The Pink Panther (1963)

Director:
Blake Edwards

Writers:
Maurice Richlin (screenplay) and Blake Edwards (screenplay)

Release Date:
20 March 1964 (USA)

Genre:
Comedy / Crime

Tagline:
A Madcap Frolic Of Crime and Fun.
You only live once, so see The Pink Panther twice!

Plot Outline:
In the first movie starring Peter Sellers as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau, he tries to catch a jewel thief who is right under his nose. As a child, Princess Dala is given, by her father, the largest diamond in the world, in which if you stare into it can be seen a "Pink Panther" hence the name. However, now as a young woman, rebels in her home country have seized power and are demanding the return of the jewel. Dala relaxes on holiday in an exclusive skiing resort but noted British playboy, Sir Charles Lytton is in town. He is secretly "The Phantom" - infamous jewel thief who has eyes on the Pink Panther.

Charles's playboy nephew George follows to the resort in an attempt to steal it and blame it on "The Phantom", not knowing that it's his uncle. On the Phantom's trail is Inspector Jacques Clouseau, from France, and his wife who, unknowingly to Jacques, is the lover of Charles and helper in the Phantom's crime. Jacques tries to stop the attempts but he is so clueless that when several attempts are made at a fantasy-dress party, Jacques looks everywhere but the right place...

Cast:
David Niven ... Sir Charles Lytton
Peter Sellers ... Insp. Jacques Clouseau
Robert Wagner ... George Lytton
Capucine ... Simone Clouseau
Claudia Cardinale ... Princess Dala



Trivia:
* The role of Inspector Clouseau was originally offered to Peter Ustinov. Despite being relatively unknown internationally, Peter Sellers was offered the part, and was paid 90,000 pounds.

* Peter Sellers modeled the character of Clouseau on the trademark of a box of matches which includes an image of Captain Matthew Webb, who in 1875 became the first person to swim the channel (his heroic mustache and proud stance are both mimicked). To lose weight, Sellers took dieting pills for a year.

* In the bath scene with Capucine and Robert Wagner, an industrial-strength foaming agent is used, which burned both of the stars' skin. Wagner, who was completely immersed at one point, became blind for four weeks.

* The film was intended to have David Niven's character Sir Charles Lytton as the main character. However, Peter Sellers' portrayal of Inspector Clouseau was so loved by the crew (and later by the audience) it became his character this film and the sequels focused on.

* The Pink Panther is a diamond which gets its name from a flaw in its structure which is shaped like a pink-colored panther.

* Between 1964 and 1993, nine Inspector Clouseau (or related) films would be released, although Inspector Clouseau (1968) and the movies made after Peter Sellers's death are mostly not considered canon. All but two would carry the "Pink Panther" title, but only four of the films actually deal with the Pink Panther diamond itself: this one, The Return of the Pink Panther (1975), Trail of the Pink Panther (1982) and Curse of the Pink Panther (1983). The reason they still kept The Pink Panther in the title was because it had become synonymous with inspector Clouseau.

* An animated Pink Panther was created for the opening credits because writer and director Blake Edwards felt that the credits would benefit from some kind of cartoon character. David H. DePatie and Friz Freleng decided to personify the film's eponymous jewel, and the Pink Panther character was chosen by Edwards from over a hundred alternative panther sketches. The Pink Panther introduced in the opening credits became a popular film and television character in his own right, beginning with the cartoon short The Pink Phink (1964) the following year.

* The second Clouseau film, A Shot in the Dark (1964), was released only three months after this film.

* Claudia Cardinale could not speak English, so Princess Dala's dialog for the entire film was dubbed.

* The role of Simone Clouseau was offered to Ava Gardner and Janet Leigh before Capucine got the part. In her autobiography, Leigh states she turned it down because she had recently gotten married to her fourth husband Robert Brandt and didn't want to go off on location and away from her new husband for the duration of filming. Ava Gardner accepted the role but both her salary and personal demands were deemed unacceptable to the producers.

* In one scene, there's a night club called "Les Nus les plus osées du monde": The boniest nudes in the world, or, perhaps, the most stripped-down nudes in the world.

Mini Biography of Peter Sellers:

Date of Birth:
8 September 1925,
Southsea, Hampshire, England, UK

Date of Death:
24 July 1980,
London, England, UK. (heart attack)

Birth Name:
Richard Henry Sellers



Often credited as the greatest comedian of all time, Peter Sellers was born to a well-off English acting family in 1925. His mother and father worked in an acting company run by his grandmother. As a child, Sellers was spoiled, as his parents' first child had died at birth. He enlisted in the army and fought during World War II, where he met Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe and Michael Bentine, who would become his future workmates. After the war he set up a review in London, which was a combination of music (he played the drums) and impressions.

Then, all of a sudden, he burst into prominence as the voices of numerous favorites on "The Goon Show" (1951-1960), making his debut in films in Penny Points to Paradise (1951) and Down Among the Z Men (1952), before making it big as one of the criminals in The Ladykillers (1955). These small but showy roles continued throughout the 1950s, but he got his first big break playing the dogmatic union man, Fred Kite, in I'm All Right Jack (1959). The film's success led to starring vehicles into the 1960s that showed off his extreme comic ability to its fullest, but after the relative failure of What's New, Pussycat (1965), which was Woody Allen's first film, Sellers embarked on a rapid downfall to "Grade Z" movies in the 1970s, all of which he claimed to have made only because he needed the money.

In 1972 he read the book "Being There" and decided to make it into a film. It took him seven years to finally bring it to the screen, but it earned him a Best Actor Oscar nomination (he lost to Dustin Hoffman's portrayal of "Superdad" in Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)). Being There (1979) proved to be somewhat of a last hurray for Sellers, as he died the following year. His last movie, The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu (1980), completed just before his death, proved to be another flop. Director Blake Edwards' attempt at reviving the Pink Panther series after Sellers' death resulted in two panned 1980s comedies, the first of which, Trail of the Pink Panther (1982), deals with Inspector Clouseau's disappearance and was made from material cut from previous Pink Panther films and includes interviews with the original casts playing their original characters.