Large cut out of the budget??

[frau kaleun]

Originally Posted by Tchocky

Almost all of it, actually. Sellers was given the basic structure and outcome of the scene, and carried on as he does
Lionel Mandrake's story about his false leg was totally ad-libbed too, apparently the cast and crew had trouble staying quiet during filming

There's a bit about that in the Special Features on the Blu-Ray disc I had, they said he was supposed to say something about having "a thing" with his leg (old war wound presumably) but it came out "the string in my leg" and he just rolled with it. Or maybe he intended to say "string" all along, who knows.

But that whole long thing of him on the phone with "Dmitri" is worth the price of admission.