Terry Southern of the Monty Python team. Cleese later described McGrath as having "no idea of comedy structure" and complained that the film ended up as "a series of celebrity walk-ons." The film was shot in London between February and May 1969. The cast was headed by Sellers (as Guy Grand) and Ringo Starr as his son Youngman Grand (a new character created for the movie), with cameo appearances by Spike Milligan, Christopher Lee, Laurence Harvey, Raquel Welch, Roman Polanski and Yul Brynner. As with "Dr Strangelove", Sellers habitually improvised on the script during filming. During production McGrath and Southern discussed a
Peter Sellers Indian actor who accidentally receives an invitation to a lavish Hollywood dinner party. His character, according to Sellers's biographer Peter Evans, was "clearly an amalgam of Clouseau and the doctor in "The Millionairess"". Roger Lewis notes that like a number of Sellers's characters, he is played in a sympathetic and dignified manner. He followed it later that year with Hy Averback's "I Love You, Alice B. Toklas", playing an attorney who abandons his lifestyle to become a hippie. Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film three stars, remarking that Sellers was "back doing what he does best", although