View allAll Photos Tagged petersellers
Have you seen the film Being there with Peter Sellers? Watch it! Simple and profound comedy. It is one of those films that pop up in my mind from time to time. When I tried to do this image in black and white, it immediately took away from the sense of being there. And also, to me, it seems that something extraordinary is about to take place next in this image.
♫ Being There ♫ - with Peter Sellers
Life is a state of mind and sometimes we are too smart for our own good. I didn’t know limitation, fear or anguish. I lived in blissful ignorance and was embraced for it. No one told me that life could be filled with danger, roadblocks and curve-balls. What if we had also not been let in on that not-so-great secret?
Is it possible that all we need to succeed is to be there? That perhaps we just get in our own way to success?
Think of when you wanted something about which you were passionate. It could be courting your spouse, starting your company, learning a new skill, or wanting to know what was at the end of a dirt road. There was risk but you calculated it (or didn’t) and just went there because it was your passion.
Taken @ Meadow Rose maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Forever%20Neverland/28/96/34
The secret to a successful karate attack is the element of surprise, Inspector Jacques Clouseau.
Leichhardt, Sydney, Australia (Saturday, 29 Oct 2016)
Postcard with a photo of Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther movies from the 1960s and 1970s . Sent to a Postcrossing member in the United States.
This is a John Hinde postcard printed in the Irish Republic, this after dark shot has been spruced up with a detailed image of a couple bottom right. It is the winter of 1965 and the British comedy film, “A shot in the dark” starring Peter Sellers and Elke Sommer is playing at the London Pavilion after transferring from the Odeon, Leicester Square. It ran at the London Pavilion from 13th February until 12th May 1965. On the left underneath the Coca-Cola sign is a poster depicting Sir Winston Churchill, he had died on 24th January and his State Funeral took place the following Saturday, 30th January. I think that the poster refers to a film of the Funeral entitled "Churchill: A Nation's Homage" made by Movietone News, it was nineteen minutes long and was shown at the Metropole Cinema in Victoria which was also showing “West Side Story” and at the Leicester Square Theatre with the Dirk Bogarde film, “The High Bright Sun” for the following four weeks.
Known for: Actor Comedian Singer
Peter Sellers, (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 roles, among them Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther series of films.
Born in Portsmouth to a theatrical family, 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. 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.
Sellers is Born , Castle Road, Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth, Hampshire, England
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sellers
Orginal picture: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Peter_Sellers_22_Allan_Wa...
Artwork by TudioJepegii
The humble British icon the Mini will celebrate its 60th anniversary in August this year (2019). Lets have a look at the history of the Mini.
Due to the Suez Crisis in 1956, the Government announced in November that year that petrol rationing would be introduced the following month. This affected car sales in Britain, and seen the arrival of so called Bubble type cars imported which due to their small size they had excellent fuel economy. Leonard Lord the Chairman of the British Motor Corporation Ltd or BMC for short seen that there was a market for a smaller car, so he instructed Alec Issigonis to design a fuel efficient car smaller than the Austin A35 and Morris Minor which could carry four adults, and use engines already built within BMC. Alec was given just 30 months to have the new car originally coded X9003 ready for production!
Alec gathered a small team of engineers including Jack Daniels to work on the project. It took six months to design and have the first running prototype car built. Alec gave Leonard Lord a short drive in the first prototype car around the grounds of the Longbridge factory, at the end of the drive, Lord was happy with the new car and told Alec ''go away and build it''.
It is believed that only two prototype X9003 cars were built and nicknamed ''orange boxes'' because they were pained orange, to disguise them, they had Austin A35 grilles fitted. The project was renamed ADO15 the letters denoted Austin Drawing Office because all the design, development and testing was transferred to the Longbridge plant near Birmingham.I do not know if the Mini design had commenced at Cowley or Longbridge? Further prototypes and preproduction ADO15 cars were built.
On Wednesday 26th August 1959 the new baby BMC car was launched to the world, when all the daily newspapers published articles about the new car, this was known as Mini day. BMC had launched their new car to the world press at Chobham test track in Surrey, I guess the day before. The Austin version was called Austin Seven, and the Morris version called Morris Mini-Minor both had the same price of £497 (basic model) and were identical apart from badges and the front grille. The Mini had a top speed of 70mph and a quoted fuel economy of 50mpg, in reality 40mpg was the realistic figure. Believe it or not BMC considered developing a diesel version of the A Series engine to be used in the Mini, sadly this never became a reality.
Wizardry on Wheels was the advertising slogan used for the new Mini. Alex `Issigonis had re-wrote the design of a small car with the Mini which measured 10ft in length and the width was just 4ft 7in, allowing a 31ft turning circle. The 848cc 34bhp A-Series engine was mounted transverse or east-west at the front with the gearbox and final drive mounted in the sump giving the Mini front wheel-drive and allowing 80% of the Mini to carry four adults and luggage. The Mini used 10inch diameter wheels at each corner which Dunlop had to develop special tyres. The Mini used hydraulic brakes on all four wheels and independent rubber cone suspension developed by Alex Moulton. The Mini had a large amount of storage space inside the car, with deep door pockets made possible by using sliding side windows, there was even storage under the rear seat. The Mini was built at Longbridge Birmingham (Austin) and Cowley Oxford (Morris). Two versions were originally offered basic and de-luxe.
The new Mini was not an immediate sales success after the launch, this was not helped when things went wrong for BMC's little baby, due to rushing it into production, the development period was too short to undertake a through test programme, the first year's customers were doing the last year of testing. The main problem was the design of the floor which allowed water in, other problems: engine mountings, oil leaks contaminating the clutch, exhausts snapping, side windows falling out, and part of the front suspension breaking at alarming rates. The biggest mistake BMC made with the Mini, was no profit margin! for every Mini sold, they lost £30, and that was before warranty claims! management hoped that high production volume would deal with that! BMC managed to rectify all the problems, apart from no profit! The Mini was a very expensive car to build, something BMC management seem to overlook.
During the swinging sixties a whole range of new versions of the Mini were introduced: in the 1960 came the Mini van 10 inches longer than the standard Mini, followed by the estate versions Morris Mini-Minor Traveller and Austin Seven Countryman. In 1961 a pickup version of the Mini was introduced along with the upmarket Wolseley Hornet and Riley Elf models for small mined snobs who found the Mini intriguing but the name of Austin or Morris offensive.
The most important Mini was introduced in 1961, the Mini Cooper powered by a 997cc version of the A-Series engine. BMC needed to build 1000 Coopers for motorsport homologation, they sold these Coopers within a few weeks of them going on sale! In 1962 the Austin Seven was renamed Austin Mini, in the same year the Mini won the Tulip Rally. In 1963 came the Mini Cooper S, a more powerful version of the standard Cooper model powered by a 1071cc A-Series engine. In 1964 the Mini won the Monte Carlo Rally and the same year saw the launch of the Mini Moke aimed at the Army!. The rubber cone suspension was replaced in 1964 with the Hydrolastic suspension in hope it would give the Mini a better ride, it did not and the Mini revered back to the rubber suspension.
In 1965 the one millionth Mini rolled off the production line, the second British car to archive this, the first was the Morris Minor which was also designed by Alec Issigonis. The Mini was the car of the sixties and the one to be seen in. Many celebrities owned Minis including: Mick Jagger, Peter Sellers, The Beatles, Lord Snowden, and Patrick Litchfield.
In 1966, BMC merged with Jaguar and became British Motor Holdings. In 1967, the Mk2 Mini was introduced.
In May 1968, British Motor Holdings (BMH) were on the brink of bankruptcy, the Labour Government persuaded the Leyland Motor Corporation to merge with BMH to form British Leyland Motor Corporation better known as British Leyland or just BL for short. Surprising the Mini was still not making a profit. To help to keep production costs down, full Mini production was transferred to Longbridge. I must mention that the last car to be designed by the British Motor Holdings and the first car to be launched by British Leyland was the Austin Maxi.
The Mini would be the star of new Paramount film in 1968 and released in June the following year. The film was The Italian Job Written by Troy Kennedy Martin, Directed by Peter Collinson, Produced by Michael Deeley, Music by Quincy Jones and starring Michael Caine, Noel Coward and Benny Hill along with three red, white and blue Mini Cooper S cars, plus a Harrington Legionnaire Bedford VAL coach registered ALR 453B. Paramount approached British Motor Holdings prior to the Leyland merger to ask if they would supply the cars in return they would have the best free advert. BMH said they would supply six Coopers at trade price! An interesting fact, Mk1 Coopers were used in the film, rather than Mk2 models. The film cost £3,5 million to make and due to poor advertising was not the success that Paramount thought it would be, hence there was no sequel.
Alec Issigonis commenced work in 1967 on pet project coded 9X to replace the Mini, in 1969 the first and only prototype 9X was built. It was slightly smaller than the Mini and had a hatchback. Sadly management at BL decided not to put 9X into production, due to the huge costs it would have taken.
In 1969, the two millionth Mini rolled off the production line, in the same year the Mk3 Mini was introduced along with a new model, the Mini Clubman. To round off 1969, the Mini become a marque in it's own right.
British Leyland replaced the Mini Cooper in 1971 with the Mini 1275GT to save paying John Cooper a £2 royalty! The three millionth Mini rolled off the production line 1972. During the seventies the Mini went through a series of improvements both mechanically and to the interior trim. In 1975, the Labour Government took over British Leyland as they were on the brink of bankruptcy. The Government invested £1.8 billion into BL, which would see a new range of cars designed for the eighties. One project was LC8 the replacement for the Mini, which became the Austin Metro launched in 1980. The four millionth Mini rolled off the production line in 1978. To help promote the Mini, a number of well known celebrities were used in television commercials including Kenneth Williams, Eric Sykes and Spike Milligan, Spike was a Mini enthusiast and owned many different types of Minis, indeed the very last Mini he owned a 1988 yellow Mayfair model is advertised for sale by Brooklands Cars for £49,996. Production of the estate version of the Mini ceased at the end of the seventies.
I mentioned that the Austin Metro was launched in 1980, management decided that production of the Mini would be discontinued in 1982, this did not happen because the Mini was still popular and making a profit.
The car division of BL was renamed Austin Rover during the early eighties. The Mini gained 12in diameter wheels in 1984. The five millionth Mini rolled of the production line in 1986, in the same year British Leyland was renamed the Rover Group, and the car division became Rover Cars. This was so the Government could sell off each part of the company.
British Aerospace bought Rover Cars in 1988, and in 1990, the Mini Cooper was re-introduced. In 1994, British Aerospace sold Rover to BMW, the future looked good for Rover with a huge investment by the new owners. Towards the end of the nineties it was announced that a new Mini was under development. BMW decided to sell Rover due to huge losses, the company was bought from BMW by a management led team. The sad news, was the new Mini would be launched by BMW in September 2000, production of the original Mini ceased on the morning of 4th October 2000, 41 years after it was launched, 5,387,862 Minis had been built in 41 years! The very last Mini off the Longbridge production line that day was a Mini Copper which was driven by sixties model Twiggy.
BMW built a brand new assembly plant on the site of the old Cowley factory to build the new Mini, the post code of the Mini Plant is OX4 6NL if you go onto Google Maps and type in the post code you will be able to see images of the Mini Plant.
My view shows 621 AOK a Morris Mini-Minor in old English white which is the very first production Morris Mini-Minor built at the Cowley factory at the end of March 1959, chassis number 101 (no VIN numbers back then!). Some people claim that the first production Mini was built at Longbridge, the first built there was on 3rd April 1959. The location of 621 AOK is a Boulevard in Oxford called St Giles which diverts at the end into Woodstock Road. Apart from car manufacturing, Oxford is also famous for the ITV Detective Drama series Inspector Morse created by Colin Dexter and staring the late John Thaw as Inspector Morse, John Thaw also started in another ITV Detective Drama series from the seventies The Sweeney.
Copyright BMW Group
Notes:-
British Motor Corporation Ltd (BMC) was formed in 1952 with the agreed merger of Austin Motor Company and the Nuffield Organisation who owned Morris, Morris Commercial, MG, Riley, Wolseley, Nuffield Tractors, and S.U. Carburettor Co.
In 1966, British Motor Corporation merged with Jaguar Cars Ltd and became British Motor Holdings. In May 1968, Leyland Motor Corporation at the request of the Labour Government merged with British Motor Holdings to form British Leyland Motor Corporation. In 1975, the Labour Government took over British Leyland Motor Corporation, and it was renamed British Leyland or BL for short.
During the life of British Leyland, the car division had various names: Leyland Cars, Austin Rover, and Rover Cars. When Rover Cars was sold to British Aerospace, it was renamed Rover Group, when BMW sold the company to the management buyout in 2000, the company was renamed MG Rover.
Three years after British Motor Corporation Ltd was formed all new car designs was transferred to the Longbridge plant, which was much more modern than the Cowley plant. At this stage all new car projects were allocated ADO designations and then a number, the Mini was ADO15. The letters denote Austin Drawing Office.
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I'm stampolina and I love to take photos of stamps. Thanks for visiting this pages on flickr.
I'm neither a typical collector of stamps, nor a stamp dealer. I'm only a stamp photograph. I'm fascinated of the fine close-up structures which are hidden in this small stamp-pictures. Please don't ask of the worth of these stamps - the most ones have a worth of a few cents or still less.
By the way, I wanna say thank you to all flickr users who have sent me stamps! Great! Thank you! Someone sent me 3 or 5 stamps, another one sent me more than 20 stamps in a letter. It's everytime a great surprise for me and I'm everytime happy to get letters with stamps inside from you!
thx, stampolina
For the case you wanna send also stamps - it is possible. (...I'm pretty sure you'll see these stamps on this photostream on flickr :) thx!
stampolina68
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great stamp Great Britain 17p Peter Sellers (1925-1980; actor, comedian; "Inspector Clouseau" The Pink Panther) timbre UK United Kingdom stamps England selo sello stamps GB stamp Great Britain GB England UK แสตมป์ บริเตนใหญ่ pulları İngiltere frimärken Storbritannien टिकटों ग्रेट ब्रिटेन इंग्लैंड timbre postes postage selo sello UK GB francobolli United Kingdom Briefmarken England Grossbritannien sellos Gran Bretaña 邮票 大不列颠 英格兰 γραμματόσημα Μεγάλη Βρετανία 切手 スタンプ グレートブリテン イングランド postzegels zegels Groot-Brittannië 우표 영국 antspaudai Didžiojoje Britanijoje znaczki Wielka Brytania selos Grã-Bretanha марки Великобритания Англия tem Vương quốc Anh GB P 17p ten
Terry Southern - The Magic Christian
Penguin Books 3081, 1969
Cover design by Bob Gill showing Ringo Starr and Peter Sellers
Swiss postcard by CVB Publishers / News Productions, no. 56961. Photo: Larry Shaw. Peter Sellers and Ursula Andress at the set of What's New Pussycat (Clive Donner, 1965).
British comedian Peter Sellers (1925-1980) was an incredibly versatile actor. He played Chief Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther films with as much ease as Clare Quilty in Lolita (1962). Stanley Kubrick asked him to play three roles in Dr. Strangelove (1964) for which he was nominated for an Academy Award.
Stunning Swiss sex symbol, starlet, and jet-setter Ursula Andress (1936) will always be remembered as the first and quintessential Bond girl. In Dr. No (1962) she made film history when she spectacularly rises out of the Caribbean Sea in a white bikini. Though she won a Golden Globe Ursula's looks generally outweighed her acting talent and she never took her film career very seriously.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
American postcard by Portfolio, NY, NY, no. P45. Photo: Louis Goldman, 1963.
British comedian Peter Sellers (1925-1980) was an incredibly versatile actor. He played Chief Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther films with as much ease as Clare Quilty in Lolita (1962). Stanley Kubrick asked him to play three roles in Dr. Strangelove (1964) for which he was nominated for an Academy Award.
Richard Henry Sellers was born in 1925 in Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth, England. He was literally born into show business. His parents, William "Bill" Sellers and Agnes Doreen "Peg" née Marks, were vaudeville performers in an acting company run by his grandmother, and Peter arrived while they were appearing in Southsea. Although christened Richard Henry, his parents called him Peter, after his elder stillborn brother. He made his stage debut at the Kings Theatre, Southsea, when he was two weeks old. Sellers remained an only child. He began accompanying his parents in a variety act that toured the provincial theatres, causing much upheaval and unhappiness in the young Sellers' life. Sellers studied dance as a child before attending St. Aloysius’ Boarding and Day School for Boys. As a teenager, he learned to play the drums and played with jazz bands. At the age of 18, Sellers entered the Royal Air Force during World War II. There he became part of a group of entertainers who performed for the troops. Sellers played his drums and did dead-on impersonations of some of the officers. After the war, he struggled to launch his comic career for several years. After several previous attempts, Sellers managed to land work with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) by winning over radio producer Roy Speer during a phone conversation. His spot-on impersonations helped to make him a beloved radio comedian. In 1951, Sellers joined fellow comics Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine for The Goon Show. The program proved to be hugely popular with listeners who tuned in to hear their absurd skits and bits. The success of The Goon Show helped Sellers break into films. In 1951 the Goons made their feature film debut in Penny Points to Paradise (Anthony Young, 1951). Sellers and Milligan then penned the script to the short Let's Go Crazy (Alan Cullimore, 1951), the earliest film to showcase Sellers's ability to portray a series of different characters within the same film, and he made another appearance opposite his Goons co-stars in the flop, Down Among the Z Men (Maclean Rogers, 1952). In 1954, Sellers was cast opposite Sid James, Donald Pleasence and Eric Sykes in the comedy Orders Are Orders (David Paltenghi, 1955). Then he landed a part as one of the oddball criminals in the classic Ealing comedy The Ladykillers (Alexander Mackendrick, 1955) with Alec Guinness. The Ladykillers was a success in both Britain and the US, and the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Sellers starred with David Tomlinson and Wilfrid Hyde-White as a chief petty officer in Up the Creek (Val Guest, 1958). In 1959, his career really took off with the satire I’m All Right, Jack (John and Roy Boulting, 1959). For his part as Fred Kite, the dogmatic communist union man, he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. In The Mouse That Roared (Jack Arnold, 1959) with Jean Seberg, Sellers played three characters: the elderly Grand Duchess, the ambitious Prime Minister and the innocent and clumsy farm boy selected to lead an invasion of the United States. This box office hit helped to introduce Sellers to the American audiences. In 1959 he was also nominated for an Academy Award for the eleven-minute short The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (Richard Lester, Peter Sellers, 1959). Sellers portrayed an Indian doctor, Dr Ahmed el Kabir opposite Sophia Loren in the romantic comedy The Millionairess (Anthony Asquith, 1960) based on the George Bernard Shaw play. The Goon Show ended its run in 1960, but the program proved to be a strong influence on British comedy. It paved the way for such future comedy shows as Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Peter Sellers hit his stride in the early 1960s with three of his most famous roles. Stanley Kubrick asked him to play the role of the mentally unbalanced TV writer Clare Quilty in Lolita (Stanley Kubrick, 1962), opposite Sue Lyon, James Mason and Shelley Winters. Sellers introduced audiences to the world’s most bumbling detective, French Inspector Jacques Clouseau, in Blake Edwards’s The Pink Panther (1963). The film proved to be a huge success, and it was quickly followed by the sequel A Shot in the Dark (Blake Edwards, 1964) again with Herbert Lom as Commissioner Dreyfus and Burt Kwouk as Cato. Andrew Spicer in The Encyclopedia of British Cinema: “In Clouseau, Sellers combined his vocal ingenuity and skill as a slapstick comedian, yet always retained an essential humanity through the inspector's indefatigable dignity in the face of a hostile universe.” In Kubricks’s cold war satire Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964), Sellers once again showed his ability to tackle multiple characters the well-meaning US President Merkin Muffley, unflappable RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake and the nightmarish Dr. Strangelove himself, the government's adviser on nuclear warfare, who is unable to control his own body. His black gloved hand always tries to make a Nazi salute, expressing an ineradicable desire to dominate and destroy. Kubrick later commented that the idea of having Sellers in so many of the film's key roles was that "everywhere you turn there is some version of Peter Sellers holding the fate of the world in his hands". In 1964, Sellers had his first heart attack. He was reportedly clinically dead for two and a half minutes before being revived. This incident marked the beginning of his heart troubles, and he later had a pacemaker installed to help manage his heartbeat. Making a full recovery, Sellers continued to work in the cinema. What's New Pussycat (Clive Donner, 1965) with Peter O'Toole and Romy Schneider, was another big hit, but a combination of his ego and insecurity made Sellers difficult to work with. When the James Bond spoof, Casino Royale (Ken Hughes, John Huston, Joseph McGrath, Robert Parrish, 1967) ran over budget and was unable to recoup its costs despite an otherwise healthy box-office take, Sellers received some of the blame. His films of the late 1960s and early 1970s had some decidedly mixed results.
It was his famed character Inspector Clouseau who gave Peter Sellers a boost at the box office with The Return of the Pink Panther (Blake Edwards, 1975) with Christopher Plummer and Catherine Schell. This hit spawned two more Pink Panther films, The Pink Panther Strikes Again (Blake Edwards, 1976), and Revenge of the Pink Panther (Blake Edwards, 1978). Sellers earned raves for his subtle, understated turn as the simple gardener Chance who becomes an unlikely trusted advisor to a powerful businessman and an insider in Washington politics in Being There (Hal Asby, 1979), a film adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's novel. His character spouts ideas and comments based on his years of television-watching, which are confused by others as words of wisdom. Sellers earned a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination for his performance. After making this remarkable black comedy, Sellers’s career seemed to be on an upswing. But he never lived to realise this new wave of potential. His last film was The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (Piers Haggard, 1980), a comedic re-imagining of the eponymous adventure novels by Sax Rohmer; Sellers played both police inspector Nayland Smith and Fu Manchu, alongside Helen Mirren and David Tomlinson. The film, completed just a few months before his death, proved to be another box office flop. Peter Sellers died in a London hospital in 1980, after suffering another heart attack. Sellers was only 54. In his personal life, Sellers struggled with depression and insecurities. Wikipedia: “An enigmatic figure, he often claimed to have no identity outside the roles that he played. His behaviour was often erratic and compulsive, and he frequently clashed with his directors and co-stars, especially in the mid-1970s when his physical and mental health, together with his alcohol and drug problems, were at their worst. Sellers was married four times”. He was survived by his fourth wife Lynne Frederick, and three children from his previous marriages. His son Michael and daughter Sarah came from his first marriage to Anne Howe and daughter Victoria came from his second marriage to actress Britt Ekland. He was also briefly married to Miranda Quarry from 1970 to 1974. Sellers was portrayed by Geoffrey Rush in the biopic The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (Stephen Hopkins, 2004).
Sources: Andrew Spicer (The Encyclopedia of British Cinema), Ashley G. Mackinnon (IMDb), Biography.com Wikipedia and IMDb.
June 2nd, 2011 - Copenhagen, Denmark
Outside the Royal Theatre there is a vast area which appears to be used to construct sets for forthcoming productions - at least I assume what these futuristic cityscapes are. These in of themselves would be extraordinary enough backdrops for street photographs, whatever the surrounding landscape, but when the are happens to back on to the docks, as is the case here - yes, the water and the yacht in the background are absolutely real, the effect is beyond surreal. I couldn't help thinking of the Peter Sellers' movie Being There - only it's as if it was being filmed on a set co-designed by Magritte and Fritz Lang.
This absolutely has to be viewed large and lightboxed.
Classic film from 1973 starring Peter Sellers and Child Actors Donna Mullane and John Chaffey with some wonderful London scenes including here Battersea Power Station`Grade 2 Listed since 1980` part of it was built in the Thirties...It finally totally closed down in 1983....Post to the left has gone as has the Red door to the right..Bollards still stand....Note the same bricks.....See my stream for many more Old N New London...........
American postcard in The Ludlow Collection series by Classico San Francisco, no. 136-239. Photo: Peter Sellers as Inspector Jacques Clouseau in The Return of the Pink Panther (Blake Edwards, 1975).
British comedian Peter Sellers (1925-1980) was an incredibly versatile actor. He played Chief Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther films with as much ease as Clare Quilty in Lolita (1962). Stanley Kubrick asked him to play three roles in Dr. Strangelove (1964) for which he was nominated for an Academy Award.
Richard Henry Sellers was born in 1925 in Southsea, a suburb of Portsmouth, England. He was literally born into show business. His parents, William "Bill" Sellers and Agnes Doreen "Peg" née Marks, were vaudeville performers in an acting company run by his grandmother, and Peter arrived while they were appearing in Southsea. Although christened Richard Henry, his parents called him Peter, after his elder stillborn brother. He made his stage debut at the Kings Theatre, Southsea, when he was two weeks old. Sellers remained an only child. He began accompanying his parents in a variety act that toured the provincial theatres, causing much upheaval and unhappiness in the young Sellers' life. Sellers studied dance as a child before attending St. Aloysius’ Boarding and Day School for Boys. As a teenager, he learned to play the drums and played with jazz bands. At the age of 18, Sellers entered the Royal Air Force during World War II. There he became part of a group of entertainers who performed for the troops. Sellers played his drums and did dead-on impersonations of some of the officers. After the war, he struggled to launch his comic career for several years. After several previous attempts, Sellers managed to land work with the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) by winning over radio producer Roy Speer during a phone conversation. His spot-on impersonations helped to make him a beloved radio comedian. In 1951, Sellers joined fellow comics Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine for The Goon Show. The program proved to be hugely popular with listeners who tuned in to hear their absurd skits and bits. The success of The Goon Show helped Sellers break into films. In 1951 the Goons made their feature film debut in Penny Points to Paradise (Anthony Young, 1951). Sellers and Milligan then penned the script to the short Let's Go Crazy (Alan Cullimore, 1951), the earliest film to showcase Sellers's ability to portray a series of different characters within the same film, and he made another appearance opposite his Goons co-stars in the flop, Down Among the Z Men (Maclean Rogers, 1952). In 1954, Sellers was cast opposite Sid James, Donald Pleasence and Eric Sykes in the comedy Orders Are Orders (David Paltenghi, 1955). Then he landed a part as one of the oddball criminals in the classic Ealing comedy The Ladykillers (Alexander Mackendrick, 1955) with Alec Guinness. The Ladykillers was a success in both Britain and the US, and the film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Sellers starred with David Tomlinson and Wilfrid Hyde-White as a chief petty officer in Up the Creek (Val Guest, 1958). In 1959, his career really took off with the satire I’m All Right, Jack (John and Roy Boulting, 1959). For his part as Fred Kite, the dogmatic communist union man, he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. In The Mouse That Roared (Jack Arnold, 1959) with Jean Seberg, Sellers played three characters: the elderly Grand Duchess, the ambitious Prime Minister and the innocent and clumsy farm boy selected to lead an invasion of the United States. This box office hit helped to introduce Sellers to the American audiences. In 1959 he was also nominated for an Academy Award for the eleven-minute short The Running Jumping & Standing Still Film (Richard Lester, Peter Sellers, 1959). Sellers portrayed an Indian doctor, Dr Ahmed el Kabir opposite Sophia Loren in the romantic comedy The Millionairess (Anthony Asquith, 1960) based on the George Bernard Shaw play. The Goon Show ended its run in 1960, but the program proved to be a strong influence on British comedy. It paved the way for such future comedy shows as Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Peter Sellers hit his stride in the early 1960s with three of his most famous roles. Stanley Kubrick asked him to play the role of the mentally unbalanced TV writer Clare Quilty in Lolita (Stanley Kubrick, 1962), opposite Sue Lyon, James Mason and Shelley Winters. Sellers introduced audiences to the world’s most bumbling detective, French Inspector Jacques Clouseau, in Blake Edwards’s The Pink Panther (1963). The film proved to be a huge success, and it was quickly followed by the sequel A Shot in the Dark (Blake Edwards, 1964) again with Herbert Lom as Commissioner Dreyfus and Burt Kwouk as Cato. Andrew Spicer in The Encyclopedia of British Cinema: “In Clouseau, Sellers combined his vocal ingenuity and skill as a slapstick comedian, yet always retained an essential humanity through the inspector's indefatigable dignity in the face of a hostile universe.” In Kubricks’s cold war satire Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (Stanley Kubrick, 1964), Sellers once again showed his ability to tackle multiple characters the well-meaning US President Merkin Muffley, unflappable RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake and the nightmarish Dr. Strangelove himself, the government's adviser on nuclear warfare, who is unable to control his own body. His black gloved hand always tries to make a Nazi salute, expressing an ineradicable desire to dominate and destroy. Kubrick later commented that the idea of having Sellers in so many of the film's key roles was that "everywhere you turn there is some version of Peter Sellers holding the fate of the world in his hands". In 1964, Sellers had his first heart attack. He was reportedly clinically dead for two and a half minutes before being revived. This incident marked the beginning of his heart troubles, and he later had a pacemaker installed to help manage his heartbeat. Making a full recovery, Sellers continued to work in the cinema. What's New Pussycat (Clive Donner, 1965) with Peter O'Toole and Romy Schneider, was another big hit, but a combination of his ego and insecurity made Sellers difficult to work with. When the James Bond spoof, Casino Royale (Ken Hughes, John Huston, Joseph McGrath, Robert Parrish, 1967) ran over budget and was unable to recoup its costs despite an otherwise healthy box-office take, Sellers received some of the blame. His films of the late 1960s and early 1970s had some decidedly mixed results.
It was his famed character Inspector Clouseau who gave Peter Sellers a boost at the box office with The Return of the Pink Panther (Blake Edwards, 1975) with Christopher Plummer and Catherine Schell. This hit spawned two more Pink Panther films, The Pink Panther Strikes Again (Blake Edwards, 1976), and Revenge of the Pink Panther (Blake Edwards, 1978). Sellers earned raves for his subtle, understated turn as the simple gardener Chance who becomes an unlikely trusted advisor to a powerful businessman and an insider in Washington politics in Being There (Hal Asby, 1979), a film adaptation of Jerzy Kosinski's novel. His character spouts ideas and comments based on his years of television-watching, which are confused by others as words of wisdom. Sellers earned a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination for his performance. After making this remarkable black comedy, Sellers’s career seemed to be on an upswing. But he never lived to realise this new wave of potential. His last film was The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (Piers Haggard, 1980), a comedic re-imagining of the eponymous adventure novels by Sax Rohmer; Sellers played both police inspector Nayland Smith and Fu Manchu, alongside Helen Mirren and David Tomlinson. The film, completed just a few months before his death, proved to be another box office flop. Peter Sellers died in a London hospital in 1980, after suffering another heart attack. Sellers was only 54. In his personal life, Sellers struggled with depression and insecurities. Wikipedia: “An enigmatic figure, he often claimed to have no identity outside the roles that he played. His behaviour was often erratic and compulsive, and he frequently clashed with his directors and co-stars, especially in the mid-1970s when his physical and mental health, together with his alcohol and drug problems, were at their worst. Sellers was married four times”. He was survived by his fourth wife Lynne Frederick, and three children from his previous marriages. His son Michael and daughter Sarah came from his first marriage to Anne Howe and daughter Victoria came from his second marriage to actress Britt Ekland. He was also briefly married to Miranda Quarry from 1970 to 1974. Sellers was portrayed by Geoffrey Rush in the biopic The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (Stephen Hopkins, 2004).
Sources: Andrew Spicer (The Encyclopedia of British Cinema), Ashley G. Mackinnon (IMDb), Biography.com Wikipedia and IMDb.