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
The Magic Christian (film) want it, here it is, come and get it'). Thunderclap Newman’s "Something in the Air" is also prominent in the film's soundtrack. Starr and Sellers became good friends during the shoot. British actor and dancer Lionel Blair was responsible for the film's choreography. A host of British and American actors have brief roles in the movie, many playing against type. Episodic in character, "The Magic Christian" is an unrelenting and often heavy-handed satire on capitalism, greed, and human vanities. Notable are the appearances of (pre-Monty Python) John Cleese and Graham Chapman (uncredited), who had jointly written an earlier version of