PETER SELLERS’ WIDOW WINS ‘PANTHER’ SUIT

LONDON â€”  Peter Sellers’ widow was awarded $1 million in damages Friday over a “Pink Pantherâ€� film assembled from the cutting-room floor after his death.

But Lynne Frederick failed to persuade a judge in the London high court to ban the film “Trail of the Pink Panther.�

Judge Charles Hobhouse awarded her the damages against United Artists, which made the film two years after Sellers died in 1980 using discarded clips from five earlier “Panther� films.

Frederick sued United Artists and film director Blake Edwards saying: “It was an appalling film: Not a tribute to my husband but an insult to his memory.�

Sellers, 54 when he died, created his most enduring comic character in the Pink Panther films, playing the bungling French detective Inspector Clouseau.