The Return of The Pink Panther - Production Notes

Production Notes

• Richard Williams, the creator of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Thief and the Cobbler, and Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure, did the animated open and close titles for this picture and The Pink Panther Strikes Again, due to DePatie-Freleng's work on the Pink Panther shorts and other cartoon projects for TV and film. Williams got help animating this from two animation legends, Ken Harris and Art Babbitt.
• Catherine Schell can be seen laughing on at least two occasions in the film - once when Clouseau impersonates a telephone repairman to infiltrate her home, and again when he meets her in a restaurant and pretends to be "Guy Gadbois", a ladies' man. This magnifies the impression that Lady Lytton sees Clouseau as "cute" rather than as a real threat. These scenes are frequently proferred as classic examples of corpsing, and it was not uncharacteristic of Sellers to goad his fellow actors to break character, but Schell has maintained in various interviews that she always considered it in character for Lady Lytton to be amused at Clouseau's antics.
• The scene in which Sir Charles Lytton arrives at his hotel in Lugash is an obvious homage to the film Casablanca. The song "As Time Goes By" can be clearly heard playing on a piano in the background. As Sir Charles meets with his contact he also asks for "The Fat Man" (a reference to the rather large Sydney Greenstreet, who played Señor Ferrari in Casablanca and Casper Gutman, "The Fat Man" in "The Maltese Falcon").
• Carol Cleveland, known to many for her regular appearances on Monty Python's Flying Circus, has a small part as a swimming pool diver.