'Pink Panther director Blake Edwards dies at 88

Director, writer and producer Blake Edwards, who made more than 40 films, including the classic Breakfast at Tiffany's and the Pink Panther comedies, has died from complications of pneumonia at age 88.  

A spokesperson for his wife and The Sound of Music star Julie Andrews said Edwards died on Wednesday night at St John's Health Centre in Santa Monica, California, with Andrews and immediate family members by his side.

Show business newspaper Daily Variety said Edwards died on Thursday morning.

During a career that spanned nearly seven decades, Edwards won wide acclaim for films such as Days of Wine and Roses and Victor/Victoria, but he also suffered flops.

At times he skewered Hollywood executives who sometimes shunned his work, and his battles with those executives got so intense that for a period he secretly taped conversations with them in order to hold them to their promises.

Born William Blake Crump on July 26, 1922, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Edwards moved to Los Angeles at the age of three. He broke into the movies as an actor with a small role in the 1942 film Ten Gentlemen from West Point and appeared in some two dozen less-than-successful films.

"Look at any one of those movies," Edwards once said, "and you'll see why I decided to become a writer."

In the late 1940s, Edwards created the popular Richard Diamond, Private Detective radio series and wrote for other radio shows.

He later created two popular private-eye series for television, Peter Gunn and Mr Lucky. He received Emmy nominations for writing and directing for Peter Gunn but decided to concentrate on writing and directing films.

His diverse body of work included light-hearted comedies as well as heart-breaking dramas and featured some of Hollywood's top talent.

HIGHS AND LOWS
In 1959, Edwards had his first big film success with Operation Petticoat, starring Cary Grant and Tony Curtis.

After making Breakfast at Tiffany's with Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard, and Days of Wine and Roses, starring Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick, Edwards shifted gears and directed The Pink Panther, the first of seven wacky comedies featuring Peter Sellers as the bumbling Inspector Clouseau.

Despite their successes, Edwards and Sellers were not always a happy team.

"The most fun and the worst times were with Peter," Edwards told Reuters in an interview in 2002 when the Writers Guild of America gave him a lifetime achievement award. "When he was at the top of his form, he was great fun. When he was in his depressed, angry world, he was impossible."

Edwards, who was given an honorary Oscar in 2003, also had critical and financial failures, including Darling Lili, co-starring Julie Andrews, which was such a box-office disaster that it imperilled Paramount Pictures.

After a series of flops derailed his career, Edwards bounced back in 1979 with 10, a salute to male mid-life crisis. The funny, poignant film featured Andrews and made stars of Dudley Moore and a certain Mary Collins aka Bo Derek, who appeared mostly in various stages of undress.

Andrews also appeared in 1982's Victor/Victoria, which earned Edwards an Oscar nomination for the screenplay, and the dark comedy S.O.B., Edwards's semi-autobiographical indictment of Hollywood studio executives.

"I had a lot of bitterness in me when I wrote the first draft," Edwards said of S.O.B. "The final screenplay was toned down a lot. What's funny now is that I keep meeting people who are characters straight out of that movie and who don't know it. They are the same terrible people doing the same terrible things."

He told Reuters, "[The film] got a lot of hostility off my chest, and I think it was one of my better writing jobs." The movie, about a director whose big-budget wholesome family film bombs, forcing him to re-shoot parts of it and insert R-rated scenes, also got the gown off his widely adored wife's chest.

Edwards was married twice, the second time in 1969 to Andrews. Andrews and Edwards remained together for 41 years and raised five children, three from separate marriages and two they adopted. He is survived by Andrews and all of his children.