The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture

EDWARDS, WILLIAM BLAKE (1922–2010).

Best known for Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Days of Wine and Roses (1962), The Pink Panther (1963) and its six sequels, and 10 (1979), Blake Edwards was a writer, director, and editor of comedies and dramas for film, television, and theater. He was born William Blake Crump to Lillian Virginia and Don Mills Crump, a Muskogee attorney, on July 26, 1922. The couple divorced, and in 1926 she married John Gordon “Jack” McEdward, part of a prominent Hollywood "film family.” Blake Edwards’s step-grandfather had been an early-day silent-movie director, and his stepfather, Jack McEdward, was a production manager who often used the young man, known as Blake McEdward, as a movie extra. Blake McEdward graduated from Beverly Hills (California) High School in 1941 and served in World War II. He changed his surname to Edwards when he went to work in the film industry. After several minor acting parts, he had his first and last starring role in a Western movie, Panhandle (1948), which he co-wrote and produced.

Subsequently, he turned his attention to writing Hollywood and television scripts in the 1950s. After co-creating a TV sitcom for Mickey Rooney, Hey Mulligan (1954–55), Edwards garnered his first film director job with Bring Your Smile Along (1955). His first hit, Operation Petticoat (1959), a comedy set on a submarine, established him as an important director with commercial credibility and launched a successful career that lasted into the 1990s. His more than fifty directorial credits for dramas, comedies, and thrillers, include Experiment in Terror (1962), The Great Race (1965), What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1966), Gunn (1967), The Party (1968), Wild Rovers (1971), and Micki + Maude (1984). In 1969 he married Broadway and motion-picture singer-actor Julie Andrews, whom he directed in Darling Lili (1970), The Tamarind Seed (1974), S.O.B. (1981), 10, Victor/Victoria (film 1982; Broadway 1995), The Man Who Loved Women (1983), and That’s Life (1986). He also compiled a record of more than seventy film and television writing credits. He created several television specials and series, writing for many of them, including the 1950s hits Peter Gunn and Mr. Lucky.

Edwards received numerous awards for his work. In 2004 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him an Honorary Academy Award (Oscar) for his contributions to motion pictures in general. His films received five other Oscars and five Golden Globe Awards. Among his many accolades were a Preston Sturges Award (1993, one of three ever given jointly by the Directors Guild of America and the Writers Guild of America), a Career Achievement Award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association (1990), and a Writers Guild of America Laurel Award for Screen Writing Achievement (2002).

Blake Edwards died of pneumonia on December 15, 2010, in Santa Monica, California. Andrews and their five children survived him. His career was explored in the 2024 PBS American Masters production “Blake Edwards: A Love Story in 24 Frames.”

Hugh W. Foley, Jr.