Was Peter Sellers ereally as much of a hateful asshole as the recent biopic starring Geoffrey Rush made him out to be?
I’m not Eve, but for what it’s worth: I remember reading this quote about Peter Sellers from Blake Edwards (who was one of Sellers’ friends !!): “He was not a nice man.”
I am not Eve, either, but not only was he not known for friendliness in real life, he was also not known for his comedy either. I believe I read somehwere that the only times he ever had any sort of humor about him was when he was in character.
FWIW.
I’m not Eve, but an overwhelming number of people who worked and lived with Peter Sellers agreed on two points: He was a true genius, and he was a right bastard.
Prima donna syndrome, mostly, but he was cruel to his family, too.
I haven’t seen the movie you’re talking about, so I don’t know if it ignores his humanity altogether and only depicts his well-documented nasty side, but, yeah… he was a piece of work.
And a true genius.
previews Heh. I thought I’d have first reply. I guess a lot of us aren’t Eve. Who knew?
I have nothing to add about Sellers, I just wanted to point out that I’m also not Eve.
I am Eve.
No I’m not
I, too, am not Eve. However I am **Peter Sellers ** from 3:30pm to 5:00pm CDT weekdays and 9am to 11:30am Saturdays. In the fall I am **Melissa Gilbert ** and during the holidays I am a waste paper basket.
“I’m not Eve and neither is my wife.”
I’m not Eve, but I play her…
Oh, wait…
Whether or not Eve knows all about Peter Sellers, I’m sure Peter Sellers knew All About Eve.
Earl Holliman! Who would have been Eve had there not already been one.
“I will never work with that maniac/asshole/bastard again!”
Attributed to every director who ever did a picture with Sellers. And a good many actors. And probably a gaffer or two. 
I am Eve.
Well, it’s* spelled * “Eve” but it’s pronounced “Throatwarbler Mangrove”
I used to be Eve (White), then I was Eve (Black) for a while. Now I’m just Jane.
I am Spartacus!
I can be Eve, but it will cost you extra.
[Whitney]
I’m Every woman
It’s all in me
Anything you want done baby
I’ll do it naturally
[/Whitney]
I’d like to know if the movie was on the mark or not, too. It wasn’t a brilliant movie but it was intriguing and I appreciated the effort put into it - the commentaries by the director and Geoffrey Rush, and the two writers, were pretty informative too. But since it’s my only source of info on Sellers, I wouldn’t mind knowing if it’s generally considered accurate. From the movie, I got the impression Sellers never grew up: he was like a spoiled toddler wanting instant gratification and throwing tantrums, capable of showing affection, but not in a mature way.
One of the writers on the commentary kept wondering why Sellers didn’t get counselling for his bipolar condition (diagnosed by the writer? or is that a fact?), but would that have been an option for a guy in the UK during the 60s? I suppose he could have had therapy later in life if he’d wanted, but I didn’t think it was that common to go see a shrink unless you were showing signs of being mentally ill. And since he was rich and famous, then wouldn’t it have been assumed that he was fine, whether it was true or not? I just thought the writer was forgetting that by the time personal therapy became common, Sellers had been living like this for decades and I doubt anyone would have suggested it to him, or that he would have taken the advice anyway.
I think there’s a little bit of Eve in all of us. I got some of her eyelashes and just a little bit of her spleen.
Sellers’s son wrote a Daddy Dearest book which if even half true portrays somebody you want to just slug with a shovel. He was always chasing ridiculously young pieces of skirt, even when he was married to Britt Eckland (who he not only desperately tried to get to abort the daughter she desperately wanted but once tossed all of her jewelry [including pieces she owned before she married him and not particularly valuable but extremely sentimentally significant heirloom pieces] into the Thames). He was psychotically stingy with servants, ex wives, children, etc., giving only as much as he was ordered to, but at the same time incredibly needy and willing to call any of them at 3 a.m. and talk for hours without regard for their schedules.
The odd progression of his fortune: his estate was worth about $12 million (USD). He was married to his fourth wife, Lynne Fredericks, from whom he was estranged and due to sign divorce papers on the day he died. She inherited almost everything (he left his first wife and his children a few thousand dollars apiece [his daughter with Eckland sued and got a bit more as an out-of-court settlement]).
The widow (who was only 26, and who also won a settlement from Blake Edwards for making a Pink Panther movie without her husband [evidently Sellers owned part of the series]) very soon married her lover, the British TV personality/journalist David Frost, who was also significantly older (though not as much as Sellers) and who, though world famous, was nowhere near as wealthy as she was. When they divorced, he sued her for a settlement on the whole “lifestyle to which I have become accustomed” grounds and won (or received one out of court, not sure which), thus a chunk (not the lion’s share, but a good sized piece of change) of Sellers’s fortune became his. Frost then remarried and had several kids.
So ironically, the children of David Frost, who was cuckolding Sellers, received more money from Peter Seller’s estate than Sellers’s own kids.
Lynne Federick died of alcoholism and drug addiction a few years ago. I don’t know if the fortune was intact, gone or exactly what, nor what disposition she made of it.
Rather odd story I thought, rather like Buddy Holly’s royalties going to his wife’s children by a subsequent husband or Mark Twain’s fortune ultimately going to a White Russian family who had only a vague clue who he was.
The film made him out to be some kind of undeveloped, mean-spirited Id. (The facts may be there, but there’s a lot of psychologizing.) Even if the movie is somewhat or entirely accurate, I’m sorry I saw it.