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 (novel) park illegally in downtown areas, and when being ticketed offering the officer enormous amounts of money to eat the ticket. A newspaper under Grand's control first begins to add foreign language passages and perverse commentary to articles, then changes to reporting simply dry facts, then to printing only hate mail received by subscribers. Grand takes a vacation, showing up to an African safari with three natives carrying an unmounted howitzer, and firing it at game animals. Grand's final adventure takes place on board the "S.S. Magic Christian", a remodeled luxury liner catering only to the super-rich. He first arbitrarily rejects