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The Bootleg Files: Salute to Sir Lew – The Master Showman

BOOTLEG FILES 732: “Salute to Sir Lew – The Master Showman” (1975 TV special with John Lennon, Tom Jones, Peter Sellers and Julie Andrews).

LAST SEEN: On YouTube.

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None.

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: Music clearance issues are keeping it out of release.

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Not likely.

John Lennon fans know that the ex-Beatle’s last live performance took place in a 1975 television special honoring Sir Lew Grade, the British television executive. Oddly, Lennon’s time on stage seemed strangely out of place in a show that offered an overripe line-up of 1970s kitsch.
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Dr. Strangelove Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)

dr-strangelove

There’s nothing funny about nuclear war. Unless you’re Stanley Kubrick, Peter Sellers, and George C. Scott and then, okay, it’s hysterical. Director Stanley Kubrick opts this time for a darkly satirical and often menacing film about American politics and what happens when the wrong orders are put out that will eventually bring the world to its knees. When America’s officials retreat to “The War Room” to sort out this nagging problem, Buck Turgidson and President Merkin Muffley attempt to find a course of action that will please all parties.

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The Life and Death of Peter Sellers (2004)

LifeandDeath2It was a known fact that Peter Sellers thought very little of his own self. He had a love-hate relationship with his own persona as a man who both hated and thought very highly of himself and such is shown in the new and first biographical picture of Peter Sellers, the genius behind films like “Dr. Strangelove” and the “Pink Panther” films, a man who was revered as a comedy genius during life and after his death. What is suggested here is that he was such a miserable man and such a mama’s boy, that he could never find true happiness with a woman in his life, regardless of who it was and what happiness they offered him as is shown by his countless wives including his first Anne (Good performance from Emily Watson), to his unsuccessful romancing of Sophia Loren (The gorgeous Sonia Aquino).

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