Britt Ekland had been cast as Karen Eriksson but pulled out three weeks into production. She had just married Peter Sellers who apparently was so jealous of her casting alongside John Leyton that he asked his actor friends David Lodge and Graham Stark who were also in the cast, to secretly spy on her. After being frequently quizzed on the telephone by Sellers about the shooting and who she acted with, Ekland left the Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, and joined Sellers in Los Angeles. 20th Century-Fox sued Ekland for $1.5 million; Sellers counter-sued for $4 million claiming the Fox suit caused him "mental distress and injury to his health".
Mia Farrow, who filmed the pilot for Twentieth Century Fox's Peyton Place (1964) - the basis for her and the studio's iconic series and television's first prime-time soap opera - became a last minute replacement for Britt Ekland. The young Swedish actress had bailed on her commitment to co-star as Karen Eriksson in order to remain at the hospital bedside of her lover and new husband, Peter Sellers, who'd infamously experienced a heart attack while in the throes of passion with her in Los Angeles, California, the night of April 5, 1964. Ekland's Swedish nationality was an obvious selling point on her playing a character who's last name is Eriksson, very Scandinavian sounding, while Farrow's features look far from Scandinavian. Sellers' recovery was slow, six months. Meanwhile, upon completion of filming this movie in England for Twentieth Century Fox, the studio signed Farrow to a contract for film and television and immediately put her to work on the small screen as ABC had ordered Peyton Place (1964) as a serialized half hour, uniquely designed for twice-a-week airings, beginning in September 1964.
Based on the 1962 novel "The Siege of Battersea" by Robert Holles.
After parading for a rebuke for letting the MP escape, C/Sgt Parkin drops the bolt of his Sterling SMG with the magazine still in the gun. It would have fired
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