photo #7369482

Peter Sellers was originally going to ride the atom bomb in "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb" (1964). Slim Pickens (born Louis Burton Lindley Jr.) got a phone call late one evening from Stanley Kubrick: "Peter has fallen and broken his hip, I need you for a day's shoot--I need you bad and I need you now. How soon can you get on a plane and make it to London?". Slim obliged and in his haste forgot that he didn't have a passport because he had never traveled outside the US before. His entrance was delayed while he had to go through the process of getting one before he was allowed to leave the airport. When Pickens showed up on the set of "Dr. Strangelove" fully dressed as a cowboy and speaking in a thick Southern accent, the British crew thought he was "Method" acting, not knowing that this was how he always dressed and acted. He explained how he got into the rodeo business: "Well, there was this big, lanky, 15-year-old California ranch kid, and he went into the rodeo manager's office and said, 'Mister, I want to sign up for the calf-roping but my paw says I ain't allowed to. So I can't use my right name'. And the manager said, 'Son, no matter what name you use, it'll be slim pickin's out there today'. So the boy said, 'That's as good a name as any, I reckon-put me down as Slim Pickin's'. The manager spelled it 'Pickens' and the boy won $400 that afternoon."