Salt and Pepper (film)

Salt and Pepper
Salt and Pepper
	Original film poster by Jack Davis
Directed by	Richard Donner
Written by	Michael Pertwee
Produced by	Milton Ebbins
Starring	Sammy Davis Jr.; Peter Lawford; Michael Bates
Cinematography	Ken Higgins
Edited by	Jack Slade
Music by	John Dankworth
Production; companies	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)

Salt and Pepper (also known as Salt & 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.^[2]

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

Production

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.

Critical reception

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Directed with vaguely swinging trimmings in the Clive Donner manner by yet another recruit from television, this is a Carry On in all but name and cast, in which Sammy Davis does one indifferent number and, along with Peter Lawford, dispenses much bonhomie to remarkably little effect amid stock characters and situations. Both the pseudo-Bond action and the slapstick comedy are excruciatingly ill-timed; any even tolerably witty joke is repeated several times over; and the studio-built Soho looks studio-built."^[3]

The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 3/5 stars, writing: "Sinatra clan members, Sammy Davis Jr and Peter Lawford came to Britain to make this amiable, though strictly routine, comedy crime caper. They play Soho club-owners involved in a series of murders that turn out to be part of an international conspiracy. The attempt to jump on the "Swinging London" bandwagon, pathetic at the time, now has high camp value and some of the lines are still funny. Although loathed by the press and eventually released as a second-feature, it produced a sequel (One More Time) in 1970."^[4]

British film critic Leslie Halliwell said: "Infuriating throwaway star vehicle set in the dregs of swinging London. The sequel, One More Time (1970), was quite unnecessary"^[5]

Novelization

Popular Library published a paperback novelization by Alex Austin^[6] of Michael Pertwee's screenplay.

References

^ "Big Rental Films of 1969", Variety, 7 January 1970 p 15
^ "Salt and Pepper". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 26 January 2024.
^ "Salt and Pepper". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 35 (408): 202. 1 January 1968 – via ProQuest.
^ Radio Times Guide to Films (18th ed.). London: Immediate Media Company. 2017. p. 800. ISBN 9780992936440.
^ Halliwell, Leslie (1989). Halliwell's Film Guide (7th ed.). London: Paladin. p. 878. ISBN 0586088946.
^ "Arthur Miller: An Inventory of His Papers". Harry Ransom Center. Retrieved 30 May 2022. Austin, Alex--271.15