fool forced by the death of his ancient benefactor to leave the mansion and small garden in which he has spent his life and, alone, to take to the streets, where, quickly, and luckily, he is hit by a limousine owned by the wife of one the richest men in the world, who doctors him, houses him, feeds him, and sets him up for superstardom.

  MacLaine plays the wife, Eve Rand. Hal Ashby originally considered Laurence Olivier for the role of Eve’s dying husband, Benjamin Rand, but Lord Olivier turned it down. As Shirley MacLaine explained during the production, “I called Larry about it the other day. He didn’t like the idea of being in a film with me masturbating.” After briefly considering Burt Lancaster, Ashby ended up with Melvyn Douglas.

  As for the role of Chance, Peter once explained facetiously that “Jerzy Kosinski wanted the part himself. That’s why he wrote it for a young man of Olympian, god-like beauty.” (In fact, Kosinski was a slight and rather rat-faced man—not ugly, but not Olympian either.) “I saw Chauncey Gardiner as a plump figure, pallid, unexercised from sitting around watching television. [Am I] too old? A lot of people said that. I just told them, ‘You’re wrong, I’m right.’ ”

  Given the fact that Peter had spent most of the last decade trying to embody Chauncey Gardiner, it hurt to be told that he was now too old to play him. The face-lift helped. It eliminated the haggard quality that had begun to creep in with The Pink Panther Strikes Again. Owing to his heart condition and the lack of a sustainable treatment, Peter was fundamentally unhealthy, though he didn’t look it onscreen.

  To create Chance’s voice, Peter said that he had, as usual, “messed around a long time with sounds. I have a whole sound set-up, and I spoke into a tape recorder and then listened. I compared one sound with another until I found the one I was happy with.” The result was a voice with “very clear enunciation, slightly American, with perhaps a little Stan Laurel mixed in.” David Lodge maintains that in Chance’s voice there’s a touch of Peter’s old, taciturn gardener from Chipperfield as well.

  • • •

  Peter had been a problematic figure in the world of big-budget motion pictures for quite some time by the time Being There was filmed, and he required no small degree of personal handling, let alone public explanation. Andrew Braunsberg felt the need to make excuses for some of Peter’s recent (and not-so-recent) work, but Braunsberg handled the awkward issue deftly and accurately by saying simply that “he knows he’s done some junk, but everyone who makes a lot of films has.” (As if there was any doubt about Braunsberg’s theory, it is proven by Laurence Olivier’s Inchon, 1981, and Katharine Hepburn’s Olly Olly Oxen Free, 1978, to name only two of the hundreds of crummy films made by fine performers.) And his weirdness was by that point an old cliché that tinkered on the edge of grand myth. Inevitably, for example, Peter announced to the cast and crew of Being There that he refused to work with anyone who wore purple, leaving the explanation to Hal Ashby, who dutifully obliged.

  Peter kept to himself most of the time during the production. At Peter’s insistence, reporters were turned away left and right, although two—Mitchell Glazer of Rolling Stone and Todd McCarthy of Film Comment—were allowed to visit the set with the promise of interviews at a later time. Shirley MacLaine later wrote that she repeatedly invited Peter to lunch or dinner, but that he kept refusing, despite their shared interest in what Shirley herself itemized as “metaphysics, numerology, past lives, and astrology.” Peter himself said that “Shirley used to have a go at me for always going off into a corner. But I had to. I didn’t want to break my gardener for the day.”

  On the other hand, Melvyn Douglas told of a more genial and social Peter. “Jack Warden and Peter Sellers are theatre raconteurs as well as wonderful actors,” Douglas later wrote in his autobiography. “The two of them hardly ever left the set. Shooting on their scenes would end and they would retire to another part of the room and go on telling stories, gesturing and laughing until tears ran down their faces.”

  In early February, Peter was filming on location in Washington, D.C.—Chance wandering the streets of the ghetto; Chance walking down the median strip of a crowded artery, seemingly headed for the brilliantly lit Capitol. By mid-February, the cast and crew had moved to another location—Biltmore, a 10,000-acre estate owned by George W. Vanderbilt in Asheville, North Carolina. The producers made a point of setting aside one of the mansion’s vast rooms to serve as Peter’s dressing room, but Peter took one look at it and hurried back to his own trailer.

  On Valentine’s Day, Peter sent Shirley five dozen red roses—anonymously, but she knew. Shirley thanked Peter for them, but he refused to acknowledge the gift.

  • • •

  “You’re always going to be a little boy, ain’t you?” says Louise, the black maid, as her parting words after the old man dies and leaves the helpless Chance to fend for himself. And so, to the tune of Eumir Deodato’s souped-up, synthesizer-ridden “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” the overgrown infant opens the front door for the first time in his life, closes it behind him, negotiates the few steps down to the sidewalk, and enters the world. Later that morning, when a young black gang leader pulls a knife on him, Chance responds by yanking his television remote control device out of his pocket, pointing it at the street tough, and trying to change channels to someone more pleasant.

  In front of an electronics store, Chance stands dumbfounded before a big-screen TV that plays images of the sidewalk in front of it. He backs up in horrified confusion at finding himself to be a video image and is immediately hit by Eve Rand’s immense Cadillac. In the limousine’s backseat, Eve gives him a drink. Assuming that the liquid is water or some form of juice, Chance drinks alcohol for the first time and promptly chokes just as Eve asks him his name:

  “Chance—achhkk—achkg—actgk’he gardner.”

  “Chauncey Gardiner?”

  Chance has a new name. “Are you related to Basil and Perdita Gardiner?” the luxurious Eve asks in a hopeful tone. “No,” Chance replies in the flat near-monotone that expresses the full extent of his emotional life. “I am not related to Basil and Perdita.”

  It’s not that Chance has no affect. Sellers periodically knits the muscles of his forehead to create an expression of mild and regular bewilderment. Chance appears at those moments to think, but it is thinking without thoughts, a kind of vestigial reasoning that leads nowhere. He is a mental earlobe trying to be a fin. It’s not surprising that American audiences accepted the plot of Being There, in which an idiot becomes a national hero, for after all, they elected Ronald Reagan to the presidency the following year.

  • • •

  Ben Rand suffers from aplastic anemia; steroids, transfusions, a fully equipped personal intensive care unit, and a live-in physician (Richard Dysart) struggle to keep him alive in his American palace on the outskirts of Washington. While Ben gets his daily dose of fresh blood, an orderly wheels Chance into the mansion’s clinic so that Ben’s doctor can examine the leg that Eve’s car came close to crushing. Chance spies an African-American medical attendant, whose skin calls the gang leader to what passes for Chance’s mind. Chance asks the man if he knows Rafael, the shadowy figure to whom the gangster had urged Chance, at knifepoint, to relay a message. Chance proceeds to repeat the message in his vacant, colorless tone, the antithesis of the vivid communiqué itself:

  “ ‘Now get this, honky. You go tell Rafael that I ain’t taking no jive from no Western Union messenger. You tell that asshole that if he got something to tell me, to get his ass down here himself.’ Then he said that I was to get my white ass out of there quick or he’d cut it.”

  The problem was, Peter couldn’t get the speech out without breaking into uncontrollable laughter; as Hoffman’s Alvin Rakoff and others have noted, Peter could be a giggler. Ashby or
dered take after take as Peter attempted vainly to compose himself. The cast and crew couldn’t help laughing, too, and so the scene never worked as written, and the entire speech had to be cut. In the finished film, Chance simply lies back down on the hospital gurney and keeps his mouth shut.

  This painful episode brought into stark relief the challenge Peter faced in reciting any of his lines, of which “now get this, honky,” and so on, was only the most overtly ludicrous. Throughout Being There, Peter achieves the pinpoint-sharp exactitude of nothingness. It is a performance of extraordinary dexterity. As the critic Frank Rich wrote in Time when Being There was released, “The audience must believe that Chance is so completely blank that he could indeed seem to be all things to all the people he meets. Peter Sellers’ meticulously controlled performance brings off this seemingly impossible task; as he proved in Lolita, he is a master at adapting the surreal characters of modern fiction to the naturalistic demands of movies. His Chance is sexless, affectless, and guileless to a fault. His face shows no emotion except the beatific, innocent smile of a moron. . . . Sellers’ gestures are so specific and consistent that Chance never becomes clownish or arch. He is convincing enough to make the film’s fantastic premise credible; yet he manages to get every laugh.”

  As Rich astutely observes, Chance is a modern, absurdist human vacuum, but a genial and naturalistic one—a schismatic personality that Peter had to convey with strenuous vocal and gestural technique. To break Chance’s strict, meditation-like state would be to destroy Chance’s being. A lesser actor would have made the character’s mental dysfunction flamboyant and drastic. A Hollywood ham, all but winking directly at the camera, would find a way to reiterate soundlessly what a magnificent performance the audience was lucky enough to witness—how fantastically smart the actor had to be to play a dullard. Think of Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man (1988). Peter Sellers’s intelligence was always deeper, his onscreen confidence greater, his technique much more finely honed.

  • • •

  The President of the United States (Warden) shows up at the mansion to marshal Ben Rand’s political and financial support. There he meets Chance. As the three titans discuss national affairs, the conversation turns to the best way to stimulate economic growth. Chance pauses for a moment, moves his eyes slightly, pauses again—all meaningless gestures that register as cogitation—and says, “As long as the roots are not severed, all is well—and all will be well—in the garden.”

  The president is taken aback, forced to regard Chance’s remark as a metaphor in order for the statement to make any sense at all. Chance follows through: “In a garden, growth has its seasons. First comes spring and summer. But then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.”

  THE PRESIDENT: (confused) Spring and summer?

  CHANCE: (flatly) Yes.

  THE PRESIDENT: (as if speaking to a cretin) And fall and winter?

  CHANCE: (delighted to be understood) Yes!

  Rand, the cadaverous multibillionaire, is truly overjoyed with Chance’s pointless words. “I think what our young friend is saying is that we welcome the inevitable seasons of nature, but we’re upset by the seasons of our economy!” “Yes!” Chance cries. “There will be growth in the spring!” The president is duly convinced. “Well, Mr. Gardiner, I must admit that is one of the most refreshing and optimistic statements I’ve heard in a very very long time.” Rand applauds. “I admire your good, solid sense,” the president continues, obviously pleased to be receiving a cretin’s wisdom. “That’s precisely what we like on Capitol Hill.”

  Later, a book publisher responds to Chance with a similar sense of spiritual kindredness by greeting him warmly and offering him a book contract with a six-figure advance. “I can’t write,” says Chance. “Well, of course not!” the publisher replies with a hearty laugh. “Who can nowadays?”

  The president mentions the sage advice of Mr. Chauncey Gardiner at a televised speech at the Financial Institute, whereupon Chance is hurried onto a talk show. His dopey remarks, delivered with a sort of puckish grin, begin as standard, late-night, getting-to-know-you comedy banter. Chance clearly knows the drill, having spent his life watching television. Ashby cuts to Ben and Eve Rand watching proudly from Ben’s bed and the president and first lady watching nervously from the White House. Things turn more sober on television when Chance opines that “it is possible for, uh, everything to grow stronger. And there is plenty of room for new trees and new flowers of all kinds.” The audience applauds enthusiastically.

  “It’s for sure a white man’s world in America,” Louise snaps, watching him from the lobby of her apartment building.

  As the president, the CIA, the FBI, and countless newspaper reporters attempt to find any information whatsoever on the nonexistent Chauncey Gardiner, Chance lies in his lavish bed eating breakfast from a tray and watching the happy, happy opening number of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. With Fred Rogers singing a song about his special friend, Eve arrives and climbs into bed with Chance. He continues to watch Mister Rogers as Mister Rogers sings the spelling of the word friend, whereupon Eve misinterprets Chance’s babylike indifference to sex by attributing it to gallantry. “A long time ago, people didn’t have television,” Mister Rogers tells his little viewers. “But they still liked to look at interesting pictures.” Eve departs.

  Fortunately for Eve, Chance happens to be viewing a steamy romantic scene on TV when she returns to his room late at night. He grabs her and begins kissing her passionately in direct imitation of the images he is watching at the time. When the onscreen kissing stops, so does Chance.

  EVE: Chauncey! What’s wrong? What’s the matter, Chauncey? I don’t know what you like!

  CHANCE: I like to watch, Eve.

  And so she performs for him on a bearskin rug. Switching channels to a yoga program, he does a handstand on the bed while Eve moans and comes to her own relaxed and delighted laughter.

  Throughout Being There, but here in particular, Shirley MacLaine’s performance is as exceptional as Peter’s. A scene that could have turned farcical, grotesque, or pathetic—the vivacious wife of a decrepit old man masturbating before a brainless cipher—becomes instead distinguished, compassionate. MacLaine invests Eve with a mix of sophistication and innocence, delicacy and fresh sexual passion. Though it might seem to have been Peter’s due to play opposite great actresses throughout his career, the fact was that he rarely did; Peter was lucky to have one more chance to act alongside a bona-fide star.

  • • •

  The film ends with Ben Rand’s burial. The president delivers a platitudinous eulogy (the selected quotations of Ben) as Chance wanders into the seemingly unending forest of the Rand estate. As Ashby himself described Being There’s original ending, “Shirley MacLaine goes after Peter Sellers when he leaves the funeral and goes into the woods. She finds him and she says she was frightened and was looking for him. He says, ‘I was looking for you, too, Eve.’ And they just walk off together.” Ashby had already filmed that scene when a friend of his, the screenwriter Rudy Wurlitzer, asked him how the Being There shoot was progressing. “It’s wonderful,” Ashby replied. “Peter Sellers and Melvyn Douglas are achieving such clarity, such simplicity, it looks like they’re walking on water.” It was a moment of inspiration.

  Ashby shot a new ending.

  Chance wanders through the snowy woods while the president continues with his platitudes and Ben’s pallbearers whisperingly agree to nominate Chance for the presidency. On the edge of a lake, Chance straightens a sapling that has been weighed down by an old, broken branch. He moves toward the shoreline and walks into—rather, on top of—the lake. He pokes his umbrella gently in, plunges it down, looks up and around in characteristic incomprehension, and continues strolling on the surface of the cold winter water. What choice did Peter Sellers have, let alone Chauncey Gardiner?

  TWENTY-THREE

  Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise

  than what it might appear to oth
ers that what you were

  or might have been was not otherwise

  than what you had been

  would have appeared to them to be otherwise.

  On April 18, 1979, the last day of shooting Being There, MacLaine and Sellers were filming the scene set in the backseat of Eve Rand’s limousine. “Peter had been to a numerologist the night before,” Shirley reports. “Looking into my eyes, he told me that the numerologist had warned him that his wife’s numbers didn’t match his own numbers. Peter was clearly most concerned about this information.”

  He was worried about his mind as well as his heart; the actual, blood-pumping muscle was giving him as much cause for concern as his love life. He found himself musing over the possible effects of his two minutes of clinical death in 1964. “I think I’m probably going a little soft in the head,” he told Time magazine a little later, “which is why I have something in common with Chance.”

  Peter’s renewed obsession with Sophia Loren did not help his deteriorating marriage with Lynne. Thoughts of Sophia had resurfaced because Sophia had just published her memoirs, and the name “Peter Sellers” had not appeared therein. Peter was shocked and hurt. “Our relationship was one of the things that helped break up my first marriage!” he complained to the columnist Roderick Mann. Referring to Sophia with icy formality, Peter continued: “Miss Loren was always telephoning me, and I’d go rushing all over Italy to be with her. It’s odd that someone who apparently meant so much in her life—or so she said—should not figure in her life story. The only reason I can think is that she was married at the time. But it’s not as if her husband didn’t know. Carlo knew very well.”