The co-star Peter Sellers refused to share a scene with: “It’s pointless going on”
The James Bond franchise has been going on for so long, it’s no surprise that it comes with its fair share of controversy.
So much of his early work doesn’t hold up to modern standards, especially his relationship with women, people from other countries, the queer community, and just about anyone else who isn’t a straight white British bloke, and one of the most interesting on-set disputes in Bond history features a very random name: the great Peter Sellers.
If you’re racking your brains trying to remember which Bond movie Sellers was in, then I’ll save you the effort, for the legendary comedian hasn’t appeared in a traditional 007 outing, but rather the 1967 spoof version of Casino Royale. Released at the height of Bond-a-mania, this interpretation of Ian Fleming’s debut spy novel features an all-star cast that also included Woody Allen, David Niven, John Huston, and original ‘Bond girl’ Ursula Andress, getting in on the fun.
Another cast member was the titanic Orson Welles, the man behind Citizen Kane, who played Le Chiffre, the villain later made famous by Mads Mikkelsen. While this version of the character didn’t cry blood, more than a few tears were shed when Welles was forced to work alongside Sellers, as the American icon apparently couldn’t stand his British co-star.
Welles thought Sellers was an unprofessional clown, while the Goon Show alum apparently hated how people fawned over his Hollywood nemesis, particularly frustrated when Princess Margaret visited the set and Welles attempted to impress her with a series of magic tricks, with things devolving so badly that the pair refused to be in the same room together, and their scenes were completed through body doubles and the power of editing.
This information comes from Joseph McGrath, one of five directors who worked on Casino Royale, in charge of filming the scenes with Sellers and Welles, whose constant sniping at each other pushed him to his limits, and he quit the production, saying, as reported by The Telegraph, “It’s pointless going on. There’s no control. Nobody has any overall feeling for the film and what’s happening”.
To be fair to Joseph McGrath, I would have quit the film on day one, for despite being good friends with Sellers, the actor and director routinely clashed. One report even suggests that the Dr Strangelove star punched McGrath when he dared to call him out on his behaviour, and then there was the bizarre multi-director set-up. McGrath spent six weeks filming his segment, which amounted to just 20 minutes of screentime, while other directors got a much larger chunk of the finished product, which can’t have done his ego much good.
The result of this insane on-set atmosphere was a movie that some critics deemed “unwatchable”, with a series of dull, predictable spy jokes and the ever-shifting cast of A-listers leaving critics exhausted while trying to sit through it. It’s viewed a little more favourably these days, but only as a curious footnote in a long-running series, yet bafflingly, it was technically nominated for an Oscar for Burt Bacharach and Hal David, who contributed an original song, ‘The Look of Love’, for the soundtrack.
Sellers and Welles never worked together again after this incident, and while these two would have undoubtedly made magic together on screen, it’s probably for the best that they were kept apart.
