Year Began: 1964
Number of Entries: 11
How long has the Pink Panther series been running? Let’s put it this way: when the first film came out, Lyndon Johnson was President. Though it’s been around forever, the comedy series about a bumbling French detective named Jacques Clouseau has not run regularly — sometimes as many as 13 years elapsed between movies. Peter Sellers played Clouseau in five Panther movies before his death in 1980 (six if you count 1982’s Trail of the Pink Panther, in which filmmakers relied on unused footage of Sellers from previous movies). Alan Arkin, Roger Moore and most recently Steve Martin have all donned the signature trench coat and mustache, but no one has ever matched Sellers’ pratfalls and refined mimicry. Other actors may appear in future Panther installments, but there will be only one Clouseau.
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