For many years, Peter Sellers told people that someone from the great beyond had been communicating with him and giving him career advice. At some point later in life, the Pink Panther star was introduced to the famous British medium Estelle Roberts, who, unaware of his supposed contact with the dead, informed him that the spirit of a comedian named Dan Leno was present at one of their meetings. Leno was among the most revered music hall comics of his time, but his career was cut short after suffering a mental breakdown in his early 40s. He died in 1904, 21 years before Sellers was born.
From the moment Roberts brought up Leno, Sellers was firmly convinced that it was the long-deceased comedian who had been in touch with him the whole time. “He follows me around everywhere,” Sellers once told his biographer, Peter Evans. “I felt his help, especially with my timing, before I knew who it was. He has been great for me. I knew it had to be someone in the business because his knowledge was so perfect. He has given me some wonderful advice.”
Not long after Evans’s biography of Sellers, The Mask Behind the Mask, was published in 1968, Sellers visited the author in London. Evans made the mistake of telling Sellers that Leno’s old house was close by, and Sellers insisted on going there immediately. When they arrived, Sellers pushed past the woman who answered the door without explanation and called out, “Dan. It’s me, Pete.” He then rushed from room to room, opening doors and yelling, “I know you’re here. Talk to me, Dan.”
There was at least one positive thing that came from Sellers’s belief that Leno was haunting him, and that was his decision to reprise his most popular film role. While experiencing a bit of a mental breakdown of his own in 1974, Sellers claimed that Leno told him to “return to Clouseau.” Despite having had a falling-out with Pink Panther director Blake Edwards following the release of 1964’s A Shot in the Dark, Sellers did as Leno asked and agreed to be in The Return of the Pink Panther, which came out in 1975. Sellers was back on top again, thanks to the ghostly “advice,” and he went on to make millions of dollars off the subsequent sequels.
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