The Unsettled Peter Sellers

When the moment came, how did we all see fit to commemorate the centenary of the births of Peter Cushing, Michael Hordern, James Mason, Dirk Bogarde, Jack Hawkins, Christopher Lee, Kenneth More, or Peter Finch, to name but a few of the many distinguished postwar British actors who come to mind? Some received polite but not overlong notices in what remains of the mainstream entertainment media or more personalized effusions in the form of online blogs contributed from among the ranks of the curious or the obsessed. Others of their number avoided even this reflexive homage, the mere dates of their births and deaths now confined to the arcane pages of a worthy but obscure trade journal along with the information that they were variously “wildly popular” at one time if not a “familiar presence on British television screens,” but that, in at least one case, “sustained commercial success at the highest level eluded him.”