This Article is From Dec 17, 2010

Blake Edwards, creator of Pink Panther dies

Highlights

  • Blake Edwards, the director and writer known for clever dialogue, poignance and occasional belly-laugh sight gags in Breakfast at Tiffany's,10 and the Pink Panther farces, is dead at age 88.

  • Edwards died from complications of pneumonia at about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, said publicist Gene Schwam. Blake's wife, Julie Andrews, and other family members were at his side. He had been hospitalized for about two weeks.

  • Edwards had knee problems, had undergone unsuccessful procedures and was "pretty much confined to a wheelchair for the last year-and-a-half or two," Schwam said. That may have contributed to his condition, he added.
Los Angeles: Blake Edwards, the director and writer known for clever dialogue, poignance and occasional belly-laugh sight gags in Breakfast at Tiffany's,10 and the Pink Panther farces, is dead at age 88.

Edwards died from complications of pneumonia at about 10:30 p.m. Wednesday at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, said publicist Gene Schwam. Blake's wife, Julie Andrews, and other family members were at his side. He had been hospitalized for about two weeks.

Edwards had knee problems, had undergone unsuccessful procedures and was "pretty much confined to a wheelchair for the last year-and-a-half or two," Schwam said. That may have contributed to his condition, he added.

At the time of his death, Edwards was working on two Broadway musicals, one based on the Pink Panther movies. The other, Big Rosemary, was to be an original comedy set during Prohibition, Schwam said.

A third-generation filmmaker, Edwards was praised for evoking classic performances from Jack Lemmon, Audrey Hepburn, Peter Sellers, Dudley Moore, Lee Remick and Andrews, his wife of nearly half a century.

He directed and often wrote a wide variety of movies including Days of Wine and Roses, a harrowing story of alcoholism; The Great Race, a comedy-adventure that starred Lemmon, Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood; and Victor/Victoria, his gender-bender musical comedy with Andrews.

He was also known for an independent spirit that brought clashes with studio bosses. He vented his disdain for the Hollywood system in his 1981 black comedy, S.O.B.

Although many of Edwards' films were solid hits, he was nominated for Academy Awards only twice, in 1982 for writing the adapted screenplay of Victor/Victoria and in 1983 for co-writing The Man Who Loved Women. Lemmon and Remick won Oscar nominations in 1962 for Days of Wine and Roses, and Hepburn was nominated for Breakfast at Tiffany's in 1961.

The motion picture academy selected Edwards to receive a lifetime achievement award in 2004 for "his writing, directing and producing an extraordinary body of work for the screen."

Edwards had entered television in 1958, creating Peter Gunn, which established a new style of hard-edged detective series. The tone was set by Henry Mancini's pulsating theme music. Starring Craig Stevens, the series ran until 1961 and resulted in a 1967 feature movie Gunn.

Peter Gunn marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration between Edwards and Mancini, who composed melodic scores and songs for most of Edwards' films. Mancini won Academy Awards for the score of Breakfast at Tiffany's and the song Moon River, the title song of Days of Wine and Roses and the score of Victor/Victoria.

The Edwards family history extended virtually the entire length of American motion pictures. J. Gordon Edwards was a pioneering director of silent films, including more than 20 with the exotic vamp Theda Bara. His son, Jack McEdwards (the family name), became a top assistant director and production manager in Hollywood.

William Blake McEdwards was born July 26, 1922, in Tulsa, Okla. The family moved to Hollywood three years later, and the boy grew up on his father's movie sets.

Andrews and Edwards married in 1968. She had a daughter, Emma, from her marriage to Broadway designer Tony Walton. Edwards had a daughter, Jennifer, and a son, Geoffrey, from his marriage to Patricia Edwards. He and Andrews adopted two Vietnamese children, Amy and Jo.
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