Salt and Pepper (film)
Salt and Pepper is a 1968 British comedy film directed by Richard Donner and starring Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Michael Bates, Ilona Rodgers and John Le Mesurier.
Salt and Pepper | |
---|---|
Original film poster by Jack Davis | |
Directed by | Richard Donner |
Produced by | Milton Ebbins |
Written by | Michael Pertwee |
Starring | Sammy Davis Jr. Peter Lawford Michael Bates Ilona Rodgers |
Music by | John Dankworth |
Cinematography | Ken Higgins |
Edited by | Jack Slade |
Production company | Chrislaw Productions Trace-Mark Productions |
Distributed by | United Artists |
Release date | 21 June 1968 |
Running time | 102 minutes |
Country | United Kingdom |
Language | English |
Box office | $1,750,000 (US/Canada rentals)[1] |
It was shot at Shepperton Studios and on location in London and at Elvetham Hall in Hampshire. The film's sets were designed by the art director Don Mingaye.
It was followed by a 1970 sequel One More Time directed by Jerry Lewis.
Plot
Chris Pepper (Lawford) and Charlie Salt (Davis) own a nightclub in Swinging London, operating under the suspicious eye of the intrepid Inspector Crabbe.
One night, Pepper finds an Asian girl on the floor of the club. Assuming she's drunk or high, he makes a date with her and thinks she responds. It turns out the girl is dying, and her death sets off a chain of events that puts the unlucky Salt and Pepper onto a plot to overthrow the British government, with the girl's dying words the key.
Cast
- Sammy Davis Jr. as Charles Salt
- Peter Lawford as Christopher Pepper
- Michael Bates as Inspector Crabbe
- Ilona Rodgers as Marianne Renaud
- John Le Mesurier as Colonel Woodstock
- Graham Stark as Sergeant Walters
- Ernest Clark as Colonel Balsom
- Jeanne Roland as Mai Ling
- Robert Dorning as Club Secretary
- Robertson Hare as Dove
- Geoffrey Lumsden as Foreign Secretary
- William Mervyn as Prime Minister
- Llewellyn Rees as 'Fake' Prime Minister
- Mark Singleton as 'Fake' Home Secretary
- Michael Trubshawe as 'Fake' First Lord
- Francesca Tu as Tsai Chan
- Oliver MacGreevy as Rack
- Peter Hutchins as Straw
- Jeremy Lloyd as Lord Ponsonby
- Ivor Dean as Police Commissioner
- Beth Rogan as Greta
- Calvin Lockhart as Jones
- Nicholas Smith as Constable
Novelization
About two months before the release of the film, per the era's customary timing, an excellent paperback novelization of the screenplay was released by Popular Library. The book sold extremely well (used and preserved copies are plentiful on the internet) and, commensurate with the film's popularity, went through several printings. The author was Alex Austin (not to be confused with the current novelist of the same name), known most for three bestselling original novels: The Greatest Lover in the World (1956), The Blue Guitar (1960) and The Bride (1964). The same year as his Salt & Pepper novelization, he would publish Eleanore (1968); his final novel would be Looking for a Girl (1972). Unless he wrote other novelizations pseudonymously, Salt & Pepper was his only media tie-in.
The SALT & PEPPER Novelization covers
References
- "Big Rental Films of 1969", Variety, 7 January 1970 p 15