LIZ TELLS HOW
LIZ Fraser was one of our bestloved actresses — playing the “dumb blonde” in countless films including four Carry Ons.
The London-born star, who died this month at 88, was pals with all the big names of the time – not least Peter Sellers.
In an extract from her autobiography, Liz Fraser... and Other Characters, she tells how the Pink Panther actor tried it on with her — again and again. ALTHOUGH I was only five years his junior, I was playing Peter Sellers’ daughter in I’m All Right Jack. I’d first met him during my earliest days on television.
We all knew one another in those days. He lived round the corner from me and from the first day we met he was trying it on. And he never stopped trying. His major passions were cars and cameras, plus women, of course. He was always showing me the latest models of camera and he asked me to pose. And he wanted to do some topless shots. “Certainly not,” I said. I met his wife Anne as we went up to Peter’s studio at the top of the house and the pictures he took remain among my favourites of all the photos I’ve had taken. They certainly weren’t the pictures he had wanted to take, however, because everything he did was aimed at getting one into bed.
He succeeded with a close friend of mine called June, who somehow became his secretary. She loved him very much but he was married and so was she.
He quickly started taking her for granted, as he did with all the women he had affairs with.
At lunchtimes, he would have June sent over to the studios at Elstree for “dictation” purposes but he wanted sex for lunch. She’d turn up, he’d satisfy himself and send her back to London.
This went on for months and June said she was beginning to feel like a prostitute. So one day, she said “No” to him. When she got back to the office, all her belongings were already packed up in a box. And that was that.
I was still unsure of myself in 1959 on I’m All Right Jack so I didn’t confront Peter about how he had treated June until we were making Two-Way Stretch a few months later.
He was completely unapologetic, saying they were both consenting adults. The relationship was meaningless to him – so he turned the conversation to cars and cameras instead. Two-Way Stretch was a prison comedy and in it Peter was playing my boyfriend, not my father.
He had pneumonia for most of the shoot. Our passionate kissing scenes took take after take to get right. But this wasn’t a ruse on Peter’s part, he really wasn’t well.
Yet every day he would suggest lunch in his dressing room. I knew what lunch involved so I kept away.
Peter re-entered my life in 1962 when I was filming The Amorous Prawn at Shepperton. He was on another sound stage shooting The Dock Brief. The same as before, every time he saw me he would say, “How about joining me for lunch in my dressing room?” I felt much more confident so I called his bluff and said: “Great.” Well, I arrived at his dressing room and he invited me in. No lunch. Instead, he locked the door and whipped off his trousers. The only way I could get out of the situation – and not arouse Peter’s vindictive nature – was to tell him I found him attractive but couldn’t participate because I knew Anne so well. He reluctantly put his trousers back on. His womanising finally