A Splurch in the Kisser: The Movies of Blake Edwards

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Wesleyan University Press, 2011 M07 21 - 370 pages

With one of the longest and most controversial careers in Hollywood history, Blake Edwards is a phoenix of movie directors, full of hubris, ambition, and raving comic chutzpah. His rambunctious filmography remains an artistic force on par with Hollywood's greatest comic directors: Lubitsch, Sturges, Wilder. Like Wilder, Edwards's propensity for hilarity is double-helixed with pain, and in films like Breakfast at Tiffany's, Days of Wine and Roses, and even The Pink Panther, we can hear him off-screen, laughing in the dark. And yet, despite those enormous successes, he was at one time considered a Hollywood villain. After his marriage to Julie Andrews, Edwards's Darling Lili nearly sunk the both of them and brought Paramount Studios to its knees. Almost overnight, Blake became an industry pariah, which ironically fortified his sense of satire, as he simultaneously fought the Hollywood tide and rode it. Employing keen visual analysis, meticulous research, and troves of interviews and production files, Sam Wasson delivers the first complete account of one of the maddest figures Hollywood has ever known.

 

Contents

Matters of Introduction
1
PROLOGUE BREAKING IN 19221955
21
1 GLAKE BEGINS19551959
27
2 BLAKE BUILDS19591962
43
3 BLAKE BLOSSOMS 19631968
77
4 BLAKE BURNS 19681974
143
5 PANTHER PICTURES BLAKE BANKS
173
6 BLAKE BOOMS19791982
199
8 BLAKE BOWS 19891991
285
EPILOGUE MAKING OUT OCTOBER 241993
307
Appendix Filmography
311
Appendicitis How to Make a Blake Edwards Movie
321
Notes
331
Recommended Reading
343
Index
347
Copyright

7 BLAKE BREAKS 19831983
255

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About the author (2011)

SAM WASSON is currently working on a book about Breakfast at Tiffany's. He lives in Los Angeles.

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