Director Blake Edwards dies at 88

LOS ANGELES - Writer-director Blake Edwards, who immortalised such cinematic legends as the “Pink Panther”, has died at the age of 88.

Edwards died Wednesday night due to complications from pneumonia at the Saint Johns Hospital in Santa Monica, California, according to a family statement.

Edwards, who was married to the actress Julie Andrews for 41 years, was best known as the director and writer of the “Pink Panther”, the midlife crisis comedy 10, and also of classics “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “Days of Wine and Roses”.

He was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, July 26, 1922. He and his first wife Patricia had a daughter, Jennifer, and a son, Geoffrey. In 1969, he married Andrews. They adopted two Vietnamese orphans, Amy Leigh and Joanna Lynn.

Edwards had been an unsuccessful movie actor before transitioning into writing, first for radio and then for television and film with his first success coming in the Peter Gunn detective TV series in 1958.

His early film successes included “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and “Days of Wine and Roses” which both earned five Oscar nominations. But it was his surefooted handling of the slapstick comedy The Pink Panther in 1964 that cemented his status among Hollywood’s elite.

Edwards went on to direct three successful sequels to the French detective farce, but also shared in box-office humiliation such as when his big-budget musical “Darling Lili” flopped at the box office in 1970.

His last major success came in 1982, when his gender-bending farce “Victor/Victoria” earned him an Oscar screenplay nomination.

That was his only individual Oscar nomination, but he was given an honorary award by the Motion Picture Academy in 2004 for his “extraordinary body of work” that spanned more than four decades.