Trivia for
The Pink Panther (1963) More at IMDbPro »

• The role of Inspector Clouseau was originally offered to Peter Ustinov. Despite being relatively unknown internationally, Peter Sellers was offered the part, and was paid 90,000 pounds.
  
  
• Peter Sellers modeled the character of Clouseau on the trademark of a box of matches which includes an image of Captain Matthew Webb, who in 1875 became the first person to swim the channel (his heroic mustache and proud stance are both mimicked). To lose weight, Sellers took dieting pills for a year.
  
  
• In the bath scene with Capucine and Robert Wagner, an industrial-strength foaming agent is used, which burned both of the stars' skin. Wagner, who was completely immersed at one point, became blind for four weeks.
  
  
• The film was intended to have David Niven's character Sir Charles Lytton as the main character. However, Peter Sellers' portrayal of Inspector Clouseau was so loved by the crew (and later by the audience) it became his character this film and the sequels focused on.
  
  
• The Pink Panther diamond is named not only for its color, but also for a tiny pink flaw shaped like a panther. The overall pink however would make the Panther a very rare Type-IIa diamond, in which some colors are absorbed not by impurities as in most other colored stones but by a misalignment of crystal structure at the molecular level caused by tectonic pressure during formation ('plastic deformation'). Though there are about a dozen large pink diamonds of name in the world, there has never been an actual "Pink Panther".
  
  
• Between 1964 and 1993, nine Inspector Clouseau (or related) films would be released, although Inspector Clouseau (1968) and the movies made after Peter Sellers's death are mostly not considered canon. All but two would carry the "Pink Panther" title, but only four of the films actually deal with the Pink Panther diamond itself: this one, The Return of the Pink Panther (1975), Trail of the Pink Panther (1982) and Curse of the Pink Panther (1983). The reason they still kept The Pink Panther in the title was because it had become synonymous with inspector Clouseau.
  
  
• An animated Pink Panther was created for the opening credits because writer and director Blake Edwards felt that the credits would benefit from some kind of cartoon character. David H. DePatie and Friz Freleng decided to personify the film's eponymous jewel, and the Pink Panther character was chosen by Edwards from over a hundred alternative panther sketches. The Pink Panther introduced in the opening credits became a popular film and television character in his own right, beginning with the cartoon short The Pink Phink (1964) the following year.
  
  
• The second Clouseau film, A Shot in the Dark (1964), was released only three months after this film.
  
  
• Claudia Cardinale could not speak English, so Princess Dala's dialog for the entire film was dubbed.
  
  
• The role of Simone Clouseau was offered to Ava Gardner and Janet Leigh before Capucine got the part. In her autobiography, Leigh states she turned it down because she had recently gotten married to her fourth husband Robert Brandt and didn't want to go off on location and away from her new husband for the duration of filming. Ava Gardner accepted the role but both her salary and personal demands were deemed unacceptable to the producers.
  
  
• In one scene, there's a night club called "Les Nus les plus osées du monde": The most daring nudes in the world.
  
  
• Claudia Cardinale was dubbed by twenty-year-old Gale Garnett.
  
  
• Wael Zuaiter, a PLO representative and translator assassinated in Rome by Israeli agents in retaliation for the 1972 Munich Massacre, played the waiter at the cocktail party as an extra. He is seen crossing the room after fadeout from the news headline "Rebels Demand Princess Return Fabulous Gem". Wael was the first target in Israel's Operation Wrath of God, and was portrayed by Makram Khoury in Steven Spielberg's Munich (2005).
  
  

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