Blake Edwards: 1922-2010

Blake Edwards died December 15, 2010 at 88. He was one of my favorite directors in the 1960s. He had an amazing string of really good films in the first half of the decade. He also did a few excellent comedies later in his career ("10" in particular).

• 1991 Switch
  A loosely-based remake of reincarnation/gender bending fantasy "Goodbye Charlie" of the 1960s, Ellen Barkin plays a misogynistic murder victim who is reincarnated as a woman. Jimmy Smits plays the very confused best friend of the deceased. 
• 1987 Blind Date
  A minor effort, but quite funny, this Bruce Willis/Kim Basinger story of a blind date gone bad. John Larroquette has a hilarious supporting role as the insanely jealous ex-boyfriend. 
• 1979 "10"
  Edwards' last great film, this Dudley Moore/Julie Andrews vehicle about the perils of male menopause made a star out of Moore and introduced us to Brian Dennehy and Bo Derek. 
• 1965 The Great Race
  An incredibly entertaining sprawling epic comedy in the vein of "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World" starring Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, and Natalie Wood. It focuses on a early 20th century fictional car race from New York to Paris. Lemmon's Dr. Evil is a foil for Curtis's The Great Leslie. 
• 1964 A Shot in the Dark 
  A follow-up to the previous year's The Pink Panther 
• 1963 The Pink Panther
  Edwards and Peter Sellers famously hated each other, but they collaborated very effectively in a classic series of Pink Panther comedies in the 1960s and 1970s. The first two were the best. 
• 1962 Days of Wine and Roses
  A classic story about alcoholism with Jack Lemmon (in his first dramatic role) and Lee Remick. Booze destroys their marriage and nearly destroys them. Bleak but very good. Classic Johnny Mercer/Henry Mancini theme song of the same name.
• 1962 Experiment in Terror
  A very good bank robbery thriller with Lee Remick and Glenn Ford. Remick is the terrorized suburban victim, Ford is the helpful FBI agent, and Ross Martin (pre-"Wild, Wild West") as the very bad bank-robber/kidnapper. 
• 1961 Breakfast at Tiffany's
  A beloved film starring a luminous Audrey Hepburn at her peak and George Peppard in a sanitized version of Truman Capote's story. It includes the classic Johnny Mercer/Henry Mancini theme "Moon River".

Of his many talents, he was also a great story teller and a life-long sufferer of clinical depression.

Below is an interview with Larry King that contains the funniest story about an attempted suicide you'll ever read. I recall seeing him tell the same story on the old Tom Synder show Tomorrow.

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EDWARDS: Oh, yes. My depression has been with me most of my life that I can remember. I have spells of it.
KING: Still?
EDWARDS: Yes, still. I haven't for quite a while.
KING: Do you take medication?
EDWARDS: I'm not on it now. I was.
KING: Did Julie help?
EDWARDS: Oh yes. Yes. I don't think I could have gotten -- that sounds melodramatic, but I really don't think I could have gotten through without her.
KING: It is clinical, right? I mean they...
EDWARDS: Yes.
KING: Someone would look at you and say hey, there's no reason for you to be depressed.
EDWARDS: No, it's clinical.
KING: So it's not explainable?
EDWARDS: No. No. It has nothing to do with lifestyle and things like that.
KING: Did you ever think of harming yourself?
EDWARDS: Excuse me?
KING: Ever think of harming yourself?
EDWARDS: Yes. In fact, I can tell you some very funny stories about that.
KING: Tell me one.
EDWARDS: OK. I had decided that the time had come. I didn't want to live anymore. I went up on a bluff in Malibu where we lived. I had decided on the method, which was probably to slash my wrists, because I figured I could bleed into the lawn and nobody would notice it. And, I got a straight razor blade and I sat down in a chair on a beautiful sunny day looking out at the Pacific. I'm in my tennis shorts, and as I prepared to do the deed, I felt a wet nose at my ear and I responded. It was my Great Dane and he knew something was going on. He just knew and I said "Get away. Go away." I pushed him away and finally he became so almost abusive trying to get me to stop doing whatever it was I was doing. I had locked him up in my studio, but I could see him through the glass because it was all glass studio.
KING: He knew?
EDWARDS: Yes, he knew. He was jumping and running and whining. You could hear him. And I thought well, in a little while that won't make any difference. I won't have to worry about him and I'm ready to do it again. And I feel this wet soggy thing at my crotch, and I look down and it's a tennis ball and our other dog, our retriever had now brought me a tennis ball and he knew what the hell was going on and he kept fetching this tennis ball and I kept saying, "Go away," and throwing the tennis ball.
KING: This is the suicide gone wrong.
EDWARDS: Right. So finally, I figured, I know what I'll do. I'll throw this ball over the cliff. It will go down on the beach. By the time he finds it and retrieves it...
KING: You're dead.
EDWARDS: I'm dead, right? So I wind up and I throw the tennis ball and I dislocate my shoulder, and I fall over backwards in the chair and I decided at that moment that today was not the day for it.
KING: The gang that couldn't shoot straight.
EDWARDS: So I turn around and I started back toward the house feeling just terrible, and I thought oh, wait a minute. You know, always the one to worry about other people and I thought that razor blade's in the lawn somewhere. So I went over looking for the razor blade and stepped on it and cut, opened my heel up about that deep and ended up in the emergency in Malibu saying "hurry up or I'm going to bleed to death." That was one suicide attempt.