Following the commercial success of What's New Pussycat?, Charles Feldman again brought together Sellers and Woody Allen for his next project, Casino Royale, which also starred Orson Welles; Sellers signed a $1 million contract for the film ($ in dollars). Seven screenwriters worked on the project, and filming was chaotic. To make matters worse, according to Ekland, Sellers was "so insecure, he won't trust anyone". A poor working relationship quickly developed between Sellers and Welles: Sellers eventually demanded that the two should not share the same set. Sellers left the film before his part was complete. A further agent's part was then written for Terence Cooper, to cover Sellers's departure. Shortly after leaving Casino Royale, Sellers was appointed a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in honour of his career achievements. The day before the investiture at Buckingham Palace, Sellers and Ekland argued, with Ekland scratching his face in the process; Sellers had a make-up artist cover the marks. During his next film, The Bobo, which again co-starred Ekland, the couple's marital problems worsened. Three weeks into production in Italy, Sellers told director Robert Parrish to fire his wife, saying "I'm not coming back after lunch if that bitch is on the set". Ekland later stated that the marriage was "an atrocious sham" at this stage. In the midst of filming The Bobo, Sellers's mother had a heart attack; Parrish asked Sellers if he wanted to visit her in hospital, but Sellers remained on set. She died within days, without Sellers having seen her. He was deeply affected by her death and remorseful at not having returned to London to see her. Ekland served him with divorce papers shortly afterwards. The divorce was finalised on 18 December 1968, and Sellers's friend Spike Milligan sent Ekland a congratulatory telegram. Upon its release in September 1967, The Bobo was poorly received. Sellers's first film appearance of 1968 was a reunion with Blake Edwards for the fish-out-of-water comedy The Party, in which he starred alongside Claudine Longet and Denny Miller. He appears as Hrundi V. Bakshi, a bungling Indian actor who accidentally receives an invitation to a lavish Hollywood dinner party. His character, according to Sellers's biographer Peter Evans, was "clearly an amalgam of Clouseau and the doctor in The Millionairess". Roger Lewis notes that like a number of Sellers's characters, he is played in a sympathetic and