Peter Sellers: A State of Comic Ecstasy

This is the garden that my dad grew up in.

His father was Peter Sellers.

I never knew my grandad.

He died quite a few years before I was born.

But what I do remember is this garden.

I remember watching home movies when I was a kid of him playing

with my dad when he was a baby and the gardener who worked there

at the time.

Michael! Michael!

And there he is running over to his dad now.

See that?

He's a lovely little fella.

I'm not sure that my grandad was the easiest person to live with.

People are very intrigued by Peter Sellers and we know

nothing about him.

He had no own personality.

There was no Peter Sellers as a human being.

I'm a very ambitious person.

I don't believe by any means that I've even begun to do

what's inside me.

I have a burning sort of fire inside me to do certain things

which I know I'm going to do.

He was capable of being mad and funny and wonderful,

and then the next minute he could be plunged

into despair.

Another...

Everyone loved him when he was acting

Peter Sellers,

and that was really his purpose in life.

My family don't have a lot of my grandad's possessions.

Maybe some photos or an old film script.

There's something we do know about, and that's his extensive

collection of home movies.

He was obsessed with cameras.

He filmed pretty much everything -

all the big moments in his life.

He did tend to film a lot of the intense relationships

he had with women -

which not all of ended all that well.

Darling, lay back, as I'm going to come over you like this.

Fantastic.

He was always moving on, trying new things, trying new people,

new affairs, new marriages, trying to find the secret of happiness.

I mean, I have a name of being very difficult. I'm not difficult at all.

I just cannot take mediocrity.

I just cannot take it on any level.

He was a genius, he was able to do that thing of making something funny

but not caricatured -that sort of explosion of talent.

Mein Fuhrer!

I can walk!

May I welcome you to The Goon Show and introduce you to the Goons!

I think it was 1955 when I finally got hooked on the Goon Shows.

Next, we present The Dreaded Revenge Of Fred Fu Manchu, Part Four.

It was Peter Sellers,

Harry Secombe, Michael Bentine and Spike Milligan,

and I must say, the first one I heard, I thought,

"I just can't make sense of this at all",

then I realised that was the point of it.

I intend to destroy it

with my explodable finger. Over my dead body!

That's that settled.

The Goon Show -how big was it?

Oh, it was as big as that,

or even bigger. Of course it was before television,

so everybody that you knew who was of the same ilk and of reasonable

intelligence met and, you know, listened to it together.

You don't have its equivalent

even today.

They made a virtue of being on radio.

And of course, Sellers was the sort of standout performer

in terms of his versatility

and the fact that he could do all these voices and transform himself.

Eccles, if I don't get $4.000 within the hour

I'm going to get killed!

What's the time now?

Two o'clock. Oh, don't worry, boss, I'll ring Dick.

Hello, Dick? Can you fix a tune for three o'clock?

They would say the unsayable, really. They were probably nearer

to the sort of Dadaists

or Beckett. Part of the joy of The Goon Show was that these guys

were round the microphone and you could tell

they were having such a good time.

One of the most significant things I know to you in your career,

and that was the Goons - which I know that...

..I mean, wasn't just a passing

phase in your career -

it's something that you still very much adore.

In fact, you look back on it with tremendous fondness.

It's the happiest time in my life.

Yes, professionally in my life.

Yes. I can believe that, too,

and, of course, I mean, you've developed in that time

a very special relationship, too, didn't you, with Harry

and with Spike?

Yes. We worked like one person, you know.

Ying Tong Song by the Goons

My father was Spike Milligan, a great friend of Peter's

and collaborator and sometimes arch enemy,

but they loved each other deeply.

We have just been spinning around the countryside

in Old Min -a 1928 Austin Heavy 12.

Old Min -obviously it's a Goon Show name.

"Minardor." Min, Min, Min, Min, Min.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes?

It was joint ownership -it kind of went between Dad and Peter,

but there seems to be quite a bit of angst surrounding the ownership

of the vehicle. When they were loving each other a lot,

they would gift it to each other. When they didn't like each other

so much, they would send a driver to take it away.

And I remember their conversations - mainly on the telephone -

but Dad would have to lie down on his back to talk to Peter

because he would laugh so...

They'd be laughing so much.

I don't know what was going on, but it was hysteria.

Yeah, sensational,

but I'm sending you another pen

because it'd look funnier in this pen.

A modern pen?

Spike and Peter were sort of both troubled in different ways.

Spike was entirely concerned with the artistry, and Peter -

the trappings of fame were equally appealing.

And there's always inherent tensions and competitiveness

in creative relationships.

I'm sure Peter Sellers' success didn't help in that regard.

Around the same time as the Goons started in 1951, he appeared

in a number of low-budget films.

They were attempts to make a Goon Show on film.

Let's Go Crazy was thrown together

more or less on the spot with a number of local

variety artists, and they turned it into a film in its own right.

Now, Beatrice, what would you have -vin blanc or vin ROOGY?

I'll leave it to you.

Righty-ho.

GARKON! Yes?

Oh...

Can we have two cups of cooking wine?

Yes.

Peter Sellers was always a film fan,

so once he'd established himself

he really wanted to get into films.

His big first break was in The Ladykillers.

No plot was ever hatched with such Satanic cunning

as Guinness and his genial group of merry minstrels hit every high note

in this delightfully different entertainment.

He's magnificent in The Ladykillers.

Alec Guinness was his idol,

his Kind Hearts And Coronets with Guinness playing

lots of characters.

That was something he always wanted to do and emulate.

Darling, I am growing old...

He moved on to do several other films, but it was really

The Mouse That Roared that got Sellers noticed in the States.

In common with several

of his films of the period, he plays three characters.

Peter Sellers as the noble statesman.

There isn't a more profitable undertaking for any country

than to declare war on the United States

and to be defeated.

Peter Sellers as the fearless leader.

Men of Fenwick, when you hear the name of Grand Fenwick, do your

hearts swell with pride? Yes!

And if your country calls,

will you rush to enlist? No! Oh.

Peter Sellers as the Grand Duchess.

Do give my love to your

president, will you?

And Mrs Coolidge too.

My favourite character

in that film is when he's dressed up in drag, his old duchess.

I think he's recreating his grandmother there.

Ma Ray, her name was.

She was a sort of matriarchal figure.

And there's his mother, Peg.

My grandparents were both in theatre.

My grandfather was playing piano

and that's how he met my grandmother -

who was actually on the stage.

Her main act was she dressed up in white.

Mum used to stand there in a white-tights thing.

It was a real daring thing then, you see.

And they used to project slides onto Mum and she would depict, you know,

various famous characters from history as the slides changed

and my dad would be playing

the old joanna in the front there or something like that.

So, here we have the original slides that my grandmother

would have performed in front of.

I believe they were hand-painted and, I mean, it's just stunning.

But to see that on the stage

probably did instil something in him, and he was a baby

when all this was going on,

so even if he wasn't that conscious of it, I think

it would have just been part of him.

My dad talked about these slides quite often.

He retained a set throughout his life.

They were obviously part of his heritage

and were very important to him.

My grandmother was quite controlling or she'd like to be.

But she was somebody that was very important to him

and he was an only child,

so that relationship would have been quite a strong bond.