Background
EDWARDS, Blake was born on July 26, 1922 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States.
EDWARDS, Blake was born on July 26, 1922 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States.
He attended a High school.
Edwards was originally a writer and actor. As an actor, he appeared in Ten Gentlemen from West Point (42, Henry Hathaway); Strangler of the Swamp (45, Frank Wisbar); Leather Gloves (48, Richard Quine); Panhandle (48, Lesley Selander); and Stampede (49, Selander). He wrote the scripts for the two latter films, and for six Richard Quine films: Rainbow Round My Shoulder (52); All Ashore (53); Cruisin' Down the River (53); Drive a Crooked Road (54); My Sister Eileen (55); and the effervescent Operation Madball (57).
He has worked occasionally as a writer on other peoples films: The Notorious Land-lady (62, Quine); Soldier in the Rain (63, Ralph Nelson); and Inspector Clouseau (68, Bud Yorkin). Three more Panthers kept him working.
In fact, not even the death of Peter Sellers (in 1980) deterred Edwards: he pushed on with three more ghostly Panthers, the one from old Sellers footage, the next with young comedian Ted Wass as a replacement, and finally with Roberto Benigni as Clouseau Jr.
For the rest, Edwards has gone from the crazy satire of S.O.B. and the gender confusion ol VictorAIictoria into die Hat doldrums of modern comedy. The Man Who Loved Women has Burt Reynolds in a reworking of Truffauts film; several movies had star pairings that refused to get chemical—Dudley Moore and Amy living in Micki and Maude; Ted Danson and Howie Mandel in A Fine Mess; Kim Basinger and Bruce Willis in Blind Date; Willis and James Gamer in Sunset. Worst of all, though, is Julie Andrew's and Jack Lemmon in the insufferable That’s Life. Life should have sued.
In 1993, the combined decision of the Directors and the Writers’ Guilds gave the Preston Sturges Award to Edwards. There was something so macabre, inappropriate, and inevitable in that decision—somehow the decline ol Hollvwood had been encapsulated.
Like so many of his generation, Edwards has not lived up to the promise of his first few movies. In his case, the loss is sharper because he seemed wittier and more perceptive than most. Above all, he had a good writer’s sense of character, dialogue, and construction, allied to an original, black-lacquer comedy. Mister Cony was an excep¬tional film and Operation Petticoat and High Time were tart comedies, with some of the extravagant fun of Operation Madball. But Breakfast at Tiffany’s, despite being Edwards’s best-looking film, was nervous of Capote’s original and now looks like one of the series of American films made of bitter chocolate but with soft centers. Experiment in Terror was frightening, but no more than an exercise. Days of Wine and Roses went much deeper; indeed, its pessimism got out of artistic control and showed a dark side that Edwards has otherwise concealed. Inevitably, one compares it with The Lost Weekend: Edwards's is a more somber film, but it shares Wilder’s fatal inability to see his characters as much more than lines in a script. The tidy sense of character, as so often in American cinema, tends to make neat drama out of tragic material.
Since then, Edwards has graduallv lost his way. The Pink Panther shows all his wit, but A Shot in the Dark and The Party only illustrate the undisciplined talents of Peter Sellers. Gunn was the cinema version of a TV series launched by Edwards; The Great Race is high farce, much longer than it should he, but full of good jokes that build gradually; What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? is an entertaining exposure of military stereotypes. Most distressing, however, is Darling Lili, starring Edwards's second wife, Julie Andrews, and his most disastrous failure. Wild Rovers has a certain fatalistic charm, but the resort to a Western hinted at the way Edwards was running out of steam. The Carey Treatment lacked even the hopeless ambition of Darling Lili and seemed the work of a tired man.
Married Julie Andrews in 1969.