Peter Sellers was one of film’s finest comedic actors. In two of his Oscar-nominated roles, “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” (1964) and “Being There” (1979), he used his incredible skills to portray the widest range of high- and low-brow humor memorably. From his “Strangelove” trio – the stoic U.S. President Merkin Muffley to the stuffy British Group Captain Lionel Mandrake and the bizarre German National Security Advisor Dr. Strangelove – to the philosophical Chance, simple gardener to another President in “Being There,” Sellers was like no other.

Additionally, Sellers was an ensemble comedian, willing to take on smaller, memorable parts in a film to allow other actors to shine. I recently discovered George Roy Hill’s very entertaining comedy “The World of Henry Orient” (1964), where Sellers shares the screen with two newcomers making their big-screen debuts, Tippy Walker and Merrie Spaeth.

This delightful tale was written by veteran screenwriter Nunnally Johnson and his novelist daughter Nora. Their adaptation of Nora’s 1958 book tells the tale of Henry Orient, a second-rate, less than famous New York concert pianist, and the two precocious teenage girls who take a deep interest in his eccentric life and conquest of a married woman, Stella Dunnworthy (Paula Prentice).

Always a master of international accents, as Henry, Sellers speaks an odd version of American English. In Sellers’ 2002 biography “Mr. Strangelove,” author Ed Sikov notes: “Peter concocted one of his most bizarre voices. As Sellers described it, ‘He has a dreadful Brooklynese accent, but in an attempt to appear cultured and charming, he hides it with a phony French accent.’” An Internet Movie Database fact revealed the voice Sellers used was also based on his friend, director Stanley Kubrick’s, New York accent.

Henry Orient is an arrogant and extremely pretentious artist with a taste for married women. While the film is loaded with silly Sellers gestures, pratfalls and eccentric facial expressions, much of this tale concerns Valerie “Val” Campbell Boyd (Walker) and Marian “Gil” Gilbert (Spaeth), the two private school teens who meet Orient in Central Park one afternoon and start a personal Henry Orient fan club, tracking his every move around Manhattan.

Val is a very imaginative, lonely teen whose absentee wealthy parents, Frank and Isabel Boyd (Tom Bosley and Angela Lansbury), are always away on business and attending other social events. Rumors around school say Val has been seeing a psychiatrist. Gil is smart and more serious and reserved. She lives with her divorced mother (Phyllis Thaxter) and her mom’s best friend in a seemingly normal home, even though her father remarried years before and is never in her life.

Val and Gil become instant best friends and invent creative scenarios of how they’ll show their appreciation to Orient, but after several chance encounters, Henry believes his privacy is being invaded or, worse yet, that the girls may be spies from Mr. Dunnworthy or another of his many female liaisons.

When Val’s parents finally appear just before Christmas, Val’s mother discovers her daughter’s Henry Orient scrapbook and demands she put an end to her fantasy.  But the undeterred Val and Gil don Asian bamboo hats and stake out Orient’s apartment before they plan to face Orient once more to declare their love for him.

Walker and Spaeth are outstanding in the most carefree, silly and natural way. I was astonished to learn that after making this film, neither of their careers took off, and both made just a couple of films and appeared in television shows before they retired.

Director Hill, who would make his fame mostly for his famous Robert Redford/Paul Newman buddy films, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (1969) and “The Sting” (1973), creates a wonderful young female buddy film in “The World of Henry Orient,” as well as tapping the fabulous comic skills of Peter Sellers. Despite its disappointing initial box office results, since 1964, this film has become a cult favorite.

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