Mr. Strangelove: A Biography of Peter Sellers by Ed Sikov Read Free Book Online

monkey,” says Peter’s friend David Lodge, describing the way Sellers lookedwhen they met. They were in Gloucester at the time, fellow Gang Show
performers. Lodge recalls their meeting as having occurred just after Sellers
returned from Asia, which would place it in 1945. Then again, on another
occasion Lodge dated it as occurring in 1944. More important than the
exact date is the fact that they got along beautifully, amused each other
greatly, and remained the best of friends for the rest of Peter’s life.
    Given the fact that tense and frustrated men are thrown together during
wartime with other tense and frustrated men, military theater often leans
in the direction of gender humor. In short, Pete’s dress-up routines included
drag. Lodge himself made a point of growing a mustache to prevent his
own forced march in gowns, but he notes that young Pete’s
“peaches-and-cream” complexion—a strange contrast to the hairy body—produced a
“very convincing woman.” But it was Sellers’s talent as a drummer more
than as a comedian that impressed Lodge: “He was a great drummer—as
good as Buddy Rich.” His were showman’s performances, complete with
flamboyant riffs and the confident tossing and catching of drumsticks in
midair. Aging drummers in Britain may disagree; rumors of Pete’s lack of
aptitude have surfaced. Unsung English drummers seem to resent the one
among their ranks who achieved vast wealth and fame as a movie star, and
apparently they denigrate his drumming talent. It doesn’t matter. The winner writes the history.
    “He behaved like a boy—a rascal, actually,” says Lodge, who necessarily
got to see Sellers’s selfish streak at close range but who, like the other men
Sellers grew to trust, saw the tender and vulnerable side as well. They were
bunked next to each other in Gloucester. Lodge couldn’t help but notice
that Pete was being bullied by a loud and burly Welshman who did not
appreciate being in such close proximity to a Jew. Sellers, whose temper
could erupt violently and without warning, was reacting to these anti-Semitic taunts with undue restraint, so the bluff, muscular Lodge stepped
in to assist him. He handed Pete a heavy iron poker and advised him to
slam the Welshman over the head with it. “If he won’t, I will,” Lodge added
straight to the Welshman’s face. The bully backed off.
    What’s fascinating about Lodge’s tale is not that Sellers was the object
of anti-Semitic contempt but that his Jewishness was so evident to a
stranger. Did the men question each other about their religions? Or was it
simply Peter’s nose?
    As Lodge soon saw, Pete did possess a volatile temper, and when he
exercised it there was no holding back. “Another time he actually broke achair up, very deliberately, piece by piece, to work out his aggression,”
Lodge recalls. “I made a note—‘If you get on the wrong side of this
boy. . .’ ”
    That Lodge quickly gained Peter’s trust was made evident by the fact
that Peter invited him back home to meet his mother. Peg and Bill were
living on Finchley High Road at the time. Lodge, not surprisingly, found
his new friend’s relationship with his mother “too close for comfort.” But,
Lodge continues, despite her domination of his emotional life, Peg couldn’t
control the actions of her willful son. Pete did precisely what he pleased.
He required her commanding love to survive, but he didn’t require her
permission for anything.
    Only Peg Sellers could see in David Lodge—a tall, broad, athletic serviceman—nothing more than a surrogate for herself. When she discovered
that the Gang Show was heading out on tour again, she tried to make
Lodge promise to become a kind of nanny for her now fully grown son.
Says Lodge, “If she’d been a fella I’d have whacked her.”
    • • •
     
     
    Europe was in unimaginable ruins when World War II ended in 1945.
Thousands of acres in the heart of British cities had been reduced to