Put two geniuses, one mentally stable, one not so stable, into a blender, and mix well.
You’ll get the Blake Edwards/Peter Sellers Pink Panther concoction. Sip until cramps of joy set in.
Robert Sellers – no relation to Peter, oddly, but I’ll bet I see how the man got his inspiration for a book topic – has written a swell book if you like the best Pink Panther movies. And I say best because there were a lot of stinkers with non-Sellers Clouseaus running around over the decades.
So what things stick in mind after reading a Sellers on a totally different Sellers?
Peter Sellers was a genius.
Peter Sellers was sincerely mentally ill.
Peter Sellers was a sweet man.
Peter Sellers was a monster and possibly evil.
Peter Sellers “liked the ladies”.
Peter Sellers “liked the ladies” a lot.
Peter Sellers liked Panther director/producer/screenwriter/artist Blake Edwards.
Peter Sellers hated Blake Edwards.
Blake Edwards gritted his teeth a lot, because he, like Sellers, made shitpiles of money over the years.
Sometimes things in life just click. Sometimes they dissolve messily. Sometimes the center holds. Sometimes there is no center.
The classic Sellers’ Panther movies with Blake brainstorming with him – there was a lot of improvisation in the best Panthers, sometimes inspired by one of the men, sometimes by both – were unloved by many critics but hailed as the greatest comedies of all time.
Clouseau disguised as a dentist with a melting nose as both he and his madman boss Dreyfuss, both high on anesthesia, pull teeth. Clouseau getting his nuts shaved off after turning into an industrial fan. Sucking parrots into vacuum cleaners. Farting in elevators, elevators loaded with gangsters and mobsters and murderers and thieves. Car chases with nude drivers, saxophones hiding private parts in nudist colonies that feature Henry Mancini’s jazz played by nude quartets, inflatable parrots, birds sprung to death by cars that blow apart, Dyan Cannon, Robert Wagner, David Niven, egads.
Amidst all this, what turns out to be the center of stability of all of this is the fact that Blake Edwards was very lucky to have Julie Andrews as his real-life wife. She, Herbert Lom (Dreyfuss), and Bert Kwouk (Cato) come off as stable, thoughtful pros.
Sellers damaged his heart after his second Panther by taking drugs during sex.
He had something like 8 heart attacks over the course of one day, and was never the same afterwards. He was clinically dead more than once. A guy, genius or not, who was eccentric and annoying when all there – being there, so to speak – became impossible.
I can only imagine what we would have been gifted if he had been healthy his last two decades.
