Sad news tonight as we’ve learned that Blake Edwards, director of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 10 and the Pink Panther series, has died at the age of 88 following complications of pneumonia.
He was an accomplished director of physical comedy and you can see the influence of his love for the likes of Chaplin, Keaton and Harold Lloyd in his films with Peter Sellers in particular, and his films made stars and icons of Audrey Hepburn, Dudley Moore and Sellers himself.
He is survived by his wife, the actress Julie Andrews, whom Edwards directed in 1982’s Victoria/Victoria – arguably his last major success, but his legacy is assured beyond the joy created with the Pink Panther films. He wove a haunting spell around Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and there’s more heart, wit and comedic invention in that film that almost every mainstream comedy pumped out of the Hollywood machine in recent years.
There will be hundreds of obituaries posted tonight and each writer will have their defining moment from Edwards’ work, this is mine.
