Trivia / The Ladykillers (1955)

• Acting for Two: Peter Sellers also voiced Mrs. Wilberforce's birds.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: Peter Sellers agreed to a relatively small part purely to work with his hero Alec Guinness.
• Based on a Dream: The screenwriter, William Rose, who also wrote Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, claimed to have dreamed the whole film.
• Cast the Runner-Up: Peter Sellers' agent sent him to audition for One-Round. Director Alexander Mackendrick instead cast him as Harry Robinson.
• Creative Differences: William Rose and Alexander Mackendrick quarreled violently during pre-production work on the film, with the result that Rose stormed off leaving his screenplay not quite finished. Mackendrick and a TV comedy writer, Larry Stevens, provided the finishing touches. Later, Rose apologized profusely to Mackendrick and praised his handling of the film lavishly.
• Fatal Method Acting: Alec Guinness narrowly averted this filming the finale: the railroad sign which kills his character nearly decapitated Guinness for real, cutting his jacket and missing his head by inches. Guinness said that he only survived because he accidentally missed his mark for the shot in question; understandably, he refused to shoot another take.
• Reality Subtext: Mrs. Wilberforce mentions that she received the news of the queen's death at her twenty-first birthday party. Mrs. Wilberforce's actress, Katie Johnson, was 22 when the real Queen Victoria died.
• Star-Making Role: For Peter Sellers' film career, in Britain at least.
• Those Two Actors: Nine years after this film was made, Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom would appear in A Shot in the Dark, the second installment for The Pink Panther.
• Uncredited Role:
  • Lucy Griffiths as Miss Pringle.
  • Fred Griffiths as a junk man.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The role of Professor Marcus was originally intended for Alastair Sim. More than one reviewer has noted that Alec Guinness' performance is at least somewhat of a Sim imitation.
  • Alexander Mackendrick wanted Richard Attenborough for Harry Robinson.

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