The Pink Panther Strikes Again

Top 10 Fun Facts

1. The animated opening credits sequence features references to such films as Batman, King Kong, The Sound of Music and Singin' in the Rain - with the cartoon versions of the panther and Inspector Clouseau reenacting moments from those movies.
2. The movie's tagline was "Why are the world's chief assassins after Inspector Clouseau? Why not? Everybody else is."
3. If the name of character Dr. Fassbender sounds familiar to you, that's because it was also the name of Peter Sellers' nutty psychiatrist in What's New Pussycat?
4. Speaking of nutty characters, director Blake Edwards claimed Sellers had become more than a little eccentric by the time filming began, saying "If you went to an asylum and you described the first inmate you saw, that's what Peter had become. He was certifiable."
5. Sellers' mental health wasn't the only obstacle on set; because of his heart condition, he opted to have his stunt double stand in for him whenever possible.
6. This film picks up right where The Return of the Pink Panther left off, in part because the scripts from both films came from a Pink Panther TV project Edwards had tried to get off the ground, to no avail.
7. Henry Mancini's original song "Come To Me," sung by Tom Jones, was nominated for an Academy Award (it lost to the love theme from A Star Is Born).
8. The unnamed assassin: you won't find his name in the credits, but Omar Sharif makes a cameo in the film as an Egyptian hired gun out to get Clouseau.
9. Blake Edwards' wife Julie Andrews provided the singing voice for the female impersonator character Ainsley Jarvis. She'd go on to earn an Oscar nomination for playing a woman disguised as a man performing as a female impersonator in Victor/Victoria, also directed by Blake Edwards.
10. The initial running length of the film was 124 minutes, but it was trimmed down to 103 minutes before hitting theaters. The footage didn't remain on the cutting room floor, though - Blake Edwards used some of it in Trail of the Pink Panther after Peter Sellers' death.

Cast

Crew