Blake Edwards was an American film director, screenwriter and producer.
Edwards' career began in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon turned to writing screenplays
and radio scripts before turning to producing and directing in film and television. His
best-known films include Breakfast at Tiffany's, Days of Wine and Roses, and the hugely successful
Pink Panther film series with British comedian Peter Sellers. Often thought of as primarily
a director of comedies, he also directed dramas and detective films. Late in his career, he
transitioned to writing, producing, and directing for theater.
In 2004, he received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of his writing, directing and
producing an extraordinary body of work for the screen.
Early life Born William Blake Crump in Tulsa, Oklahoma,
his step-grandfather was J. Gordon Edwards, a director of silent movies, and his stepfather,
Jack McEdwards, became a film production manager after moving his family to Los Angeles in
1925. In an interview with the Village Voice in 1971, he said that he had "always felt
alienated, estranged from my own father, Jack McEdwards". After attending grammar and high
school in Los Angeles, he began taking jobs as an actor during World War II. Edwards describes
this period:
I worked with the best directors – Ford, Wyler, Preminger – and learned a lot from
them. But I wasn't a very cooperative actor. I was a spunky, smart-assed kid. Maybe even
then I was indicating that I wanted to give, not take, direction.
Edwards served in the United States Coast Guard during World War II where he experienced
a severe back injury, which left him in pain for years afterwards.
Career In the 1954–1955 television season, Edwards
joined with Richard Quine to create Mickey Rooney's first television series, The Mickey
Rooney Show: Hey, Mulligan, a sitcom about a young studio page trying to become a serious
actor. Edwards's hard-boiled private detective scripts for Richard Diamond, Private Detective
became NBC's answer to Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, reflecting Edwards's unique humor.
Edwards also created, wrote and directed the 1959 TV series Peter Gunn, which starred Craig
Stevens, with music by Henry Mancini. In the same year Edwards produced, with Mancini's
musical theme, Mr. Lucky, an adventure series on CBS starring John Vivyan and Ross Martin.
Mancini's association with Edwards continued in his film work, significantly contributing
to their success. Operation Petticoat
Operation Petticoat was Edwards's first big-budget movie as a director. The film, which starred
Tony Curtis and Cary Grant, became the "greatest box-office success of the decade for Universal
[Studios]," and made Edwards a recognized director.
Breakfast at Tiffany's Breakfast at Tiffany's, based on the novel
by Truman Capote, is credited with establishing him as a "cult figure" with many critics.
Andrew Sarris called it the "directorial surprise of 1961", and it became a "romantic touchstone"
for college students in the early 1960s. Days of Wine and Roses
Days of Wine And Roses, a dark psychological film about the effects of alcoholism on a
previously happy marriage, starred Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick. It has been described as "perhaps
the most unsparing tract against drink that Hollywood has yet produced, more pessimistic
than Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend". The film gave another major boost to Edwards's
reputation as an important director. Edwards's most popular films were comedies,
the melodrama Days of Wine and Roses being a notable exception. His most dynamic and
successful collaboration was with Peter Sellers in six of the movies in the Pink Panther series.
Five of the those involved Edwards and Sellers in original material, while Trail of the Pink
Panther, made after Sellers died in 1980, was made up of unused material from The Pink
Panther Strikes Again. He also worked with Sellers on the film The Party. Edwards later
directed the comedy film 10 with Dudley Moore and Bo Derek.
Darling Lili Darling Lili, whose star, Julie Andrews, Edwards
later married, is considered by many followers of Edwards's films as "the director's masterpiece".
According to critic George Morris, "it synthesizes every major Edwards theme: the disappearance
of gallantry and honor, the tension between appearances and reality and the emotional,
spiritual, moral, and psychological disorder" in such a world. Edwards used difficult cinematography
techniques, including long-shot zooms, tracking, and focus distortion, to great effect.
The film failed badly, however, at the box-office. At a cost of $17 million to make, few people
went to see it, and the few who did were unimpressed. It brought Paramount Pictures to "the verge
of financial collapse," and became an example of "self-indulgent extravagance" in filmmaking
"that was ruining Hollywood." Pink Panther films
Edwards is best known for directing most of the comedy film series The Pink Panther, all
of those starring Peter Sellers as the inept Inspector Clouseau. It was considered a fruitful,
yet complicated, relationship between the director and the lead actor, with many disagreements
during production. At various times in their film relationship, "he more than once swore
off Sellers" as too hard to direct. However, in his later years, he admitted that working
with Sellers was often irresistible:
"We clicked on comedy, and we were lucky we found each other, because we both had so much
respect for it. We also had an ability to come up with funny things and great situations
that had to be explored. But in that exploration there would oftentimes be disagreement. But
I couldn't resist those moments when we jelled. And if you ask me who contributed most to
those things, it couldn't have happened unless both of us were involved, even though it wasn't
always happy."
The films were all highly profitable. The Return of the Pink Panther, for example, cost
just $2.5 million to make, but grossed $100 million, while The Pink Panther Strikes Again, did
even better. Honorary Academy Award
In 2003, Edwards received an Honorary Academy Award for cumulative achievements over the
course of his film career. Silent-film style
Having grown up in Hollywood, the son of a studio production manager and grandson of
a silent-film director, Edwards had watched the films of the great silent-era comedians,
including Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Laurel and Hardy. Both he
and Sellers appreciated and understood the comedy styles in silent-films and tried to
recreate it in their work together. After their immense success with the first two Pink
Panther films, The Pink Panther and A Shot in the Dark, which adapted many silent-film
aspects, including slapstick, they attempted to go even further in The Party. Although
the film is relatively unknown, some have considered it a "masterpiece in this vein"
of silent comedy, even though it included minimal dialogue.
Personal life Edwards, the step-grandson of prolific silent-film
director J. Gordon Edwards, married his first wife, actress Patricia Walker, in 1953. They
had two children, and divorced in 1967. She appeared in the comedy All Ashore, for which
Edwards was one of the screenwriters. Edwards' second marriage from 1969 until his
death was to Julie Andrews. Andrews had a daughter from her previous marriage, and the
couple adopted two orphans from Vietnam in the early 1970s, Amelia Leigh and Joanna Lynne.
Andrews appeared in a number of his films, including Darling Lili, 10, Victor Victoria
and the autobiographical satire S.O.B., in which Andrews played a character who was a
caricature of herself. In 1995, he wrote the book for the stage musical adaptation of Victor/Victoria,
also starring Andrews. Edwards described his struggle with the illness
chronic fatigue syndrome for 15 years in the documentary I Remember Me.
Death On December 15, 2010, Edwards died of complications
of pneumonia at the Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California. His wife and
children were at his side. His death came after 15 years of suffering from chronic fatigue
syndrome and depression. Legacy
Edwards was greatly admired as well as strongly criticized as a filmmaker during his career.
On the negative side, general critique included this by American film author George Morris:
It has been difficult for many critics to accept Blake Edwards as anything more than
a popular entertainer. Edwards' detractors acknowledge his formal skill but deplore the
absence of profundity in his movies. Edwards' movies are slick and glossy, but their shiny
surfaces reflect all too accurately the disposable values of contemporary life.
Others, however, recognized him more for his significant achievements at different periods
of his career. British film critic Peter Lloyd, for example, described Edwards, in 1971, as
"the finest director working in the American commercial cinema at the present time." Edwards'
biographers, William Luhr and Peter Lehman, in an interview in 1974, called him "the finest
American director working at this time." They refer especially to the Pink Panther's Clouseau,
developed with the comedic skills of Peter Sellers, as a character "perfectly consistent"
with his "absurdist view of the world, because he has no faith in anything and constantly
adapts." Critic Stuart Byron calls his early Pink Panther films "two of the best comedies
an American has ever made." Polls taken at the time showed that his name, as a director,
was a rare "marketable commodity" in Hollywood. Edwards himself described one of the secrets
to success in the film industry:
For someone who wants to practice his art in this business, all you can hope to do,
as S.O.B. says, is stick to your guns, make the compromises you must, and hope that somewhere
along the way you acquire a few good friends who understand. And keep half a conscience."
Filmography
Television credits
Radio drama credits
Theater credits
References
External links Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical
Database Blake Edwards at the Internet Movie Database
Blake Edwards at the TCM Movie Database Blake Edwards at AllMovie
Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture – Edwards, Blake
My Day With Blake Edwards – A Tribute by Steven Ameche