The man who directed some of my favorite films, Blake Edwards, died today at the age of 88 of pneumonia in Santa Monica. He was the director of seven of the Pink Panther movies, I didn't even realize there had been that many. Those movies with Peter Sellers playing French Inspector Clouseau brought back slapstick from the silent movie era.

"We decided to try to make Clouseau a real clumsy, accident-prone, well-intentioned, but idiotic character," Mr. Edwards said, according to Sam Wasson's admiring study of Mr. Edwards's films, "A Splurch in the Kisser." "We decided that the one thing about Clouseau that could make him succeed was that he embodied what I considered to be the eleventh commandment, which is 'Thou Shalt Not Give Up.' He never figured he could lose, never figured that he could fail." -excerpt from The Washington Post.

Edwards also directed Dudley Moore and Bo Derek in "10" and his wife, Julie Andrews, in "Victor/Victoria". Another one of my all time favorite movies is "Breakfast at Tiffany's" with Audrey Hepburn featuring the song "Moon River" by Henry Mancini. (The composer who also wrote "The Pink Panther Theme").

Earlier this year I saw "The Great Race" for the first time, it's almost a melodrama with Tony Curtis as the hero and Jack Lemmon playing the villian and I realized it was helmed by Blake Edwards too.

So if you need some laughs to get rid of some of your holiday stress put on a Blake Edwards' film and let your troubles melt away.

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