Blake Edwards

Blake Edwards was born William Blake Crump on 26 July 1922 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, into a family with roots in the film industry through his stepfather's side. He began in Hollywood as a bit-part actor in the 1940s before moving into writing, contributing radio scripts and screenplays, and then into television, where he created the series Peter Gunn (1958) and Mr. Lucky. His feature directing career opened with comedies and light dramas before Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), starring Audrey Hepburn, established him as a major director able to mix romance, comedy and melancholy. He followed it with the far darker Days of Wine and Roses (1962), a study of alcoholism, demonstrating a range beyond the comic reputation he would later be known for. In 1963 he introduced Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther, launching a franchise with Peter Sellers that became the commercial backbone of his career across several sequels into the 1970s and 1980s. Edwards married the actress Julie Andrews in 1969, and the two frequently worked together, notably on 10 (1979), which made a star of Bo Derek, and Victor/Victoria (1982), for which Edwards received an Academy Award nomination for his screenplay. His career had highs and public failures alike, including expensive flops that damaged his standing with studios in the 1970s, but he continued directing into the 1990s. He received an Honorary Academy Award in 2004 for his body of work. Edwards died in Santa Monica, California, on 15 December 2010, aged eighty-eight, of complications from pneumonia.