Blake Edwards was an American director born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, celebrated for sophisticated comedies and dramas spanning several decades of American cinema. Breakfast at Tiffany's, adapting Truman Capote's novella into a stylish, bittersweet romance starring Audrey Hepburn, established his elegant comic sensibility, while The Pink Panther franchise, built around Peter Sellers's bumbling Inspector Clouseau, became one of the most successful and beloved comedy franchises in film history across numerous sequels. Days of Wine and Roses showed his range into serious dramatic territory examining alcoholism, while 10 and Victor/Victoria, the latter a gender-bending musical comedy, demonstrated his sustained relevance into the 1980s. Edwards's versatility across sophisticated romantic comedy, slapstick farce, and serious drama made him one of the most commercially enduring directors of mid-century American cinema.
Blake Edwards
Director · Writer · Since 1959
88 years (Jul 26, 1922 – Dec 15, 2010)Tulsa, USATulsa, Oklahoma, USA
52 Directed · 8 Series
Blake Edwards was an American director born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, celebrated for sophisticated comedies and dramas spanning several decades of American cinema. Breakfast at Tiffany's, adapting Truman Capote's novella into a stylish, bittersweet romance starring Audrey Hepburn, established his elegant comic sensibility, while The Pink Panther franchise, built around Peter Sellers's bumbling Inspector Clouseau, became one of the most successful and beloved comedy franchises in film history across numerous sequels. Days of Wine and Roses showed his range into serious dramatic territory examining alcoholism, while 10 and Victor/Victoria, the latter a gender-bending musical comedy, demonstrated his sustained relevance into the 1980s. Edwards's versatility across sophisticated romantic comedy, slapstick farce, and serious drama made him one of the most commercially enduring directors of mid-century American cinema.
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, and 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.