Useless but essential pop culture tidbits and trivia from the worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror that will not interest anyone at the upcoming Glee marathon at the civic center.
Anybody who has seen Stanley Kubrick’s seminal Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb will certainly remember the versatile performance from Peter Sellers in three separate roles in which he portrayed the nebbish British officer Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, the ineffectual president Merkin Muffley, and the borderline psychotic ex-Nazi Dr. Strangelove. But did you know that original plans for the film had him playing a fourth role, the B-52 pilot Major Kong whom Slim Pickens would eventually take into Hollywood infamy with his bronco-bomb-riding performance?
Columbia Pictures agreed to finance the film if Peter Sellers played four roles because they believed that the multiple characters he portrayed in Kubrick’s Lolita helped drive the success of that movie. Sellers originally expressed concern over the casting demands feeling the workload would be too much and he also worried that he might not get the Texas accent right for the gung-ho pilot. Kubrick implored the actor to take on the fourth role, though, and Sellers actually started working on the character before he sprained his ankle and found that he could not work in the tight confines of the cockpit set.
Of course Slim Pickens, a veteran of many westerns, would famously took over the role of Major Kong, but he was allegedly never told that it was a comedy and was only given the script for the scenes that he played in. And when he arrived at the set he was wearing full western gear prompting some to believe he had dressed for the part, though they did not realize that he regularly dressed that way. James Earl Jones, who played next to Pickens in Dr. Strangelove, said of the actor that “he was Major Kong on and off the set—he didn’t change a thing—his temperament, his language, his behavior.” Guess they made the right decision in the end.
Source: Wikipedia
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