The partnership of Terry Thomas and Peter Sellers
Comedy double-acts have been part and parcel of making audiences laugh since even before the days of vaudeville, and as two of the most gifted and popular performers of their era, it was only natural that Terry Thomas and Peter Sellers would strike up a natural rapport on-screen.
Although they were never billed as a pairing in the same way as Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, or any of the other dynamic duos who made their name on the silver screen, it wasn’t a coincidence they appeared as part of the ensemble on so many occasions.
Even when they didn’t, they were still connected in a way, most notably in 1963’s The Mouse on the Moon. Thomas starred in the sequel to 1959’s The Mouse That Roared, but he wasn’t involved in its predecessor. However, Sellers played three roles in the first film as was his want, but opted against returning for the follow-up.
Whereas Sellers became an international superstar by way of his chameleonic ability to disappear into multiple characters in the same movie – something that inspired generations of performers right through to the era of Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy doing much the same thing – Thomas had his own standard set of tics and tricks he always tended to rely on.
Typically found playing an upper-class toff with a mean streak, the distinctive gap between his front teeth only enhanced the lecherous air he regularly sought to project. It may have been archetypal, but it’s hard to argue with the results, which saw Thomas become one of Britain’s most distinguished and in-demand comic performers throughout the 1950s and 1960s.
Sellers, meanwhile, shot to fame through The Goon Show before ultimately cracking Hollywood, where he headlined the successful Pink Panther franchise as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau and worked with Stanley Kubrick on Lolita and the classic Dr. Strangelove, earning three Academy Award nominations after showcasing that he was equally adept at drama as he was comedy.
Thomas and Sellers crossed paths on a number of films including 1957’s blackmailing black comedy The Naked Truth and political farce Carlton-Browne of the F.O., which were two rare occasions when the powerhouse pair were the two top-billed names in the credits. Not that they were desperately craving the limelight, when they were perfectly fine stealing scenes through their signature style of histrionics.
Musical fantasy Tom Thumb and industrial satire I’m All Right Jack are among their other cinematic unions, with Sellers winning a Bafta for ‘Best Actor’ in the latter. At his peak there was nobody who could hope to match his showmanship and bravura, but whenever one of his projects required the definitive interpretation of an unscrupulous member of society’s wealthier subsection, Thomas never tended to be too far behind.
