Mel brooks

Monday

Peter Lydon

Peter Sellers and the comic tragedy of The Producers

From our UK edition

It’s October 1994 and I’m rooting around in a garage in a non-descript LA neighbourhood, a few blocks from 20th Century Fox. The garage is piled high with clothes, cameras, audio tapes, reels of film and, in pride of place, a Nazi storm trooper helmet. This was the last resting place for a mountain of paraphernalia belonging to comedy legend Peter Sellers, who was born 100 years ago today. The house was owned by Sellers’s widow, Lynne Frederick, who had been found dead there just six months earlier. Now her mother lived there alone and was the keeper of the trove. After several G&Ts together, she agreed to allow me access. I was in LA filming a series of interviews for The Peter Sellers Story, a documentary for the BBC’s Arena.

Friday

Paul du Quenoy

Stephen Colbert kills The Late Show

“When you die at the palace, you really die at the palace,” laments Comicus, the ancient Roman “stand-up philosopher” played by Mel Brooks in his iconic, if not exactly well received, History of the World, Part I (1981). Forced to improvise a comedy routine for Dom DeLuise’s Emperor Nero, Comicus repeatedly puts his foot squarely in his mouth, insulting the capricious ruler for his corruption and weight. An enraged Nero sentences him to death, setting up a madcap escape sequence.

Stephen Colbert

Thursday

Alexander Larman

Gene Hackman was never, ever bad, whatever the role

Somehow the strange circumstances of the death of Gene Hackman, found dead in his New Mexico home with his wife Betsy and their dog, make the end of one of America’s finest actors all the more poignant. The full details will presumably become clear soon — but whatever happened, it is more important to remember Hackman’s legendary on-screen career than to waste time fixating on his final moments. He was an actor without sentiment, but with enormous amounts of fierce compassion — even when playing villains — and it is those qualities that should be celebrated. Hackman began his life in the Marine Corps before he became an actor, and many of his best performances have the tough, unbending quality that he developed in the military.