US filmmaker Blake Edwards, best known for directing Breakfast at Tiffany’s and The Pink Panther, has died aged 88.
Edwards died of complications from pneumonia on Wednesday at St John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, southern California, his publicist Gene Schwam said on Thursday. His wife, the actress Julie Andrews, and other members of his family were at his side, Schwam added.
Edwards, who was also a screenwriter, producer and actor, received a lifetime achievement award at the 2004 Academy Awards.
Many of Edwards’ films were box office hits and he was twice nominated for an Oscar, in 1982 for writing the adapted screenplay of Victor/Victoria, and in 1983 for co-writing The Man Who Loved Women. Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 1961 established him as a stylish director who could combine comedy with bittersweet romance.
His career waned in the mid 1970s with Pink Panther sequels his only box office successes. Then in 1979 came the sex comedy 10, which made Bo Derek a star and restored the director’s reputation.
Edwards had knee problems and had been “pretty much confined to a wheelchair for the last year-and-a-half or two,” Schwam said.
He had been receiving treatment in hospital for two weeks before his death, the publicist added.
At the time of his death, Edwards was working on two Broadway musicals, one based on the Pink Panther films.
Andrews and Edwards married in 1969. They both had children from previous marriages and they adopted two Vietnamese children, Amy and Jo.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion