Observations placeholder
Sellers, Peter - The Goons
Identifier
026009
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Peter Sellers – Alexander Walker
Thus his Major Bloodnok, ex-Rajputana Rifles, decorated with the Military Cross for emptying dustbins during battle, was the voice of the Raj he had heard all round him in India infused by Milligan's hatred for the hang-over of Empire.
Bluebottle was a reedy-voiced school swot from St Aloysius days. Grytpype Thynne, the arch-cad, was
Sellers's take-off of suede-voiced George Sanders;
Willum 'Mate' Cobblers, the timber merchant as thick as the furniture he sold, was the owner of a near-by store. Other Goon voices, as the critic Richard Mayne was to point out later, had origins in the pre-war radio shows:
Milligan's ingenuous Eccles was reminiscent of ventriloquist Edgar Bergen's country yokel dummy Mortimer Snerd; Sellers's Henry Crun fluted like the inventor-cum-magician, in the Children's Hour serial Toytown. But all of them were distorted through the mouthpieces of their animators till they appeared as totally independent beings.
A description of the experience
Neddie Seagoon and Grytpype Thynne 'Tales Of Old Dartmoor'
Major Bloodnok: You've Done Me A Power Of Good
Neddie Seagoon & Henry Crun Lone Banana
Eccles and Bluebottle 'Shifting Sands'