The Life and Death of Peter SellersRoger Lewis, in his no-holds-barred biography, exposes a Peter Sellers the world little knows. Recognized as the greatest British comic since Charlie Chaplin, Sellers was the grand master of fifty-five films - from Dr. Strangelove, to Being There and the Pink Panther hits. But shadowing his phenomenal career was a history of increasingly bizarre behavior involving psychotic violence, compulsive promiscuity, drug abuse and humiliating self-destructive obsessions with people including Princess Margaret, Sophia Loren, Liza Minnelli and each of his four wives (Ann Hayes, Britt Ekland, Miranda Quarry and Lynne Frederick). He alternately showered his wives and children with gifts and then threatened to kill them. Sellers' fluidity as an actor made for a terrifying madness that grew like a slow metastasizing cancer throughout his adult life. The story of Peter Sellers concludes with his premature death at the age of 54, "sick at heart and alone in those sunless hotel rooms, " so recoiled from intimacy that no one really knew him anymore. |
Contents
INTRODUCTION | ix |
THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS | 1 |
VARIETY LIGHTS | 3 |
WARTIME | 36 |
PEACE WORK | 71 |
RADIO DAYS | 83 |
OLD COMRADES | 85 |
HER MANS A SCREAM | 110 |
A LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN | 215 |
HIS MARVELLOUS YEARS | 241 |
CHIPPERFIELD CIRCUS | 243 |
BUBBLE BUBBLE | 266 |
THE SPIRIT OF ROMANCE | 297 |
THE AFTERLIFE OF PETER SELLERS | 335 |
THE CRACKUP | 337 |
LOVE AND DEATH | 368 |
SOUND AND VISION | 129 |
HOPE AND GLORY | 149 |
FIRST PHOTOPLAYS | 151 |
NO NOT EALING | 181 |
THE EVIL THAT MEN DO | 395 |
WHOS THE MAN? | 453 |
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