Sterling Hayden, who plays General Ripper, kind of steals the show for me in Dr. Strangelove.
There are other top notch performances but I’ve always loved his scenes with Sellers as the RAF officer trying to reason with his madness.
The film is my favorite and George C. Scott deserves a ton of credit too. Slim Pickens is incredible as well. If there’s one character that is a bit over-the-top for me it’s Dr. Strangelove himself. It’s a close call but I wonder if the film could still work without some of the mein furher, involuntarily nazi salute stuff.
> I wonder if the film could still work without some of the mein furher, involuntarily nazi salute stuff.
That part is funnier if you recognize that the main real life person that Dr Strangelove was a spoof of was Wernher von Braun. (For more insight into the joke, listen to Tom Lehrer's song about Wernher von Braun.)
Yes, but based on the Kubrick quote in that section of the Wikipedia article, von Braun was the main one; and von Braun is the obvious one for the "mein Fuhrer", etc., of Strangelove to be a spoof of.
