Two 1957 films by Peter Sellers, long thought to be lost, have been found by the building manager of the now-defunct Park Lane Films in London. The master prints of “Dearth of a Salesman†and “Insomnia is Good,†were in 21 film cans that the manager, Robert Farrow, salvaged from a trash can outside the building when the studios were cleared before to refurbishment in 1996.
“I took them home, put them in a cupboard and pretty much forgot about them,†Mr. Farrow, said in a statement. When he cleared out his cupboards recently he looked inside the tins and discovered the two 30-minute films, co-written by Sellers, who died in 1980, and the Canadian author Mordecai Richler. It is unclear whether the films were intended for television or cinema.
“They're kind of a pastiche of the public information films at the time,†said Paul Cotgrove, from The White Bus, which runs the Southend Film Festival in Essex, told the BBC. “They're not riotous comedy, they're just good fun to look at.†The films will be shown at the Southend festival on May 1 next year.
