Salt and Pepper (film)

Salt and Pepper
Original film poster by Jack Davis
Directed byRichard Donner
Written byMichael Pertwee
Produced byMilton Ebbins
StarringSammy Davis Jr.
Peter Lawford
CinematographyKen Higgins
Edited byJack Slade
Music byJohn Dankworth
Production
companies
Chrislaw Productions
Trace-Mark Productions
Distributed byUnited Artists
Release dates
  • 3 July 1968 (1968-07-03) (Sweden)
  • 21 June 1968 (1968-06-21) (US)
Running time
102 minutes
Country
    • United States[1]
    • United Kingdom[2]
LanguageEnglish
Box office$1,750,000 (US/Canada rentals)[3]

Salt and Pepper (also known as Salt & Pepper) is a 1968 buddy spy comedy film directed by Richard Donner and written by Michael Pertwee. It stars Rat Pack members Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford as Charlie Salt and Chris Pepper, owners of a Swinging London nightclub that become embroiled in a political conspiracy.[2]

An American and British co-production,[1][2] the film was released by United Artists on June 21, 1968. It received mixed reviews but was a commercial success and spawned a sequel, One More Time (1970).[1]

Plot

American Charlie Salt and British Chris Pepper own a Soho nightclub, operating under the suspicious eye of the intrepid Inspector Crabbe. One night, Pepper finds a Chinese woman on the floor of the club. Assuming she's intoxicated, he makes a date with her and thinks she responds. It turns out the girl is actually dying. Salt and Pepper are questioned by Crabbe, before being kidnapped by Colonel Balsom of the Secret Service, who tells them the woman was a British agent.

Salt and Pepper find the dead woman's diary, which contains the names of four men marked for murder, and decide to solve the case themselves. Despite their efforts, three of the men are murdered. They eventually discover a plot by the renegade Colonel Woodstock to overthrow the British government, and are kidnapped and taken aboard a landlocked submarine.

The two escape and go to Colonel Balsom, but when they return the submarine is nowhere to be found. They eventually find the conspirators' secret headquarters at the Imperial War Museum. They commandeer a tank and manage to defeat Woodstock.

For their heroic efforts, the duo are both knighted by the queen.

Cast

Production

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.

Donner said " I was fired from the cutting and Sammy and Peter did it. What I did I loved, but I’ve never seen their film... I was trying to make a simple Abbott and Costello kind of wonderful thing and they wanted to do the problems in a black and white relationship. Anyway what I did was good enough so they got a sequel out of it."[4]

Critical reception

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Directed with vaguely swinging trimmings in the Clive Donner manner by yet another recruit from television, this is a Carry On in all but name and cast, in which Sammy Davis does one indifferent number and, along with Peter Lawford, dispenses much bonhomie to remarkably little effect amid stock characters and situations. Both the pseudo-Bond action and the slapstick comedy are excruciatingly ill-timed; any even tolerably witty joke is repeated several times over; and the studio-built Soho looks studio-built."[5]

The Radio Times Guide to Films gave the film 3/5 stars, writing: "Sinatra clan members, Sammy Davis Jr and Peter Lawford came to Britain to make this amiable, though strictly routine, comedy crime caper. They play Soho club-owners involved in a series of murders that turn out to be part of an international conspiracy. The attempt to jump on the "Swinging London" bandwagon, pathetic at the time, now has high camp value and some of the lines are still funny. Although loathed by the press and eventually released as a second-feature, it produced a sequel (One More Time) in 1970."[6]

British film critic Leslie Halliwell said: "Infuriating throwaway star vehicle set in the dregs of swinging London. The sequel, One More Time (1970), was quite unnecessary"[7]

Novelization

Popular Library published a paperback novelization by Alex Austin[8] of Michael Pertwee's screenplay.

References

  1. ^ a b c "Salt & Pepper". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. Retrieved 9 August 2025.
  2. ^ a b c "Salt and Pepper". British Film Institute Collections Search. Retrieved 26 January 2024.
  3. ^ "Big Rental Films of 1969", Variety, 7 January 1970 p. 15
  4. ^ Egan, Joseph (21 October 2016). "Director Richard Donner". The Purple Diaries. Retrieved 5 August 2025.
  5. ^ "Salt and Pepper". The Monthly Film Bulletin. 35 (408): 202. 1 January 1968. ProQuest 1305821234.
  6. ^ Radio Times Guide to Films (18th ed.). London: Immediate Media Company. 2017. p. 800. ISBN 9780992936440.
  7. ^ Halliwell, Leslie (1989). Halliwell's Film Guide (7th ed.). London: Paladin. p. 878. ISBN 0586088946.
  8. ^ "Arthur Miller: An Inventory of His Papers". Harry Ransom Center. Retrieved 30 May 2022. Austin, Alex – 271.15
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