Weegee's most striking photographs were made on the War Room set, where much of the drama of Dr Strangelove takes place. Visionary production designer Ken Adam's expressionist, windowless interior was all dark gloss surfaces and angled walls, with a huge circular table illuminated from above, like a poker room. Since there were no public images of the U.S. government's real Pentagon War Room, Ken Adam was free to imagine it (just as he imagined the unseen interior of Fort Knox for the James Bond movie Goldfinger, also released in 1964). Preeminently a photographer of the night, Weegee was perfectly at home in the darkened space. He could use his flash or the production's bright lights to pick out his subjects, just as he had done in the treacly midnights of 1930s and '40s New York. His portrait of Peter Bull, playing Russian ambassador Alexi de Sadesky, looks as if it could have been taken in the crowd at a Manhattan theater premiere.
The British actor Peter Sellers was tasked with playing three key roles in the film: U.S. President Merkin Muffley, Captain Lionel Mandrake of the British Royal Air Force, and the eerie Dr. Strangelove - a former Nazi who is now the President's chief scientific advisor. Sellers was also a keen amateur filmmaker, shooting many home movies as well as photographs. He and Weegee struck up an endearing friendship on set. Sellers had an extraordinary ability to absorb and mimic accents, and became fascinated with Weegee's way of talking, which was a gruff but sweet cocktail of eastern European consonants and streetwise New York vowels. Sellers needed very distinct accents for each of his parts. His impression of Weegee became the basis of his voice for Dr. Strangelove. On a TV talkshow shortly after filming, Sellers recalled:
"I was stuck, you see, because I didn't want to do sort of a normal English broken German accent thing, so on the set was a little photographer from New York, a very cute little fellow called Weegee. You must have heard of him. And he had a little voice.... And I got an idea... I put a German accent on top of that, and I suddenly got... him into Dr. Strangelove. So really, it's Weegee. I don't know if he knows it."
- David Campany, 'Weegee & Kubrick', in Clement Cheroux (ed.), Weegee: Society of the Spectacle, London, 2025, p.193.
See also:Photography: Dennis Hopper: photographer, 15 September 2025
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