Thursday, September 27, 2012

Herbert Lom (1917 -2012)








I was so sorry to learn that the marvelous actor Herbert Lom (born Herbert Karel Angelo Kuchacevič ze Schluderpacheru in Prague in 1917) passed away, but reading his son Alec's comments in the obituary and refreshing my memory about Lom's life and career this morning was both fascinating and uplifting.

I've always loved Herbert Lom's performance in The Lady Killers, which I believe was his first pairing with Peter Sellers, preceding their Pink Panther partnership by a decade.  

But I was really interested to read Lom's comments about Sellers and the reasons for his terrible, tragic relations with his children.  They seem exceptionally insightful and certainly aspects of behavior I can recognize in parts of my own life: 

"Peter [Sellers] was always a mixed-up guy, a childish fellow. But if you're fond of children, you're also fond of childish men. He was always very helpful to me. After he was famous, and when I was still in trouble with the US embassy, he wrote a letter in support of me which was magnificent. But it is true that he was very cruel to his children. He was so hurt by the way children treat you when you're their father. I have been hurt by my children. But he was not in possession of a proper brain when it came to these things."


Requiescat in pace.
  




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