X MOVIES H
GEN. LEO fitzjohn, ret, late of
His Majesty's Hussars,
creaked down the huge staircase,
his paunchy figure stiff with age
and lumbago.
The director yelled "Cut!" but the gen
eral didn't pause. He lumbered up to a
beautiful blonde in a cool, green sheath
and hoisted an arm around her shoulders.
"Hello, Darling," wheezed Peter Sellers.
"Good of you to pick me up."
This baggy-eyed old general wasn't the
same husband Mrs. Anne Sellers had
driven home from work a few weeks ear
lier. But then, she gets a new husband
every three or four months all named
Peter Sellers.
Sellers, 36, is the one-man film festival
who has become the hottest thing in Brit
ish movies. His uncanny ability to be
dozens of different people has producers
everywhere clamoring for him.
But Peter Sellers is as many people off
screen as on. Take the man Mrs. Sellers
met that evening on the set of "The Waltz
of the Toreadors," one of Peter's recent
movies. That was Sellers the Actor. There
aren't many like him. For Peter acts with
unbelievable intensity, and almost liter
ally becomes the character he plays.
Sellers moves, talks, reacts, and even
thinks like the character he's portraying.
On the "Toreadors" set, the director and
fellow-actors call him "General," not
"Peter." Off camera as well as on, Peter's
clipped military voice and creaky move
ments are the general's, not his own.
The trouble is that Sellers can't quit.
He takes off his character's make-up at
night, but he can't shake the character
itself. When he played an Indian doctor
in "The Millionairess," he used his Indian
accent on his family. He bossed them
around while winning the British Acad
emy Award as a union-shop steward in
"I'm All Right, Jack" and a period his
wife recalls as "awful" while he played a
sadistic villain in "Never Let Go."
ABOUT His own personality, Sellers in
sists that he's a "minus quantity."
But his friends would put up an argument
about that for Peter Sellers is just as
fascinating a character, or characters, off
stage as he is on.
Take Sellers the Eccentric. This partic
ular Sellers has a passion for gadgets.
Once he bought several miniature espres
so coffee-making machines. Nobody ever
learned why. Another time he brought
home a life-sized mechanical elephant be
cause "it's a nice thing to have."
So are cars. And Peter buys and sells
cars as other people trade postage stamps.
He has had "well over 50" cars in the
past dozen years, he admits. Some he
keeps only a few days; one he owned for
15 minutes just long enough to drive it
around the corner. His current automotive
love is a $22,585 drop-head Bentley.
Peter changes his mind with dazzling
swiftness. And not only about cars.
Witness another of Peter's private lives,
that of Village Squire. For two years. Sell
ers played lord of a 16th-century Tudor
manor house in a village 23 miles north
of London. Only a short time ago, he de
scribed his 400-year-old home with affec
tion, but two weeks later he put it up
for sale to move closer to London.
This sudden decision involved more
than throwing a few things into a suit
case. It meant uprooting himself, his wife,
and the children, Michael, 7, and Sarah
Jane, 4 not to mention several dogs, cats,
tropical fish, a canary, a 500-foot model
railroad, and what has been called "the
largest set of trap drums in captivity."
Playing jazz drums is one of the amaz
ing variety of things Sellers does well: he
used to be a professional at it. He's also
an expert photographer, a hi-fi bug, a
blue-belt-rank judo expert, a "very, very
keen" cricket player, and a superb rally
entering auto driver.
Peter sellers the Mimic is yet another
creature of fantastic talents. He is a
master of uncounted dialects and can
mimic anyone he meets. In fact, he got
his first big job through a mimic's trick.
He telephoned a BBC producer and spoke
in the voices of two top BBC stars, who
wildly praised a young vaudeville actor
named Sellers. Peter was hired at once,
and before long he was playing dozens of
voices on a zany radio program called
"The Goon Show," which became a na
tional institution overnight.
Many people still consider Peter goony.
A Sellers creation like "The Running,
Jumping, and Standing Still Film" bears
them out. So do Peter's occasional tele
vision shows, named with characteristic
wackiness: "A Show Called Fred," "Son
of Fred," or "Yes, It's the Cathode-Ray
Tube Show!"
His idol is Sir Alec Guinness. Sellers got
his first big movie part as a member of the
Guinness gang in "The Ladykillers," and,
like Guinness, Peter made his name doing
multiple roles, as in "The Mouse That
Roared," and in comedy parts. Both men
deny that Sellers is "a second Alec Guin
ness," although a knighthood seems a sure
bet for Sellers, too, some day.
But first, Mrs. Sellers will have to pick
up a lot more husbands at work. And only
two things are certain about them : they'll
be a wildly varied lot (though they won't
include Napoleon, Freud, a garbage col
lector, or King Henry VIII roles which
Peter has recently turned down), and
they'll all be named Peter Sellers. .
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A Superior Moletkin
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