A while ago we brought you a hilarious series of recordings of the British comedic actor Peter Sellers reading The Beatles’ “She Loves You” in four different accents. Today we have a brief clip from a telephone call by Sellers on the set of Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (in which Sellers played three different roles). Here he demonstrates the nuances of a few of the many accents around Great Britain. From cockney to upper class and from London to Edinburgh, it’s classic Sellers all the way.
Related content:
Peter Sellers: His Life in Home Movies
Peter Sellers Performs The Beatles in Shakespearean Mode
Weird. Sellers is obviously on the set of *Dr. Strangelove*, made up as President Merkin Muffley and probably just finished doing the scene where, in his American accent, he talks to his Soviet counterpart, Premier Dmitri Kissoff. (“Now, Dmitri, you know how we’ve always talked about something going wrong the The Bomb. [beat] The *Bomb*, Dmitri. [beat] The *hydrogen* Bomb.”) He looks as if he’s being asked about accents by someone on the phone — but the phone’s got to be a prop, no? This little shtick is crying out for some context!
Here’s the context: I saw this same clip on the DVD extras for the film. This is an excerpt from one of the “interviews” Sellers did for promoting Dr. Strangelove. The films of the interviews, complete with pauses, were sent to television stations, along with a printed list of the questions Sellers was asked. The idea was that a local entertainment reporter could be shown in split screen with Sellers, hold a telephone receiver as if talking to him, and ask the prepared questions. It would then look like the person was interviewing Sellers live via telephone. Another similar film was done with George C. Scott.
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