A Leu Unto Himself - How Inspector Clouseau Became The United Kingdom's Favourite Frenchman, Part One
Relations between France and Britain weren't great in the 1960s and '70s. So why did Peter Sellers' preposterous creation prove so popular with his fellow countrymen?
On the face of it, things weren't too bad between Britain and France in the 1960s.
I mean, we weren't at war, were we? But with General De Gaulle's distrust of the UK's 'special relationship' with America leading him to block our admission to the EEC at every turn, there was an undeniable air of distaste to period of détente.
All of which made it rather strange that, throughout the '60s and '70s Britain enjoyed a love affair with a Frenchman, a brave, romantic soul who never let complete incompetence prevent him from bringing the continent's criminals to book. The gentleman in question? Inspector Jacques Clouseau of the Sûreté. The vehicles that led to his popularity? Blake Edwards' Pink Panther movies.
Of course, Britain and France have been laughing at one another almost as long as we've been fighting one other. To our Gallic chums, we are the 'Rosbifs', ruddy uncultured swine who're equally as bad in the kitchen as we are in the bedroom. And as for what we think of the French, you could do a lot worse than look at how satirist James Gillray portrayed Napoleon Bonaparte as smug and petulant, cowardly and two-faced; 'qualities' that colour many a British take on our friends across La Manche.
Inspector Clouseau, however, is none of these things. Sure, he's an idiot - that almost goes without saying - but he's also incredibly brave - in Revenge Of The Pink Panther we learn that he served with the French Resistance - and far from being a libidinous Pepé Le Pew type, he's a romantic in the Charles Aznavour mould. Two other things you might not know about Clouseau are i) he wasn't actually the star of the original Pink Panther film, and ii) Peter Sellers wasn't meant to play him.
Indeed, Peter Ustinov - riding high on the back of his Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Spartacus - was meant to play the lawman with an inadvertent appetite for destruction. Mere days before the start of shooting, Ustinov got cold feet. Frantically searching for someone - anyone - who could do justice to the part, writer-director-producer Blake Edwards found himself in touch with Peter Sellers, then best known for his work with The Goons and his BAFTA-winning performance as shop steward Fred Kite in the Boulting Brothers' I'm All Right Jack.