William Powell had Nick Charles. Sean Connery had Bond. And Mike Meyers has Austin Powers. It's not unusual for an actor to become inseparable from the characters they play. Especially a character that they've developed, that holds so much of their own personality, a part no other actor could do as well, a beloved character that inspires sequel after sequel, all of them box office hits. Well, that's certainly true of Peter Sellers. Sure, there are his multiple roles in Dr. Strangelove (1964) and Clare Quilty from Lolita (1962) and Chance from Being There (1979), but when most moviegoers think of Peter Sellers, they think Clouseau.

And rightly so. Sellers starred as the bumbling Inspector in six films. The first, of course, was The Pink Panther (1964), directed as were the other six by co-writer-producer-director Blake Edwards. There were no plans to continue the Inspector Clouseau character after the first film. But up next for Seller's was A Shot in the Dark (1964), based on a play by Harry Kurnitz and originally slated to co-star Sellers and Walter Matthau as a team of detectives. But Sellers soon became dissatisfied with director Anatole Litvak and threatened to quit during preproduction. So Blake Edwards was brought on to direct and placate his leading man. A Shot in the Dark quickly changed with Edwards' input, as he discarded the framework of the play and inserted Inspector Clouseau into the action. It also introduced two familiar characters to the Pink Panther series: Inspector Dreyfus (Herbert Lom) and houseboy Kato (Burt Kwouk). A Shot in the Dark would be released just thee months after the original as the only film of the six without Pink Panther in the title.

Ten years went by before Sellers and Edwards teamed up for another Clouseau movie in The Return of the Pink Panther (1974). In the meantime, Edwards had produced Inspector Clouseau (1968), a bomb, with Alan Arkin filling Seller's shoes. The Return of the Pink Panther was such a huge success that another sequel, The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976), was rushed into production. Premiering just eighteen months after Return, The Pink Panther Strikes Again topped its predecessor's box office, taking in about $20 million. The plot revolved around a disappearing ray device and threats of world destruction that drew the super powers' attention in the form of defecting Russian spy Lesley-Anne Down and for the U.S., Dick Crockett as Gerald Ford and Byron Kane as Henry Kissinger. Never mind the odd historical footnote: That the film's release in December 1976, followed an election upset that ended Ford's term as President and put Jimmy Carter in the White House. Ford continued to govern on screen even after the January inauguration.

A couple of other interesting notes on The Pink Panther Strikes Again: the credit sequence was completed long before the final cut of the film. As such, several actors, including Jackie Cooper, were listed in the credits even though their footage wound up on the cutting room floor; the film features a cameo by Omar Sharif as an Egyptian killer; and the movie's theme song Come to Me, sung by Tom Jones, won Oscar® nominations for Best Song for Henry Mancini (music) and Don Black (lyrics).

Another Sellers-Blake Pink Panther film arrived in 1978 - Revenge of the Pink Panther. It would be the last for Sellers who died of a heart attack in 1980. Sellers had a history of heart problems and as the executor of his will, Elwood Rickless noted, "from the time of The Pink Panther Strikes Again, in 1976, he knew he was dying. He knew he had little time left." Sellers was known to be single-minded to the point of obsession, which well suited him to work with a detail focused director like Stanley Kubrick. Sellers also had the ability to shift easily between multiple characters, often losing himself in the roles. But there had never been much love lost between Sellers and Blake Edwards. And as Edwards remembers it, by the time of The Pink Panther Strikes Again, "if you went to an asylum and you described the first inmate you saw, that's what Peter had become. He was certifiable."

Nonetheless, Edwards went on to do the impossible in 1982. He made another Clouseau movie, after Seller's death - Trail of the Pink Panther. It was really little more than scraps and outtakes from old Pink Panther movies that featured Sellers, combined with some newly filmed footage to tie it all together. Yet another sequel was filmed simultaneously, called Curse of the Pink Panther (1983), and this time, with no remaining footage of Sellers to use, the case revolved around the hunt for the missing Inspector Clouseau. Sellers' third wife, Lynne Frederick, sued over the use of her late husband in Trail of the Pink Panther, claiming it diminished the memory of Sellers. And she won a million plus settlement.

The Clouseau character started with Sellers, but he didn't end there. In 1993, Edwards directed still another Pink Panther movie, this time starring future Oscar winner Roberto Benigni as the Son of the Pink Panther.

Producer/Director: Blake Edwards
Screenplay: Frank Waldman, Blake Edwards
Art Direction: John Siddall
Cinematography: Harry Waxman
Editing: Alan Jones
Music: Don Black, Henry Mancini
Cast: Peter Sellers (Inspector Jacques Clouseau), Herbert Lom (Dreyfus), Colin Blakely (Alec Drummond), Leonard Rossiter (Inspector Quinlan), Lesley-Anne Down (Olga).
C-103m. Letterboxed.

by Stephanie Thames