“The Life and Death of Peter Sellers”, by Roger Lewis

 

 

502 pages, Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, ISBN-13: 978-1557832481

 

Dad loved Peter Sellers’ movies; they’d be the only ones he’d take my Mom out to see, much to her chagrin as she didn’t like them at all (or the Woody Allen films Dad dragged her to, either; Mom was just looking for a free meal, anyway). But just who in hell was Richard Henry…er, sorry, Peter Sellers anyway? Well, that name, for starters, offers an insight: “Peter” was originally for Richard’s elder brother, who was stillborn; his mum Peg just kept on keeping on with that name, however, and Richard became Peter by default. And so the man who could so seamlessly become one character after another had been doing so from birth when he assumed a dead brother’s identity. It could only screw him up and, brother, did it ever.

 

The Life and Death of Peter Sellers by Roger Lewis reads rather like an English roundabout: you get on thinking you’re going in one direction and end up in another; what I mean is that, while the book is more or less chronological, it is erratically so, as Lewis picks up on a topic and goes driving off in whatever direction he fancies, taking you along for the ride. While he eventually gets back onto the highway – while he eventually rejoins his original narrative – you, the reader/passenger, have been taken along the scenic route.

 

Because Lewis has written a kind of stream of consciousness meditation about an egomaniacal genius who was also “more seriously fucked up than a chameleon crossing a kilt”. This is not much of an exaggeration, as it turns out, for outside of his rolls Sellers was rather a prick, the rhetorical comet who streaks across the sky and burns out all too soon in a fiery burst – and if you’re too close to the blast, you’ll get burnt (just ask his four wives – Anne Howe, Britt Ekland, Miranda Macmillan and Lynne Frederick – or his three children – Michael, Victoria and Sarah).

 

Lewis gives us everything: from Sellers’ origins as part of an old-school traveling vaudeville family to his last fatal heart attack in the luxurious Dorchester Hotel, seemingly anything and everything that happened to his subject is recorded in all of its Technicolor horror. And don’t forget, it is a roundabout of a book to boot, going round and round and back and forth and hither and yon, all in pursuit of even the smallest of details. This is especially evident in how Lewis handles Sellers’ career, with a flop such as Casino Royale (1967) or the unreleased Ghost in the Noonday Sun (1974) getting as much attention as a hit like The Ladykillers (1955) or the legendary Dr. Strangelove (1964).

 

This is because, under Lewis’ pen, Sellers’ life and career are a kind of shorthand for the whole of the unique and peculiar British entertainment scene of which Sellers was such a part, if not the driving force (along with Alec Guinness, to whom Lewis links his subject, not always to Sellers’ advantage). We get great informative riffs on The Goon Show (1951-1960), Sellers first BBC radio job, to Ealing comedies, the Sixties and on almost every aspect of British cinematic and theatrical culture imaginable throughout (this last bit may be particularly irritating to those Yanks who don’t have a grounding in English humor – er, humour).

 

But stick with it, Dear Reader, for The Life and Death of Peter Sellers is a really stunning book, for all its very English eccentricities. This is, perhaps, because Lewis is obviously a fan, but a disillusioned one; I can just picture the author bent over his keyboard punching out word after word and grimacing the whole time as he exposes his subject for the pure genius and total shit that he truly was, God help him (I wonder what Dad would have thought about his favorite comedian if he had read this book?).

 

Underneath the vaulting verbiage and flowing imagery is a brilliant biography of a troubled artist who, at heart, didn’t know who he was, something that Sellers admitted repeatedly throughout his life. Chance the Gardner, one of Sellers’ last roles (and for which he was nominated for an Academy Award) appealed to him so much because, Lewis says, Sellers identified with this blank slate upon whom everyone projected what they wanted to see. And ultimately this biography plays out like one of its subject’s performances: manic, all-encompassing, liable to go off in a random direction without warning…and utterly unforgettable.