Trivia / The Pink Panther

Entries in this franchise with their own Trivia pages:

• The Pink Panther (1963)
• A Shot in the Dark
• The Return of the Pink Panther
• The Pink Panther Strikes Again
• Revenge of the Pink Panther
• Trail of the Pink Panther
• Curse of the Pink Panther
• Son of the Pink Panther
• The Pink Panther (2006)

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The films

• Acting for Two: In Inspector Clouseau, Alan Arkin played not only Clouseau, but every member of the gang while they were disguised as the title character with the actors for each character dubbing their lines in over Arkin's dialogue later.
• Actor-Inspired Element: Although the Clouseau character was in the script, Peter Sellers created the personality, devising the costume, accent, make-up, moustache and trench coat.
• B-Team Sequel: Neither Blake Edwards nor Peter Sellers returned for Inspector Clouseau, as they opted to make The Party instead.
• Cash-Cow Franchise: Even more so when you add in the animated spinoffs and their associated merchandise.
• Character Outlives Actor: Trail of the Pink Panther was made after the death of Peter Sellers. Rather than having the character of Inspector Clouseau die in the film, he is instead shown to be alive and well on a deserted island after surviving a plane crash. The subsequent film Curse of the Pink Panther reveals Clouseau got Magic Plastic Surgery to look like Roger Moore, and pulled a Face–Heel Turn to settle down with a jewel thief countess.
• Creator Backlash: Alan Arkin, not surprisingly, considered making Inspector Clouseau a mistake. He rarely spoke much about the film in the years after its release, but one time Arkin did explain why he took up the role. In the late 1960s he was becoming a fairly well-known actor and thought that as a movie actor, he could do whatever role was offered to him, and he could do it easily. He admits that the failure of Inspector Clouseau knocked him off his high horse, stating that it taught him a valuable lesson; there's just some parts he can't play.
• Died During Production: In 1980, Peter Sellers was co-writing a script for the series for the first time, Romance of the Pink Panther, that he intended as a Grand Finale. He submitted a revised draft of it to United Artists shortly before his death in 1980. It ultimately was never produced. Blake Edwards decided to continue the series his own way (quite specifically nothing to do with Romance), writing out Clouseau and introducing new character Clifton Sleigh over two films shot at the same time, Trail of the Pink Panther (which featured clips of Sellers from the previous films) and Curse of the Pink Panther. The results were disastrous.
• Fake Nationality:
  • Peter Sellers was an Englishman playing a Frenchman, but beyond this, the character of Clouseau affects several disguises in the course of the series that require him to be various other highly-caricatured nationalities.
  • Herbert Lom (Commissioner Dreyfus) and Graham Stark (several roles) are also Eastern-European and British respectively. Sellers and Lom already co-acted together in The Ladykillers (1955).
• Fake Russian: Lesley Anne-Down (British) as the Russian spy Olga in Strikes Again.
• Franchise Killer: Oh, boy. Where to even begin? This franchise was killed at least four times in its history. The original series was first rendered dead in the water by the critical and financial failure of Inspector Clouseau because of a bad script and Clouseau not being played by Peter Sellers. Return revived the franchise for three successful films only for it to be killed a second time by the one-two punch of Trail of the Pink Panther and Curse of the Pink Panther (both of which were made without Peter Sellers' involvement; he had died by that point), both of which were box office failures and lambasted by critics. A decade later, an attempt to resurrect the original series with Son of the Pink Panther ended up becoming an enormous failure and sealed the original series' fate for good. The Continuity Reboot series with Steve Martin had an even shorter life. While the first film did well at the box office despite negative critical reception, the sequel three years later not only received more negative critical reaction, but it ended up under-performing the first film and put the series back on the back-burner once again. Time will tell whether or not the series gets rebooted yet again.
• Hostility on the Set: The relationship between Peter Sellers and Blake Edwards was highly contentious. It later got to the point where they communicated via notes under the door.
• I Am Not Spock: Averted with Peter Sellers, David Niven, and Robert Wagner; played straight with most of the others.
• One for the Money; One for the Art: Partial motivation for Sellers being willing to reprise the role of Clouseau in the 1970s. (The other was getting enough clout to get Being There greenlit.)
• The Other Darrin: The Clouseaus besides Sellers, of course, but several other recurring characters were played by different actors from film to film (see the trope entry) in the classic series.
  • Prof. Auguste Balls is an odd example, since essentially two actors took turns playing the part: he was originally played by Harvey Korman in The Pink Panther Strikes Again, but his scenes were cut from the film. The character makes his official debut in Revenge, played by Graham Stark. However, the following movie, Trail of the Pink Panther uses the deleted scenes from Strikes Again, and thus Prof. Balls is now Harvey Korman, a role he reprised for Curse...only for the character's final appearance to have him played by Graham Stark again.
• Star-Making Role: Peter Sellers was already a huge star in the United Kingdom thanks to The Goon Show and a list of TV and film credits that was already in the double digits, and had made inroads in North America with The Mouse That Roared and his work with Stanley Kubrick, but Inspector Clouseau was the role that made him an international success.
• Throw It In!:
  • Occasionally; for instance, the "synchronized watches" bit in Shot was largely improvised by Peter Sellers and Graham Stark.
  • Also, Clouseau's line 'a rit of fealous jage' was supposedly a slip-up (there is an outtake where Sellers and George Sanders both crack up at it) which was later re-filmed as part of the script.
• Unfinished Episode:
  • Romance of the Pink Panther, the intended finale of the series, which would have seen Clouseau fall in love with a jewel thief (played by Pamela Stephenson) and turn evil, with Sidney Poitier directing. It was scrapped when Peter Sellers died.
  • While Romance was never made, Curse of the Pink Panther seemingly adapts it into a subplot where Clouseau does go bad, but falls in love with a jewel thief's female accomplice who double-crosses him and he isn't evil. It still doesn't explain why Clouseau left the force for a life of crime, however.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Peter Ustinov was originally cast as Clouseau, but left over a salary dispute.
  • The aforementioned Romance of the Pink Panther — intended as the series Grand Finale, derailed by the death of Peter Sellers, led to the Replacement Scrappy disasters.
  • Inspector Clouseau almost had Sellers return to the title role when he was made aware that the Mirisch Corporation was going ahead with another Clouseau film even though he and Blake Edwards had refused to do a third. He said he'd be willing to reprise the role but only if he got final script approval, stating only he could play Clouseau. Walter Mirisch said no, so Sellers did as well and the role ended up going to American actor Alan Arkin. Sellers would stand corrected.
  • Blake Edwards had plans for a TV series, and wrote a couple of scripts; these scripts were then used as the basis for Return and Strikes Again.
• You Look Familiar: Happens a lot in the original series.
  • Graham Stark, a close friend and colleague of Sellers, appears in all the films from Shot through Son (save for Inspector Clouseau) as various characters, two of which, Hercule and Auguste Balls, are recurring.
  • Robert Loggia plays an American gangster in Revenge and the current head of the French mob in Trail and Curse.
  • Joanna Lumley plays a reporter in Trail and a countess in Curse.
  • Claudia Cardinale plays Princess Dala in The Pink Panther and Maria Gambrelli in Son of.... The latter is also a case of The Other Darrin (Maria was played by Elke Sommer in A Shot in the Dark).

The cartoons

• Acting for Two: The Ant and Aardvark, both voiced by John Byner.
• Actor Allusion: One episode of the 1993 cartoon has Pink get mistaken for Max Headroom. Pink is voiced by Headroom's actor, Matt Frewer.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!/Spell My Name with a "The": In the 1990s animated series, he is not Pink Panther, but The Pink Panther. Emphasis on The at beginning.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: It varies.
  • With the release of Kino Lorber's DePatie/Freleng Collection Volume 2 in 2018, every DFE-produced Pink Panther spinoff has been made available on home media. The original shorts had received several DVD releases by then (the Pink Panther DFE/Marvel TV specials received a release as well); The Inspector, The Ant and the Aardvark, and Roland and Rattfink also received earlier releases.
  • Pink Panther and Sons has not been released on home media.
  • For the 1993-95 series, it's available only via dodgy torrent sites in Eastern Europe. You could get a DVD at one point, but it was only of season 1. The complete first season is available on Amazon.de, if nowhere else.
  • Each iteration of the cartoon (or segments thereof) is available on the official Pink Panther YouTube page.
• Playing Against Type: Overlapping with also Irony as She Is Cast, the titular panther is voiced in the Japanese dub of the classic shorts by Kouji Ishii, a voice actor known for voicing Hot-Blooded, loud or Ax-Crazy characters, like Kotaro Taiga, Gato or Ryuji Yamazaki, as well as being the official Japanese dub voice of Yosemite Sam. The Pink Panther, on the other hand, at least in the two shorts he even spoke, is normally a soft-spoken character instead.
• Recycled Script: A number of 1970's cartoons, namely "The Pink of Arabee", "Pinky Doodle", and "Rocky Pink", would respectively be re-issued as "The Pink of Bagdad", "Yankee Doodle Pink" and "Pet Pink Pebbles" with new music and additional footage.
• Rereleased for Free: The 1970's and 1993 cartoons, as well as Pink Panther and Pals have large portions of their archive uploaded for free on the official YouTube page.
• Role Reprise:
  • John Byner came back to voice the Ant and Aardvark for the 1993 series.
  • Alex Nussbaum reprised his role as Big Nose in Pink Panther and Pals for "A Very Pink Christmas," a Christmas Special that came 6 years later.
• Schedule Slip: An unusual example that happened because of highly inconsistent orders from United Artists: the original cartoons ran from 1964 to 1969, took a year long break to return with 9 new shorts in 1971, then 3 more years passed before two more shorts got released in 1974 (at a very inconsistent and random placement), before the series finally got back to having regular releases between 1975 and 1977, then another break took place between 1977 and 1978, after which the made for TV shorts (noticeable for being much more kid friendly) were released at a regular pace until 1980.
• The Merch: In an odd example, the Pink Panther character is the mascot for Owens Corning insulation and was the mascot for Sweet'n'Low artificial sweetener.
• Three Shorts: Nearly every iteration of The Pink Panther show, would follow this format, featuring two cartoons centering on the Panther, while the middle segment would always be any of the other DePatie/Freleng series of films, such as The Inspector, The Ant and the Aardvark, or Crazy Legs Crane, among others. Often times in syndication, the shorts would always be jumbled, at least showing one Panther cartoon.
• What Could Have Been: Before airing on NBC in 1969, The Pink Panther Show was meant to be a lot different. A pitch film from 1965 displayed all the original material pitched. It would've followed the Three Shorts format, but with one Pink Panther short, and the other two being original creations, a then-in-production series of shorts based off The Inspector (which eventually premiered in theaters later that year), and a new segment featuring a W. C. Fields-esque rhino named Magnificent B. Hornsby, who would've appeared in many different time periods helping historical figures, similar to Peabody's Improbable History.
  • There were plans in the late 1980s for a primetime Pink Panther series on CBS, to capitalize on the popularity of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, with a live-action human detective (or in some accounts a newspaper reporter) played by a young Charlie Schlatter, assisted by the animated Panther (who could talk much like he eventually did in the 1993 series, though it's unclear who was cast in the role here). Per John Cawley (working at Film Roman at the time, mostly for Garfield and Friends), the pilot was scrapped when a new network president came in and didn't like it (the reasoning being that Panther talked, and it "wasn't the real Panther").

Other

• Billing Displacement: The jewel thief in the pinball game dominates the backglass, reducing the Pink Panther to a background character.

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