Peter Sellers

Although Bill Sellers was Protestant and Peg was Jewish, Sellers attended the North London Roman Catholic school St. Aloysius College, run by the Brothers of Our Lady of Mercy. Although the family was not rich, Peg insisted on an expensive private schooling for her son. According to his biographer, Roger Lewis, Sellers was intrigued by Catholicism, but soon after entering Catholic school, he "discovered he was a Jew—he was someone on the outside of the mysteries of faith." Later in his life, Sellers observed that while his father's faith was according to the Church of England, his mother was Jewish, "and Jews take the faith of their mother." He became a top student at the school, excelling in drawing in particular; he was prone to laziness, but his natural talents shielded him from criticism by his teachers. Sellers recalled that a teacher scolded the other boys for not studying, saying: "The Jewish boy knows his catechism better than the rest of you!" Read Less

He asked Sellers to play four roles: US President Merkin Muffley, Dr. Strangelove, Group Captain Lionel Mandrake of the RAF and Major TJ "King" Kong. Sellers was initially hesitant about taking on these divergent characters, but Kubrick prevailed. According to some accounts, Sellers was also invited to play the part of General Buck Turgidson, but turned it down because it was too physically demanding. Kubrick later commented that the idea of having Sellers in so many of the film's key roles was that "everywhere you turn there is some version of Peter Sellers holding the fate of the world in his hands". Sellers was especially anxious about successfully enacting the role of Kong and accurately affecting a Texan accent. Kubrick requested screenwriter Terry Southern to record in his natural accent a tape of Kong's lines. After practising with Southern's recording, Sellers got sufficient control of the accent, and started shooting the scenes in the aeroplane. After the first day's shooting, Sellers sprained his ankle while leaving a restaurant and could no longer work in the cramped cockpit set. Kubrick then re-cast Slim Pickens as Kong. The three roles Sellers undertook were distinct, "variegated, complex and refined", and critic Alexander Walker considered that these roles "showed his genius at full stretch". Sellers played Muffley as a bland, placid intellectual in the mould of Adlai Stevenson; he played Mandrake as an unflappable Englishman; and Dr. Strangelove, a character influenced by pre-war German cinema, as a wheelchair-bound fanatic. Read Less