Fact: It was Peter Sellers' ankle that broke, not his accent.

Indeed, the most powerful accent-and-inflection actor in the history of cinema couldn't initially wrap his consonants around the oft-caricatured Southern drawl, but after manfully struggling for a while, he took on the character of Major TJ Kong -- only to have a sprained ankle preventing him from completing the role.

So despite Columbia Pictures financing the project only on the condition that Sellers play at least four roles in the project, he could 'only' do three. Paying him a million dollar salary on a movie that cost under two mil, Kubrick famously remarked, "I got three for the price of six."

What a trio he got, though. Sellers played Lionel Mandrake, an earnest British Group Captain with extreme, albeit inadvertent, comic timing; American President Merkin Muffley, -- with more innuendo in his name than a Bond girl -- a Midwesterner based on Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson; and most crucially, former Nazi physicist and current US scientific advisor, Dr Strangelove -- who, on more than one occasion, addresses the Pres as 'Mein Fuhrer.'

An unabashedly loony effort, Kubrick was careful to pitch the dark comic satire just right, striking an unbelievably perfect balance between a parody, a comedy of manners, and a Cold War drama. The dialogues are to die for, as are each of the characters.

Owing to an extremely cerebral script that started out as a serious drama before finally metamorphosing into a nightmarish comedy, this take on the theory of Mutually Assured Destruction remains the finest satire ever made.

While very tempted to link you to the marvellous End Credits, I choose not to play spoiler and show you this lovely clip instead, with the dialogue between the Soviet and American Presidents.

Click here for the video. Priceless.

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