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Sophicles' Peter Sellers Page
 
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Actor Peter Sellers was born in North London on September 8, 1925 and made his
first stage appearance at the age of 2 weeks,  during one of his parents' music hall shows.
 With show-biz coursing through his veins it didn't take long for young Sellers to get his
  big break. It came in the form of BBC radio and he got it by impersonating two popular
 BBC stars and recommending himself to a  BBC producer. Sellers confessed his deception
 and being impressed that Sellers  had put one over on him,  the producer granted him a spot on the air.
 
Soon, the impressionists' impressionist went on to star in a new BBC radio
show Crazy People, which made its debut on May 28, 1951. The show's name
changed and became known as the Goon Show on June 22, 1952. The show
was a zany collection of skits that was a precursor to Monty Python's Flying
Circus. Sellers's characters on the show included: Major Denis Bloodnok,
Bluebottle, Hercules Grytpype Thynne, William "Mate" Cobblers and Henry
Crun. Co-starring with Sellers were Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and
Michael Bentine. The show ran until January 28, 1960 and was a showcase for
Sellers's improvisational talents, but more importantly, the exposure opened
the doors to his film career.
Sellers's first feature film was Penny Points to Paradise (1951) and after doing
several British Pictures his first film to achieve success in America was The
Mouse That Roared. Sellers could slip in and out of characters as easily as
one slips out of a jacket and he displayed this talent well playing multiple
characters in Mouse as well as several other films throughout his career
including, Dr. Strangelove (or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love
the Bomb) (1964). Strangelove is considered by many to be Sellers's best film
and for which, he received his first Oscar nomination.
1963 saw the release of another popular Sellers film, The Pink Panther. Yes, here
the indomitable Inspector Clouseau was born. The Pink Panther series of films is
the most successful comedic film series of all-time. This was the role for which Sellers
was best known and loved. There were 4 sequels to the original, A Shot in the Dark,
The Return of the Pink Panther, which resurrected Sellers's stagnating career in
1975, The Pink Panther Strikes Again, Revenge of the Pink Panther and Trail
of the Pink Panther. Sellers posthumous appearance in Trail was nothing
more than outakes from the previous Panther films combined with new
footage of other cast members. The two subsequent Panther films made
without Sellers were so painfully unfunny that they aren't worth mentioning here.
 
 Sellers garnered his second Oscar nomination for the critically acclaimed
film, Being There (1979) in which he played the child-like Chance, a gardener
mistaken for an economic guru. Sellers's controlled performance was key to
the success of this subtle comedy. Sellers's last film, The Fiendish Plot of Fu
Manchu (1980), was not one of his better films, but it was a fun diversion.
Sadly, Sellers died on July 24, 1980, but the comic could not go out without
playing one last joke. He had the song In The Mood played at his funeral,
leaving his fellow Goons to fight back laughter - Sellers hated the song.
 
 
 
Did you know that:

- Sellers won the Britsh Academy Award for the film I'm Alright Jack
defeating Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton and Peter Finch for the prize.

- Sellers dubbed some of Humphrey Bogart's lines in Beat the Devil as he was
unavailable to do them in post-production

- In the film Malaga Sellers dubbed the voices of 14 of the cast members, both
male and female and in one scene, 11 of his characters carry on a conversion
together.

- Sellers was the voice of Winston Churchill in The Man Who Never Was and
the parrot in Our Girl Friday.

- Sellers was awarded the title Commander of the British Empire (C.B.E.) in
1966.

- Singer/Songwriter/Goon Show fan Elton John purchased the original Goon
Show scripts at a Christie's auction in March of 1981 paying 14,000 British
pounds sterling for them.

 
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