Blake Edwards: 1922 - 2010   
       
   19 hours ago | IMDb News   
       
   Blake Edwards, the screenwriter, producer and director best-known for the   
   hugely successful Pink Panther film series in collaboration with the comedian   
   Peter Sellers, died Wednesday evening at St. John's Health Center in Santa   
   Monica of complications from pneumonia; he was 88. Known mostly for the   
   slapstick comedy of the Pink Panther films and other farces ranging from the   
   midlife crisis comedy 10 to the gender-bending Victor/Victoria, Edwards did   
   venture into other genres, most notably with the iconic Breakfast at   
   Tiffany's, starring Audrey Hepburn, and the melodrama Days of Wine and Roses,   
   both filmed in the early 1960s. Edwards was also known for his high-profile   
   marriage to actress Julie Andrews, whom he directed in a number of films, and   
   with whom he adopted two children; Andrews and his family were reportedly at   
   his bedside when he passed.   
       
   Born William Blake Crump on July 26, 1922, in Tulsa Oklahoma, Edwards was the   
   son of a stage director and the grandson of prolific silent-film director J.   
   Gordon Edwards. He began his career as an actor and a radio scriptwriter   
   specializing in hard-boiled private detective scripts tinged with humor, a   
   different take from the classic noir gumshoes such as Sam Spade and Phillip   
   Marlowe. Edwards took his talents to the small screen in 1959, creating the TV   
   series Peter Gunn about a private investigator who loved hip jazz and dressed   
   to the nines. Though the series ran for over 100 episodes, Peter Gunn is   
   perhaps best remembered for its theme music, composed by Henry Mancini, who   
   was to become an invaluable contributor to Edwards' career in film.   
       
   In the mid 1950s Edward also moved towards film, directing a number of   
   comedies before striking box office gold with the 1959 hit Operation   
   Petticoat, starring Cary Grant and Tony Curtis. Two years later, Edwards   
   turned Truman Capote's novella Breakfast at Tiffany's into a critical and   
   commercial success, propelling Audrey Hepburn's Holly Golightly into the pop   
   culture pantheon as well as Mancini's hit song "Moon River", which won an   
   Oscar (the film received five Oscar nominations total, including Best   
   Actress). The adult-for-its-time comedy, co-starring George Peppard, Patricia   
   Neal and Mickey Rooney (whose jaw-dropping portrayal of a stereotypical   
   Japanese landlord was the film's biggest misstep), erased much of Capote's   
   sexual subtext in favor of a standard Hollywood romance between the two leads,   
   but it nonetheless became one of the favored romantic comedies of all time. He   
   followed up that film with the effective black-and-white thriller Experiment   
   in Terror (1962) , his only turn in the thriller genre, and the alcoholism   
   drama Days of Wine and Roses (also 1962), which featured Academy   
   Award-nominated performances by Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick.   
       
   In 1963, beginning with The Pink Panther (1963) and in four subsequent Panther   
   films over two decades, Edwards, in collaboration with Peter Sellers, gave   
   audiences one of the most distinctive comedic characters ever conceived -   
   Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau. With an exaggerated French accent and an   
   incredibly clumsy manner, Clouseau was a uniquely brilliant creation, a   
   completely inept detective who always got his man. Only two films were made in   
   the early 1960s, but the franchise was revived in the mid 1970s with three   
   more films. Though Sellers died in 1980, Edwards made three additional Panther   
   films into the early 1990's, though none came close to capturing the   
   freewheeling and blissfully absurd spirit of the first two Panther comedies,   
   which also included A Shot in the Dark (1964).   
       
   First married from 1953-1967 to actress Patricia Walker, with whom he had two   
   children, Edwards met his second wife, Julie Andrews, in the late 1960s as   
   both were coming off big movie hits, she with The Sound of Music and he with   
   the Pink Panther films as well as The Great Race (1965) and The Party (1968).   
   The two, who married in November 1969, attempted to join their creative forces   
   for the World War I musical melodrama Darling Lili, which was an attempt to   
   show Andrews in a more adult light as a Mata Hari-type spy who attempts to use   
   her seductive wiles on American major Rock Hudson, only to fall in love him.   
   One of the most notorious flops of its time, the production was marred by   
   expensive location shooting, expansive yet nonsensical musical numbers,   
   extensive rewrites and constant meddling from Paramount studio to make the   
   film more commercially appealing; the budget skyrocketed as the film drew   
   towards its 1970 release, and was roundly drubbed as a fiasco on all counts.   
       
   Darling Lili practically sunk Edwards' career, and the filmmaker suffered from   
   severe depression and retreated to Switzerland to recover. While he made some   
   films in the early 1970s, none were warmly received until The Return of the   
   Pink Panther in 1975. After two more Panther films with Peter Sellers, Edwards   
   was suddenly back on top in 1979 with the comedy 10, which featured Dudley   
   Moore as a man besotted with a younger woman, a corn-rowed Bo Derek, who   
   thanks to the film would become a superstar and cultural icon of the time, due   
   mostly to scenes captured of her running on a Mexican beach in little more   
   than a flesh-colored bikini. The film turned Edwards' career around, and he   
   gleefully skewered the Hollywood that attempted to sink him after Darling Lili   
   with the scathing satire S.O.B. (1981), in which Andrews played a thinly   
   veiled version of herself and finally rid herself of her pristine image by   
   baring her breasts.   
       
   Andrews received an Oscar nomination, as did Edwards for screenwriting, for   
   the cross-dressing musical hit Victor/Victoria (1982), the story of a British   
   female singer pretending to be a gay Polish female impersonator in pre-World   
   War II France. The racy comedy, which dealt frankly with cross-dressing and   
   homosexuality in an era when both evoked titters and general discomfort with   
   mainstream audiences, also starred James Garner and Oscar nominees Robert   
   Preston and Lesley Ann Warren. The film, featuring numerous musical numbers   
   and Edwards' patented brand of slapstick, was a huge hit, and would inspire a   
   Broadway musical adaptation in the mid-1990s, also directed by Edwards and   
   starring Andrews; lightning, however, did not strike twice, and though   
   commercially successful, it was less than warmly received by critics.   
       
   Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Edwards made more comedies, including   
   Micki & Maude (1984), A Fine Mess (1986), Blind Date (1987), and Switch   
   (1991); his most notable film post-Victor/Victoria was the autobiographical   
   That's Life! (1986), starring Jack Lemmon as an Edwards-style filmmaker, Julie   
   Andrews as his wife, and two of his children as part of the main character's   
   large family.   
       
   After the Broadway adaptation of Victor/Victoria, Edwards essentially retired   
   from filmmaking; in 2004 he received an Honorary Oscar "In recognition of his   
   writing, directing and producing an extraordinary body of work for the   
   screen". The presentation of the award, by Jim Carrey, was notable for   
   including a patented Edwards sight gag, in which the director, ensconced in a   
   wheelchair, crashed through a wall in an attempt to accept the statuette.   
       
   Edwards is survived by Andrews and his four children.   
       
   - Mark Englehart   
       
       
   Regards,   
       
   Roger   
      
   --- D'Bridge 3.58   
    * Origin: NCS BBS -Houma, LA- (1:3828/7)