The local daily gave Blake Edwards’ death short shrift. But so, I imagine, did all publications everywhere. This was one of the most prolific and well-rounded comic artists of the 20th century, and it would take several books to do him justice. What I liked about him was that he seldom played safe. His failures were as  staggering as his successes. There wasn’t much middle ground. There were the Peter Sellers Pink Panther films and then there were the Ted Wass and Roberto Benigni ones. There was Dudley Moore and Bo Derek running on the beach in 1o, then there was Bruce Willis and Kim Basinger inexplicably sliding down a vertical mattress in Blind Date. The composers he got to do soundtracks for him, mainly Mancini, were impeccable, but between he and his wife Julie Andrews between them rendered the one-two punch of Darling Lili and Star! which nearly killed off the American film musical for good in 1969-70. His S.O.B. is considered a cult classic which Wikipedia deems “autobiographical”—until you read the far superior Terry Southern novel Blue Movie from which it was clearly ripped off. I interviewed Southern shortly before his death and he told me that both Edwards and Andrews had been attached to a movie adaptation of Blue Movie that never got green-lit. Southern was appalled at S.O.B. and still held a huge grudge.

In any case, funny guy, and more of a risk-taker than anyone gave him credit for being.

I’ve recently become enamored of Edward’s early-career work on the radio detective series Richard Diamond, Private Eye, which you can find on several on the Golden Age radio websites. The show’s edgy but not as manic as his later TV series Peter Gunn, funny but not as campy as his Honey West