Actor/comedian.
PETER (RICHARD HENRY) SELLERS. Born in
Southsea, Hampshire, England, 8 September 1925.
Died in London, 24 July 1980.
While the late actor Peter Sellers is primarily known for his roles in film comedies such as the Pink Panther series, he first became a British celebrity as a member of the cast of The Goon Show, a satirical BBC radio series. Originally aired in 1951, the show
teamed Sellers with fellow comedians Spike Milligan and Harry Secombe. The show was a shocking departure for listeners accustomed to urbane humor from the BBC--the Goons combined a zany blend of odd characters in sketches that poked fun at every aspect of English society. Sellers used mimicry skills honed as a stand-up comedian in London strip-tease bars to create a number of distinctive characters with equally memorable names: Grytpype
Thynne, Bluebottle, Willum Cobblers, and Major
Bloodnok. The show acquired a cult following with BBC audiences around the world, and helped launch Sellers' film career.
Goon Show influences can be traced to equally-eccentric British television progeny such as Monty Python's Flying Circus and The Benny Hill Show. The Goons, led by Sellers, created a distinctive media genre that combined Kafkaesque humor with hilariously
stereotypical English characters. This new genre paved the way for the Pythons and others to follow in the 1960s and 1970s.
In 1979, Peter Sellers appeared in Hal Ashby's production of Being
There, a film version of Jerzy Kosinski's satirical novel on the
cultural influence of television. In the film Sellers played
Chauncey Gardiner, a none-too-bright gardener who is forcibly thrust into the outside world after the death of his benefactor. Sheltered in his employer's home, Chauncey's world-view was entirely shaped by the television shows he watched on sets scattered throughout the house. After being cast from this TV-defined Eden, Chauncey and his child-like innocence are challenged by the harsh realities of the outside world at every turn. In one memorable scene, he is menaced by members of an inner-city street gang as he urgently presses a TV remote control to make them "go away." In another scene, Sellers kisses a passionate female character played by Shirley MacLaine as
he mimicked a televised love scene that he was watching over her
shoulder.
Being There reflected Kosinski's jaundiced view of the influence of television on modern culture, and the tendency to confuse actual events with their symbolic media representations. In Kosinski's sardonic world the innocent jabberings of a moronic child-man are mistaken as profound wisdom--at the end of the film Chauncey is feted as a presidential candidate.
This story resonated with Peter Sellers at first reading and he pursued Kosinski for seven years for the film rights. During the making of the motion picture, Sellers became Chauncey Gardiner--so much so that friends became alarmed at his 24-hour-a-day transformation. The result was one of Sellers' funniest and most-poignant screen roles. He was an innocent man cast adrift in a world full of duplicitous people and contrived mediated images. And the film, like Kosinski's novel, is one of the most trenchant
indictments of the role of television in society yet mounted in fictional form. The film was a fitting end to a career built on Sellers' own unique mimicry skills. He contrived a number of quirky illusory personas--a diverse world that included such memorable characters as Grytpype
Thynne, Jacques Clouseau, and Chauncey Gardiner.
-Peter B. Seel
