Previously seen footage only Robert Wagner as George Litton Claudia Cardinale as Princess Dala Colin Gordon as Tucker Production Sellers died in late July 1980, a year and a half before production began, and his performance was constructed from deleted scenes from The Pink Panther Strikes Again. David Niven appears in the film, reprising his role of Sir Charles Lytton, which he first played in the original The Pink Panther of 1963. Niven was in the early stages of ALS, and his voice subsequently proved too weak to loop his own dialogue during post-production; as a result, his lines were dubbed by impressionist Rich Little. Returning series regulars include Herbert Lom as Chief Inspector Dreyfus, Graham Stark as Hercule LaJoy (last seen in the 1964 Pink Panther film A Shot in the Dark), Burt Kwouk as Clouseau's faithful man servant Cato and André Maranne as Sgt. François Chevalier. Trail featured the animated opening and closing credits, animated by Marvel Productions and written and directed by Art Leonardi. Director Blake Edwards dedicated the film to Sellers, "the one and only Inspector Clouseau." Despite the dedication, Sellers's widow Lynne Frederick filed a $3 million lawsuit against the film's producers and MGM/UA, claiming that the film diminished Sellers's reputation, and was awarded over $1 million in damages. Despite this, however, there was a practical reason behind Frederick's suing of Edwards. Her primary objection was that Sellers had actually vetoed the use of outtakes from earlier Panthers in his lifetime and that his estate should have had the right to control the use of outtakes after his death. The reason the question of outtakes being used had come up in Sellers's lifetime was that Edwards had shot and edited a two hour version of Strikes Again, hoping to recapture the zany spectacle of The Great Race, with Dreyfus as the melodramatic villain in the fashion of Jack Lemmon's Professor Fate. United Artists vetoed this long version and the film was drastically cut from two hours to just over an hour and a half. After Sellers died, UA tried to get Dudley Moore to take on Clouseau in the Sellers-penned Romance of the Pink Panther. Moore refused to do it without Edwards directing and was willing to play Clouseau only one time as a tribute to Sellers (knowing Romance was to have ended the series, according from a Los Angeles Times interview with Moore in