Ian McShane Recalls The Last of Sheila, Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins’ Inside Jokes

While The Last of Sheila’s reputation has blossomed in recent years—particularly after a certain whodunit filmmaker named it as a major influence on the Benoit Blanc films—the movie still feels eternally underrated. Both a devilishly clever murder mystery and a ruthless satire of the Hollywood film industry, Sheila was on the one hand retro in its heyday by virtue of revolving around a locked room killing occurring among the rich and spoiled; and on the other it was ahead of its time given how thoroughly cynical it was about the entertainment industry. (Here it was all bad, even when they were beautiful.)

It’s also a movie that one of its ensemble players, the legendary Ian McShane, still looks fondly back on more than 53 years later—albeit with caveats.

“You can’t beat 15 weeks in the South of France as a location,” McShane marvels with a growing smile when we caught up with the star in lieu of this month’s Ballerina release. All these years later, he still can reminisce about the fun of the shoot, even if the structure of the film, complete with a lengthy killer reveal in the third act, leaves McShane a tad critical.

“That was a really interesting one to make. First of all, it was written by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins, and you can tell it was Stephen Sondheim because nobody had the balls to tell him ‘you can’t end a film with a 15-minute explanation of the plot!’” McShane laughs. “The film is great and then suddenly you get exposition at the end of the movie, as great as James Mason was, you want to say you can’t end with that because the audience is thinking ‘give me something else!’ All the characters are gone and then you get that.”

Nonetheless, McShane mostly remembers being wowed by Sondheim and Perkins’ screenplay, as well as who he got to work with.

Says McShane, “It was great. I remember Herb Ross directing it was terrific. [James] Coburn, Joan Hackett, Dyan Cannon. It’s a very funny script and a very nice idea, and they keep threatening to make it again with a younger cast, but if they did, I think they should tweak the ending.”

With that said, one of the appeals of the movie is it very much feels designed to be a bit of an inside joke for Sondheim and Perkins, who were famous in their friends circles for throwing murder mystery parties and games similar to the ones seen in The Last of Sheila. As a result, many have speculated who each of the characters might be based on, from Cannon’s utilitarian Hollywood player, who named names during the HUAC years, to Cobourn’s vindictive producer, and McShane’s own needy and opportunistic manager to a movie star played by Raquel Welch. 

“I think the character Coburn was based on was John Foreman, a producer, and obviously the Dyan Cannon’s character was based on [agent] Sue Mengers. My character and Raquel Welch’s were based on Twiggy and her manager, who was an English guy at the time. They sort of went from there. I don’t know who the James Mason character was based on, but I became great friends with James and made three films with him. He was phenomenal. It was quite the experience.”

Some of this is unsurprising. Hollywood power agent Mengers was so obviously the influence on Cannon’s character that Sondheim famously offered Mengers the part. However, as the story goes, she demurred by saying she couldn’t act but she had a client who could.

However, The English guy McShane refers to seems to be Justin de Villeneuve, who acted as manager to model and actress Twiggy from 1966 to 1973. He apparently ‘discovered’ her at the age of 17 when she came into the Mayfair hair salon in London where de Villeneuve worked as a hairdresser. Yeah, that sounds like something Sondheim and Perkins would have fun with.

Ballerina is in theaters now.

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