Customer Reviews

P.S. I love you: Peter Sellers, 1925-1980

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This book, published Less than 2 years after the death of Peter Sellers is an honest, moving look into the life of the talented, but sometime stroubled actor. Written by his son with help from other family members the book portrays Sellers as a man whose genius got the best of him. The book is fanny, sad and often touching. This book gives an insight that no one but Peter Sellers son could give. FRom their first Holidays together to the last hours in the hospital room before Peter Sellers death, teh author was there and he recounts his memories for the reader. This book is a must for any serious Sellers fan or someone who wants to understand more about the man. If you can find a copy of this book...read it!

Granted this book is written by his child, and is a collection of memories, it seems like a longwinded email from someone obsessed with pinning his miseries on his childhood. Peter Sellers' actions are described in poor detail, just graphic enough to muddle us through his life, and we never explore the motivations of the man. It's unfortunately not overtly sad, funny, or poignant, aside from the beginning of the book, where we see him at the end of his life and comatose in the hospital for all of a dozen pages.

A ghostwriter should have been hired, but seemingly wasn't. Read this book only if you've exhausted other Sellers sources.

Published in 1982, a mere two years after Peter Sellers`s passing, Michael Sellers`s memoir P.S. I LOVE YOU may have been, more than anything else, the outcome of a therapeutic need to put into words a less than emotionally stable childhood. By this time, the elder Sellers`s reputation for being "difficult" nearly rivaled the attention given his unquestioned talent (or genius...) in the media. However, you`d have a hard time counting all the instances where professional collaborators of an artist or celebrity will claim that the person is impossible to deal with, whereas friends and family will be at pains to prove the opposite....so how is the case with Peter Sellers, then?

Sadly, it is quickly settled that P.S. I LOVE YOU does not intend to disconfirm any tale depicting Peter as being a hard man to deal with; as it turns out, Peter seems to have caused his children more difficulties than any other person. Michael does stress that his father could be charming and hilarious to be with, on his "good days;" but the unpredictability of his moods often left his children in an emotional crisis. Granted, many people do battle mood swings --I will not claim to be constantly cheerful myself-- but what particularly made the emotional outbursts of Peter Sellers impossible for others to handle, was that he apparently expected everyone around him to automatically adjust themselves to his unpredictable behavior. This would be particularly evident when he was doing a movie; Michael recalls in detail the pains he caused his then-wife Britt Ekland while both were appearing in AFTER THE FOX, yelling at her that she could not act, and so on. On the worst instances, Peter`s moods could result in both verbal and (though to a lesser degree) physical abuse on his children, and certain passages make for extremely disturbing reading. The saddest, most infuriating story is perhaps of how Peter, towards the end of his life, refused to ever speak to his daughter Sarah again; Sarah had been asked by her father to describe his character of Chance the Gardener in BEING THERE, whereupon she described him, in a joking tone, as a "chubby old man." She evidently had the character in mind when she said this, not her father as a person. Even so, Peter was outraged, and said he did not want anything more to do with her, and they never spoke again. He died one year later.

Despite all the pain, Michael does not appear bitter in the end; occasional mention is made of his happier times with his father, picturing Peter, if only during those particular periods, as a marvelous playmate. Call me naïve, but even though Michael writes, probably with much right, that his father seldom expressed any direct interest in his children or what they did with their lives, the few good moments leave me with the impression that Peter may have wanted, deep in his heart, to be a good father, but that his own emotional problems were too much of a burden for him to handle, and that he was unable to keep them down even in the presence of his offspring (such as parents ideally should try to do, in my opinion). Some reviewers have been dismissive of the writing in P.S. I LOVE YOU, but I have no major complains on this matter, though there are a few grammatical errors throughout, and the writing feels a bit dry at times. The book is probably among the best choices to anyone doing research on the private aspects of Sellers`s life, told from a personal, unsensationalistic viewpoint. However, if you are looking for a thorough account on his work and characters, Ed Sikov`s biography MR. STRANGELOVE remains my primal recommendation.

Finally, be aware that the book will not make for pleasant reading, least of all to the Sellers-fan; I am of the conviction that one should never, as far as it is possible, let the private life of an artist affect how one views his work, but if you find it more difficult to separate these two aspects, you may want to skip this book and put one of the better Pink Panthers in the DVD-player instead.