title: Salt and Pepper (film)
text: Salt and 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. 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.
  
  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
  
  Novelization
  About two months before the release of the film, per the era's customary timing, a paperback novelization of the screenplay by Michael Pertwee was released by Popular Library. The book sold extremely well (used and preserved copies are plentiful on the internet) and, commensurate with the film's popularity, went through several printings. The author was Alex Austin (not to be confused with the later novelist of the same name), known most for three bestselling original novels: The Greatest Lover in the World (1956), a satirical fantasy, The Blue Guitar (1960), about an incestuous brother and sister, and The Bride (1964), about the breakdown of a marriage. The same year as his Salt & Pepper novelization, he would publish Eleanore (1969) by Olympia Press. His final novel would be Looking for a Girl (1973) by Dell. Unless he wrote other novelizations pseudonymously, Salt & Pepper was his only media tie-in.
  
  (About Alex Austin) "A native New Yorker, has been a ranch hand, gold prospector and photographer, and he was once voted No. 14 jazz drummer in the country in a Metronome Magazine Poll. He has published fiction, poetry and articles in Harpers, The Saturday Review, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine."
  
  References
  
  External links
   
   
  
  1968 films
  1960s buddy comedy films
  1960s English-language films
  1960s spy comedy films
  Films directed by Richard Donner
  British buddy comedy films
  British spy comedy films
  Films set in London
  1968 comedy films
  Films shot at Shepperton Studios
  Films scored by John Dankworth
  1960s British films