Peter Sellers was actually supposed to carry even more of the load in “Dr. Strangelove” than ended up being the case. In the Cold War satire, he plays the title character – an ex-Nazi scientist bound to a wheelchair – along with the President of the United States and a British Air Force captain. But he was also intended for probably the film’s most iconic role: Maj. “King” Kong, the would-be cowboy who famously rides the nuclear bomb that will set off the Russian “doomsday machine” and kill all life on Earth.

Sellers never wanted all four roles, but he had already pulled off a similar shtick in “The Mouse That Roared,” and Columbia insisted that director Stanley Kubrick cast Sellers across the board as a condition of funding the movie. Sellers was worried about the workload, and whether his British tongue could pull off Kong’s Texas accent. As it turned out, he sprained an ankle and couldn’t film Kong’s scenes in a crowded cockpit set. The part was offered to John Wayne, and the famously conservative actor unsurprisingly turned down the part. Finally, Slim Pickens ended up taking the bomb-straddling role.

Regardless of who played what, “Dr. Strangelove” was a hit when it opened 51 years ago on January 29, 1964. The world had been living in the Age of the Bomb since 1945, and the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 seemed to have brought the planet to the brink of nuclear war. The entire situation seemed…silly, and ripe for satire. Kubrick and Sellers stepped up to the plate with the black comedy, which was subtitled “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”

In “Strangelove,” a rogue American officer sets off a bombing campaign against the Soviet Union. But this is guaranteed to trigger Moscow’s doomsday machine, which will wipe out all life on the planet…and has been kept secret from the world. When Strangelove points out that this makes it a rather poor deterrent to the Russian ambassador, the diplomat says it was going to be announced the following Monday – because “the Premier loves surprises.”

A mad scramble to recall the American bombers ensues, and all the bombs are stopped except one – Kong’s, which famously dooms all life on Earth. The only hope for humanity is to retreat to radiation-proof mineshafts underground for 93 years and institute a breeding program that will repopulate the planet. Of course, the arms race is never totally over, as a general warns the president of a “mineshaft gap” with the Soviets.

The movie was delayed from its initial release because of the Kennedy assassination in November 1963. Thinking that the subject matter would have been off-key while the country mourned, Columbia pushed it into late January. They also changed a line about “a pretty good weekend in Dallas” to refer to Vegas. By the time it opened, plenty of Americans were ready to laugh at the Cold War. What else could they do?

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