Birth of a Notion: A Shot in the Dark

Monday, June 23, 2014

Firing a Shot in the Dark

Clouseau (Peter Sellers): Facts, Hercule, facts! Nothing matters but the facts. Without them the science of criminal investigation is nothing more than a guessing game.

Some of my fondest memories from my childhood are of my family watching Blake Edwards' timeless "Pink Panther" movies. There was another family with whom we liked to watch those movies — but we got a kick out of the Pink Panther even if our friends weren't there.

We were positively obsessive on the subject. There's no telling how many times we watched those movies on TV and laughed uproariously at the same things each time (as if we had never heard or seen them before). Some of Clouseau's lines became running jokes in my family.

(Interestingly, after Sellers died in 1980, film critic Roger Ebert wrote that Sellers' trademark accent was developed in "A Shot in the Dark," not in the original "The Pink Panther."

("It came from this brilliant concierge in a hotel I used to stay at in Paris," Sellers told Ebert. "He was a master of dealing with American tourists. He'd talk to them in a strange accent that wasn't French but sounded French to an English speaker.")

The only movie in the series that did not have "Pink Panther" in the title was "A Shot in the Dark," which premiered on this day in 1964. That was before my time. Mom and Dad may well have gone to see it at the theater, but I only saw it on TV until once, when I was in high school, an area theater held a Pink Panther movie marathon. I remember taking my girlfriend to see it.

"A Shot in the Dark" was also the only movie in that series that starred Peter Sellers and did not have an animated sequence in the opening credits with the pink panther cartoon character that became so popular on Saturday mornings ("Inspector Clouseau," which starred Alan Arkin in Sellers' role, also had no animation).

Here is the gist of the story. A murder was committed at a palatial French estate, and the prime suspect was the maid (Elke Sommer). The chief inspector (Herbert Lom) was ready to make an arrest, but the incredibly inept Inspector Clouseau stepped in to conduct his own investigation.

Clouseau, you see, had fallen in love with Sommer. There was a series of murders, the evidence in each pointing to Sommer, and every time Sommer was picked up by the police — but Sellers managed to free her each time.

Sellers always seemed to have beautiful women co–starring with him, but Sommer may have been his most beautiful "Pink Panther" co–star. It isn't difficult to understand why Sellers' character was so smitten, but in the end, even his detractors had to admit that he was spot–on in his judgments that Sommer was not guilty.

Although Sommer was innocent, "A Shot in the Dark" still managed to find ways to use her physical attributes in not–so–innocent ways.

The funniest example probably came when Sellers and Sommer were arrested for public nudity after escaping a nudist colony.

It was actually a funny escalation of an ongoing joke in which Sellers, in his bungling Clouseau way, always managed to be in the wrong place at the right time and was arrested for, in succession, selling balloons, selling paintings and hunting, each time without a license.

Those first three times, viewers could see, after Clouseau had been arrested, a paddywagon on its way to the police station, presumably with Clouseau inside, and the security officers standing on the vehicle's running boards looking bored and disinterested.

But when the paddywagon presumably contained Sellers and Sommer, both nude, the officers could be seen with their faces pressed against the paddywagon's tiny windows.

As I say, this was the second of the "Pink Panther" movies, but it was the one that really established the Clouseau character — as well as Dreyfuss' frantic eye twitching and Kato's judo ambushes.

Mom loved it all — the fractured French accent, Clouseau's clumsiness, everything. She would speak in his accent, sometimes using lines from the movies, sometimes using lines she made up but delivered in that accent. When she wanted to confer with a member of the family about something, she would say, "I must have speaks with you." (I don't remember offhand which movie that line was from. I don't think it was "A Shot in the Dark.")

I can only imagine the kind of conversation she might have had with Sellers' concierge. They might have needed an army of translators.

I am very fond of the "Pink Panther" movies and always try to watch when one is on TV because, well, they are funny but also because of Mom. Of course, I know, when I sit down to watch one, that I will be reminded of her, but that is OK.

They bring back happy memories for me.

Friday, December 17, 2010

Remembering Blake Edwards

One of the most cherished memories of my childhood is of seeing "Pink Panther" movies with my parents and certain family friends.

And those memories came flooding back to me when I heard that director Blake Edwards had died at the age of 88. Edwards, of course, directed the "Pink Panther" movies ("The Pink Panther," "A Shot in the Dark," "The Return of the Pink Panther" and "The Pink Panther Strikes Again") in the 1960s and 1970s.

(By the way, you can see "A Shot in the Dark" on Turner Classic Movies this Monday at 10 a.m. Central.)

What memories they were.

I remembered sitting in movie theaters and laughing with my parents at Peter Sellers' bumbling Inspector Clouseau. My memory is that it was fairly easy to get my mother to laugh at the movies, but my father seldom laughed aloud unless he was really amused — and he was always laughing at the "Pink Panther" movies, deep rumbling laughs that came from somewhere deep inside.

It was like the laugh bubbled to the surface, and he simply couldn't contain it even if he wanted to.

I know a new generation of moviegoers thinks of Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau, but Sellers is the original.

Sellers alone, though, couldn't pull it off. He needed Edwards, and, in my mind, Edwards and Sellers are forever linked, thanks to their work on those movies.

That's strange, I suppose, because they were hardly buddies. Sellers, who died in 1980, could be hard to work with. I have heard there were times when he and Edwards stopped speaking in the midst of making their films. Must have made it rather difficult to complete the films.

But Edwards always respected Sellers' talent. When he made "Trail of the Pink Panther" two years after Sellers' death and included outtakes and deleted scenes from other movies in the series, Edwards dedicated it to Sellers' memory: "To Peter ... The one and only Inspector Clouseau."

My mother didn't live long enough to see the Steve Martin version, but I suspect she would have agreed with Edwards.

I think she would have been adamant about it. There was only one Clouseau.

And the truth is that, although I strongly associate Edwards with Sellers, much as I do Robert Redford and Paul Newman, their collaborations represent small fractions of their careers.

Sellers worked with many directors, most of whom — apparently — found him hard to work with.

Edwards, as many people don't realize, began as an actor, getting small roles in some pretty classic movies (like "The Best Years of Our Lives" and "A Guy Named Joe," which was remade by Steven Spielberg as "Always") and big roles in some pretty forgettable ones.

Perhaps that gave him insights that helped him when he made his transition into the next phase of his career.

By the time he was in his 30s, Edwards had moved behind the camera, working first as a screenwriter, then as a director, and it was as a director that he made his reputation, mostly with comedies, although one of his earliest directorial successes was a decidedly dramatic tale, "Days of Wine and Roses."

A few years later, the "Pink Panther" franchise was born.

And it spawned all sorts of running jokes in my family, much of it centered on Sellers' exaggerated French accent as Inspector Clouseau.

My mother (who, I always suspected, would have loved to participate in one of Carol Burnett's parodies of movies or TV shows) would begin speaking in Clouseauese almost without notice — but she usually had to be in the company of folks who would understand.

For example, the phone would ring and she would say, in her best Clouseau impression, "The phin is ringing" — with extra emphasis on the G's in "ringing."

Or she would speak of a "minkey." (That's the Clouseau pronunciation of "monkey.")

And everyone in her presence would crack up — provided, of course, that they were in on the joke. Not everyone was so Mom picked her moments for that sort of thing initially. Later in her life, she was pretty open and uninhibited about it.

By the time the final "Pink Panther" movie to be made in Sellers' lifetime was released, the running jokes were so widely known among devotees of the series that they served as pretty much the foundation of the plot for the former chief inspector's conspiracy to assassinate Clouseau.

The things that annoyed him the most about Clouseau were the things that made audiences laugh. It was movie magic.

Sadly, there were no other Edwards–Sellers collaborations after "The Pink Panther Strikes Again."

Edwards continued to entertain audiences ...

... with movies like "10."

And he worked with his wife, the incomparable Julie Andrews, in many of his films, like "S.O.B." and "Victor/Victoria" as well as "10."

But his career sort of tapered off after that. He made a few more movies, but it has been nearly 20 years since his last one.

Nevertheless, he was recognized by the Academy Awards in 2004 for his life's work. And, in true Blake Edwards/Inspector Clouseau fashion, he made a slaptstick entrance and acceptance speech (after being introduced by Jim Carrey).

I've heard that, on that night, Edwards began planning a remake of "10" — a remake that, unfortunately, he never made.

It would have been interesting — and probably quite entertaining — to see what kind of spin he might have given the story a quarter of a century later.