Peter Sellers

Life and career

His mother was part of the Ray Sisters troupe. Although christened Richard Henry, his parents called him Peter after a stillborn elder brother. He had no other siblings. His mother was related to pugilist Daniel Mendoza, whom Sellers greatly revered.

At two weeks old, Sellers was carried on stage by Dick Henderson at the Kings Theatre in Southsea, where the crowd sang, causing the infant to cry. The family constantly toured, causing upheaval and unhappiness for the young Sellers. He maintained a very close relationship with his mother, which friend Spike Milligan later considered unhealthy. His agent recalled Sellers as an immensely shy young man, inclined to be dominated by his mother.

As an only child, he spent much time alone. In 1935 the family moved to North London and settled in Muswell Hill. Although his father was Protestant and his mother Jewish, Sellers attended the Roman Catholic school St Aloysius' College in Highgate. Peg insisted on expensive private schooling.

Biographer Peter Evans noted Sellers was fascinated, puzzled, and worried by religion from a young age, particularly Catholicism. Roger Lewis believed that after entering Catholic school, Sellers discovered he was a Jew, someone on the outside of the mysteries of faith. Later in life, Sellers observed that Jews take the faith of their mother.

Death

On 21 July 1980, Sellers arrived in London from Geneva and checked into the Dorchester hotel. He visited Golders Green Crematorium for the first time to see the location of his parents' ashes. He had plans to attend a reunion dinner with Goon Show partners Milligan and Secombe on 22 July. On the day of the dinner, Sellers took lunch in his hotel suite and shortly afterward collapsed from a heart attack.

He was taken to the Middlesex Hospital, London, and died just after midnight on 24 July 1980, aged 54. Following his death, Richard Attenborough said Sellers had genius comparable to Chaplin. The Boulting brothers considered him a man of enormous gifts who gave them to the world. Burt Kwouk stated that Peter was a well-loved actor in Britain and that the day he died, the whole country seemed to come to a stop.

Blake Edwards thought Peter was brilliant with an enormous facility for finding unique facets of the character he was playing. Spike Milligan was too upset to speak to the press, while Harry Secombe said he was shattered and that Peter had so much talent it oozed out of him. Secombe added in dark humour, Anything to avoid paying for dinner, and later declared, Bluebottle is deaded now. Milligan later said it was hard to say, but he died at the right time.

A private funeral service was held at Golders Green Crematorium on 26 July, conducted by Canon John Hester. Sellers's final joke was playing In the Mood by Glenn Miller, a tune all the Goons hated. A memorial service was held at St Martin-in-the-Fields on 8 September 1980, what would have been Sellers's 55th birthday. Lord Snowdon read the twenty-third Psalm, Harry Secombe sang Bread of Heaven, and David Niven read the eulogy.

Technique

Vincent Canby of The New York Times noted that Sellers and Herbert Lom were a hilarious team, each having a special talent for portraying epic self-absorption that makes slapstick farce acceptable and funny. Film critic Elvis Mitchell said Sellers was one of the few comic geniuses who could truly hide behind his characters, giving no sense of what he was like in real life. A feature of Sellers's characterisations is that, regardless of how clumsy or idiotic they are, he ensured they always retained their dignity.

On playing Clouseau, Sellers said he set out to play him with great dignity because he thinks he is probably one of the greatest detectives in the world, and that a forgivable vanity would humanise him. Biographer Ed Sikov notes that because of this retained dignity, Sellers is the master of playing men who have no idea how ridiculous they are. Social historian Sam Wasson notes the complexity in Sellers's performances in the Pink Panther films, which alienates Clouseau from his environment.

Wasson considers this combination of high and low comedy the performative counterpoint to Edwardian sophisticated naturalism, making Clouseau the sole representative of humanity. Film critic Dilys Powell saw the inherent dignity in the parts and wrote that Sellers had a balance between character and absurdity. Richard Attenborough thought that because of his sympathy, Sellers could inject into his characterisations the frailty and substance of a human being.