Blake Edwards
Encyclopedia
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 radio scripts at Columbia Pictures
. He used his writing skills to begin producing and directing, with some of his best films including: Experiment in Terror
, The Great Race
, and the hugely successful Pink Panther
film series with the British comedian Peter Sellers
. Often thought of as primarily a director of comedies, he was also renowned for his dramatic work, Breakfast at Tiffany's and Days of Wine and Roses
. His greatest successes, however, were his comedies, and most of his films were either musicals, melodramas, slapstick comedies, or thrillers.
In 2004, he received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of his writing, directing and producing an extraordinary body of work for the screen.
. His 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 Village Voice in 1971, he said that he had "always felt alienated, estranged from my . . . father." After attending grammar and high school in Los Angeles, he began taking jobs as an actor during World War II. Edwards describes this period:
Edwards served in the United States Coast Guard
where he experienced a severe back injury, which left him in pain for years afterward.
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' 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
, 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 (1959)
Operation Petticoat
was Edwards' 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 (1961)
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 (1962)
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' reputation as an important director.
Edwards' 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 (1969)
Darling Lili
, starring Julie Andrews
, is considered by many followers of Edwards' film 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.
However, the film failed badly at the box office. At a cost of $17 million to make, few people went to see it, and the few who did weren't impressed. It brought Paramount Pictures
to "the verge of financial collapse," and became an example of "self-indulgent extravagance" in filmmaking "that was ruining Hollywood."
In 2004, Edwards received an Honorary Academy Award for cumulative achievements over the course of his film career.
, and all of the entries starring Peter Sellers
as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau. It was considered a fruitful, yet complicated relationship, 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:
The films were all highly profitable. The Return of the Pink Panther (1975), for example, cost just $2.5 million to make, but grossed $100 million, while The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976), did even better.
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 clowns, 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
(1963) and A Shot in the Dark
(1964), which adapted many silent film aspects, including slapstick, they attempted to go even further in The Party
(1968). Although the film is relatively unknown, some have considered it a "masterpiece in this vein" of silent comedy, even though it included minimal dialogue.
, married his first wife, actress Patricia Walker, in 1953; they divorced in 1967. She appeared in the comedy All Ashore (1953), for which Edwards was one of the screenwriters. Edwards' second marriage from 1969 until his death was to Julie Andrews
. She 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
.
Edwards and Andrews had five children. The two eldest, Jennifer and Geoffrey, are from his previous marriage; middle child Emma is from Andrews' first marriage; and the youngest children are two adopted orphans from Vietnam, Amelia Leigh and Joanna Lynne. Edwards and Andrews adopted them in the early 1970s. All of the children, except Joanna, have appeared in his movies.
at the Saint John's Health Center
in Santa Monica, California
. His wife and children were at his side.
But others recognized him more for his significant achievements at different periods of his career. British film critic Peter Llyod, 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 Panthers 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:
Edwards' career began in the 1940s as an actor, but he soon turned to writing radio scripts at Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures
Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production and distribution company. Columbia Pictures now forms part of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group, owned by Sony Pictures Entertainment, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. It is one of the leading film companies...
. He used his writing skills to begin producing and directing, with some of his best films including: Experiment in Terror
Experiment in Terror
Experiment in Terror is a 1962 thriller film. It was directed by Blake Edwards and written by Mildred Gordon and Gordon Gordon based on their 1961 novel Operation Terror. The film stars Glenn Ford and Lee Remick.-Plot:...
, The Great Race
The Great Race
The Great Race is a 1965 slapstick comedy film starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and Natalie Wood, directed by Blake Edwards, written by Blake Edwards and Arthur A. Ross, and with music by Henry Mancini and cinematography by Russell Harlan. The supporting cast includes Peter Falk, Keenan Wynn,...
, and the hugely successful Pink Panther
The Pink Panther
The Pink Panther is a series of comedy films featuring the bungling French police detective Jacques Clouseau that began in 1963 with the release of the film of the same name. The role was originated by, and is most closely associated with, Peter Sellers...
film series with the British comedian Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers
Richard Henry Sellers, CBE , known as Peter Sellers, was a British comedian and actor. Perhaps best known as Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series, he is also notable for playing three different characters in Dr...
. Often thought of as primarily a director of comedies, he was also renowned for his dramatic work, Breakfast at Tiffany's and Days of Wine and Roses
Days of Wine and Roses (film)
Days of Wine and Roses is a film directed by Blake Edwards with a screenplay by JP Miller adapted from his own 1958 Playhouse 90 teleplay of the same name....
. His greatest successes, however, were his comedies, and most of his films were either musicals, melodramas, slapstick comedies, or thrillers.
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, OklahomaTulsa, Oklahoma
Tulsa is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 46th-largest city in the United States. With a population of 391,906 as of the 2010 census, it is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with 937,478 residents in the MSA and 988,454 in the CSA. Tulsa's...
. His 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 Village Voice in 1971, he said that he had "always felt alienated, estranged from my . . . father." 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
United States Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard is a branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven U.S. uniformed services. The Coast Guard is a maritime, military, multi-mission service unique among the military branches for having a maritime law enforcement mission and a federal regulatory agency...
where he experienced a severe back injury, which left him in pain for years afterward.
Career
In the 1954-1955 television season, Edwards joined with Richard QuineRichard Quine
Richard Quine was an American stage, film, and radio actor and film director.Quine was born in Detroit. He made his Broadway debut in the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II musical Very Warm for May in 1939 and appeared in My Sister Eileen the following year...
to create Mickey Rooney
Mickey Rooney
Mickey Rooney is an American film actor and entertainer whose film, television, and stage appearances span nearly his entire lifetime. He has won multiple awards, including an Honorary Academy Award, a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award...
's first television series, The Mickey Rooney Show: Hey, Mulligan
The Mickey Rooney Show: Hey, Mulligan
The Mickey Rooney Show: Hey, Mulligan is an American sitcom that aired from 1954 to 1955 on NBC. The series stars Mickey Rooney who was particularly remembered for his starring role in numerous Andy Hardy films made between 1937 and 1958, which overlapped with Hey Mulligan.-Synopsis:Rooney stars...
, a sitcom about a young studio page trying to become a serious actor. Edwards' hard-boiled private detective scripts for Richard Diamond, Private Detective
Richard Diamond, Private Detective
Richard Diamond, Private Detective is an American detective drama which aired on radio from 1949 to 1953, and on television from 1957 to 1960.-Radio:...
became NBC's answer to Sam Spade
Sam Spade
Sam Spade is a fictional character who is the protagonist of Dashiell Hammett's 1930 novel The Maltese Falcon and the various films and adaptations based on it, as well as in three lesser known short stories by Hammett....
and Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe
Philip Marlowe is a fictional character created by Raymond Chandler in a series of novels including The Big Sleep and The Long Goodbye. Marlowe first appeared under that name in The Big Sleep published in 1939...
, reflecting Edwards's unique humor. Edwards also created, wrote and directed the 1959 TV series Peter Gunn
Peter Gunn
Peter Gunn is an American private eye television series which aired on the NBC and later ABC television networks from 1958 to 1961. The show's creator was Blake Edwards...
, with music by Henry Mancini
Henry Mancini
Henry Mancini was an American composer, conductor and arranger, best remembered for his film and television scores. He won a record number of Grammy Awards , plus a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously in 1995...
. In the same year Edwards produced, with Mancini's musical theme, Mr. Lucky, an adventure
Adventure
An adventure is defined as an exciting or unusual experience; it may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome. The term is often used to refer to activities with some potential for physical danger, such as skydiving, mountain climbing and or participating in extreme sports...
series on CBS starring John Vivyan
John Vivyan
John Vivyan was an American actor active primarily between 1957 and 1970. He was known for his starring role as the honest debonair gambler in the CBS adventure series Mr. Lucky.-Early life and career:Born John C...
and Ross Martin
Ross Martin
Ross Martin was a Polish-born American Emmy-nominated actor known for playing Artemus Gordon in the western TV series The Wild Wild West, starring Robert Conrad, and Andamo on Mr...
. Mancini's association with Edwards continued in his film work, significantly contributing to their success.
Operation Petticoat (1959)
Operation Petticoat
Operation Petticoat
Operation Petticoat is a 1959 comedy film directed by Blake Edwards, and starring Cary Grant and Tony Curtis. It was the basis for a television series in 1977 starring John Astin in Grant's role...
was Edwards' first big-budget movie as a director. The film, which starred Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis was an American film actor whose career spanned six decades, but had his greatest popularity during the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in over 100 films in roles covering a wide range of genres, from light comedy to serious drama...
and Cary Grant
Cary Grant
Archibald Alexander Leach , better known by his stage name Cary Grant, was an English actor who later took U.S. citizenship...
, became the "greatest box-office success of the decade for Universal [Studios]," and made Edwards a recognized director.
Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961)
Breakfast at Tiffany's, based on the novel by Truman Capote
Truman Capote
Truman Streckfus Persons , known as Truman Capote , was an American author, many of whose short stories, novels, plays, and nonfiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and the true crime novel In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "nonfiction novel." At...
, is credited with establishing him as a "cult figure" with many critics. Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris is an American film critic and a leading proponent of the auteur theory of criticism.-Career:Sarris is generally credited with popularizing the auteur theory in the U.S...
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 (1962)
Days of Wine and Roses
Days of Wine and Roses (film)
Days of Wine and Roses is a film directed by Blake Edwards with a screenplay by JP Miller adapted from his own 1958 Playhouse 90 teleplay of the same name....
, a dark psychological film about the effects of alcoholism on a previously happy marriage, starred Jack Lemmon
Jack Lemmon
John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III was an American actor and musician. He starred in more than 60 films including Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, Mister Roberts , Days of Wine and Roses, The Great Race, Irma la Douce, The Odd Couple, Save the Tiger John Uhler "Jack" Lemmon III (February 8, 1925June...
and Lee Remick
Lee Remick
Lee Ann Remick was an American film and television actress. Among her best-known films are Anatomy of a Murder , Days of Wine and Roses , and The Omen .-Early life:...
. It has been described as "perhaps the most unsparing tract against drink that Hollywood has yet produced, more pessimistic than Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder was an Austro-Hungarian born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist, and journalist, whose career spanned more than 50 years and 60 films. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's golden age...
's The Lost Weekend." The film gave another major boost to Edwards' reputation as an important director.
Edwards' most popular films were comedies, the melodrama Days of Wine and Roses
Days of Wine and Roses (film)
Days of Wine and Roses is a film directed by Blake Edwards with a screenplay by JP Miller adapted from his own 1958 Playhouse 90 teleplay of the same name....
being a notable exception. His most dynamic and successful collaboration was with Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers
Richard Henry Sellers, CBE , known as Peter Sellers, was a British comedian and actor. Perhaps best known as Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series, he is also notable for playing three different characters in Dr...
in six of the movies in the Pink Panther
The Pink Panther
The Pink Panther is a series of comedy films featuring the bungling French police detective Jacques Clouseau that began in 1963 with the release of the film of the same name. The role was originated by, and is most closely associated with, Peter Sellers...
series. Five of the those involved Edwards and Sellers in original material, while Trail of the Pink Panther
Trail of the Pink Panther
Trail of the Pink Panther is a 1982 comedy film starring Peter Sellers. It was the seventh film in the Pink Panther series, and the last in which Peter Sellers starred as Inspector Jacques Clouseau, although Sellers died before production began and the film thus contains no original material...
, made after Sellers died in 1980, was made up of unused material from The Pink Panther Strikes Again
The Pink Panther Strikes Again
The Pink Panther Strikes Again is the fifth film in the Pink Panther series and picks up where The Return of the Pink Panther leaves off...
. He also worked with Sellers on the film The Party
The Party (film)
The Party is a 1968 comedy film directed by Blake Edwards, starring Peter Sellers and Claudine Longet. The film has a very loose structure, and essentially serves as a series of set pieces for Sellers's improvisational comedy talents...
. Edwards later directed the comedy film 10
10 (film)
10 is a 1979 romantic comedy film directed by Blake Edwards and starring Bo Derek, Dudley Moore, and Julie Andrews. Considered a trend-setting film at the time, and one of the year's biggest box office hits, the film made superstars of Derek and Moore....
with Dudley Moore
Dudley Moore
Dudley Stuart John Moore, CBE was an English actor, comedian, composer and musician.Moore first came to prominence as one of the four writer-performers in the ground-breaking comedy revue Beyond the Fringe in the early 1960s, and then became famous as half of the highly popular television...
and Bo Derek
Bo Derek
Mary Cathleen Collins , better known as Bo Derek, is an American film and television actress, model, and sex symbol, known for her role as Jenny Hanley in the 1979 comedy film 10. However, Derek's film career soon faltered; her later films, including, Bolero and Ghosts Can't Do It , were poorly...
.
Darling Lili (1969)
Darling Lili
Darling Lili
Darling Lili is a 1970 American musical film. The screenplay was written by William Peter Blatty and Blake Edwards, who also directed. The cast included Julie Andrews, Rock Hudson, and Jeremy Kemp.-Plot:...
, starring Julie Andrews
Julie Andrews
Dame Julia Elizabeth Andrews, DBE is an English film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honors...
, is considered by many followers of Edwards' film 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.
However, the film failed badly at the box office. At a cost of $17 million to make, few people went to see it, and the few who did weren't impressed. It brought Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
to "the verge of financial collapse," and became an example of "self-indulgent extravagance" in filmmaking "that was ruining Hollywood."
In 2004, Edwards received an Honorary Academy Award for cumulative achievements over the course of his film career.
Pink Panther films
Edwards is best known for directing most of the comedy film series The Pink PantherThe Pink Panther
The Pink Panther is a series of comedy films featuring the bungling French police detective Jacques Clouseau that began in 1963 with the release of the film of the same name. The role was originated by, and is most closely associated with, Peter Sellers...
, and all of the entries starring Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers
Richard Henry Sellers, CBE , known as Peter Sellers, was a British comedian and actor. Perhaps best known as Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series, he is also notable for playing three different characters in Dr...
as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau. It was considered a fruitful, yet complicated relationship, 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 (1975), for example, cost just $2.5 million to make, but grossed $100 million, while The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976), did even better.
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 clowns, including Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
, Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".Keaton was recognized as the...
, Harold Lloyd
Harold Lloyd
Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. was an American film actor and producer, most famous for his silent comedies....
, and Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy
Laurel and Hardy were one of the most popular and critically acclaimed comedy double acts of the early Classical Hollywood era of American cinema...
. 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
The Pink Panther (1963 film)
The Pink Panther is a 1963 American comedy film directed by Blake Edwards and co-written by Edwards and Maurice Richlin, starring David Niven, Peter Sellers, Robert Wagner, Capucine, and Claudia Cardinale...
(1963) and A Shot in the Dark
A Shot in the Dark (1964 film)
A Shot in the Dark is a 1964 comedy film directed by Blake Edwards and is the second installment in the Pink Panther series. Peter Sellers is featured again as Inspector Jacques Clouseau of the French Sûreté...
(1964), which adapted many silent film aspects, including slapstick, they attempted to go even further in The Party
The Party (film)
The Party is a 1968 comedy film directed by Blake Edwards, starring Peter Sellers and Claudine Longet. The film has a very loose structure, and essentially serves as a series of set pieces for Sellers's improvisational comedy talents...
(1968). 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 EdwardsJ. Gordon Edwards
J. Gordon Edwards was a Canadian-born film director, producer, and a writer who began his career as a stage actor and as a stage director. He made his directorial debut on film in 1914's St. Elmo. Soon went on helming all of the Fox studio's mega-budget spectacles, including all of actress Theda...
, married his first wife, actress Patricia Walker, in 1953; they divorced in 1967. She appeared in the comedy All Ashore (1953), for which Edwards was one of the screenwriters. Edwards' second marriage from 1969 until his death was to Julie Andrews
Julie Andrews
Dame Julia Elizabeth Andrews, DBE is an English film and stage actress, singer, and author. She is the recipient of Golden Globe, Emmy, Grammy, BAFTA, People's Choice Award, Theatre World Award, Screen Actors Guild and Academy Award honors...
. She appeared in a number of his films, including Darling Lili
Darling Lili
Darling Lili is a 1970 American musical film. The screenplay was written by William Peter Blatty and Blake Edwards, who also directed. The cast included Julie Andrews, Rock Hudson, and Jeremy Kemp.-Plot:...
, 10
10 (film)
10 is a 1979 romantic comedy film directed by Blake Edwards and starring Bo Derek, Dudley Moore, and Julie Andrews. Considered a trend-setting film at the time, and one of the year's biggest box office hits, the film made superstars of Derek and Moore....
, Victor Victoria and the autobiographical satire
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
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
Victor/Victoria (musical)
Victor/Victoria is a musical with a book by Blake Edwards, music by Henry Mancini, lyrics by Leslie Bricusse and additional musical material by Frank Wildhorn...
, also starring Andrews.
Edwards described his struggle with the illness chronic fatigue syndrome
Chronic fatigue syndrome
Chronic fatigue syndrome is the most common name used to designate a significantly debilitating medical disorder or group of disorders generally defined by persistent fatigue accompanied by other specific symptoms for a minimum of six months, not due to ongoing exertion, not substantially...
for 15 years in the documentary I Remember Me
I Remember Me
I Remember Me is a is a biographical documentary about chronic fatigue syndrome, filmed in the United States by Kim A. Snyder. The film attempts to show just how devastating the illness can be to persons afflicted with the illness....
.
Edwards and Andrews had five children. The two eldest, Jennifer and Geoffrey, are from his previous marriage; middle child Emma is from Andrews' first marriage; and the youngest children are two adopted orphans from Vietnam, Amelia Leigh and Joanna Lynne. Edwards and Andrews adopted them in the early 1970s. All of the children, except Joanna, have appeared in his movies.
Death
On December 15, 2010, Edwards died of complications of pneumoniaPneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
at the Saint John's Health Center
Saint John's Health Center
Saint John's Health Center is a hospital in Santa Monica, California, United States. The hospital was founded in 1942 by the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth.-List of famous patients:*Former US President Ronald Reagan, 2001, taken to St...
in Santa Monica, California
Santa Monica, California
Santa Monica is a beachfront city in western Los Angeles County, California, US. Situated on Santa Monica Bay, it is surrounded on three sides by the city of Los Angeles — Pacific Palisades on the northwest, Brentwood on the north, West Los Angeles on the northeast, Mar Vista on the east, and...
. His wife and children were at his side.
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.
But others recognized him more for his significant achievements at different periods of his career. British film critic Peter Llyod, for example, described Edwards, in 1971, as "the finest director working in the American commercial cinema at the present time." Edwards' biographers, William Luhr
William Luhr
William Luhr is an American film author and professor. He is the author of such works as Thinking About Movies: Watching, Questioning, Enjoying, World Cinema Since 1945: An Encyclopedic History and Returning to the Scene. He is also currently a professor of English at Saint Peter's College in...
and Peter Lehman, in an interview in 1974, called him "the finest American director working at this time." They refer especially to the Pink Panthers Clouseau, developed with the comedic skills of Peter Sellers
Peter Sellers
Richard Henry Sellers, CBE , known as Peter Sellers, was a British comedian and actor. Perhaps best known as Chief Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther film series, he is also notable for playing three different characters in Dr...
, 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."
External links
- Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
- Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture – Edwards, Blake
- My Day With Blake Edwards – A Tribute by Steven Ameche