The part of Inspector Clouseau in Blake Edwards' "The Pink Panther" (1963) was originally intended to be played by Peter Ustinov. At the last minute, he pulled out of the project & they were scrambling to find a replacement. The desperation was short-lived after the choice of Peter Sellers came up.
Edwards said, “The happy idea of Peter Sellers came up. He arrived on a weekend in Rome and we were scheduled to shoot on Monday. We went over the script together and out of our conference, the entire concept of the character was changed.” Inspector Clouseau, who was originally conceived as a “straight, sober-sided dignified cop,” became, at Sellers’s urging, a “funny, pathetic, bumbling, lovable” fellow.
Of his collaborations with, Peter Sellers, Blake Edwards said, "For years I'd been getting bits of what I wanted into films, as writer or director... but I had never had an area in which to exploit my ideas to the full. Then along came Peter, a walking storehouse of madness, a ham with an almost surrealist approach to the insanity of things, and we found an immediate affinity."
("Peter Sellers Changed The 'Entire Concept' Of The Pink Panther's Jacques Clouseau", Lee Adams, Slashfilm, 2022 & AFI Catalog)
P.S: Remembering the great American Filmmaker, Blake Edwards on his 104th birthday!
Jason Robards #botd is remembered as one of America's finest stage actors and acclaimed for his outstanding work in film and on television.
"I always wanted to act. To be with my friends. To share something with the audience about the human condition..."
Robert Redford a insisté pour confier le rôle de Ben Bradlee dans « Les Hommes du président » à Jason Robards, en souvenir de sa gentillesse envers lui, jeune débutant, sur « Iceman Cometh » en 1960.
Robards traversait alors une mauvaise passe.
Le pari lui vaudra l’Oscar.