Taken by one of the era's foremost celebrity photographers, Richi Howell, they were judged too casual and unstarry for publication at the time.
Television producer Marino Katschmaryk unearthed the contact sheet of photographs at an auction and immediately recognised their significance. His first wife has also recently recalled with pain her former husband's reaction to meeting Loren. Talking to his son Michael at his chalet in Gstaad after suffering several heart attacks, he confessed his sorrow over the infatuation with Loren. When he made a film with his second wife, Britt Ekland, he put her in a black wig and complained that she wasn't acting like Loren.Īt the end of his life Sellers spoke of his regrets about this period. His obsessional behaviour, which was repeated soon afterwards in a fantasy affair he conducted with Princess Margaret, made a lasting impact on his life. The north London radio comedian and star of The Goon Show had quickly became fixated with Loren and begun to reject family life with his wife, the former actress Anne Howe. In real life the roles were entirely reversed. The song 'Goodness Gracious Me' was written by David Lee and Herbert Kretzmer and was conceived as a way to publicise the release of the 1960 film The Millionairess, in which Loren played a spoilt, rich socialite who woos a reluctant Indian doctor, played by Sellers. In capturing Loren's extraordinary beauty and poise the new pictures make a fitting birthday present too. The Hollywood star repeatedly rejected his advances and is still married to 91-year-old Ponti today. Sellers's biographers now believe that, although he left his first wife and two children citing his love for Loren, the relationship was no more than a delusional fantasy.
In the film Geoffrey Rush recreates the troubled comic's obsessional stalking of Loren, who is played by Italian actress Sonia Aquino. The discovery of the previously unpublished pictures, which show the EMI record producer George Martin alongside Loren's husband, the film producer Carlo Ponti, are of particular significance in the run up to the 1 October release of the controversial Sellers biopic The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. For Sellers's millions of fans the images will be a poignant illustration too of the period in which many believe his personal life started to go seriously awry. The informal shots catch the actors off-guard and demonstrate just how enamoured the comedian had become with the visiting 26-year old Italian film goddess. This summer a series of 36 glamorous and revealing photographs of the stars taken during the recording session have been uncovered for the first time. The song is a piece of non politically correct nonsense that does not even feature in the film it was intended to promote, yet 'Goodness Gracious Me', recorded by Peter Sellers and Sophia Loren at London's Abbey Road Studios in 1960, is still played and loved all over the world.
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