Died at 103
male
Blake Edwards was an American film director, screenwriter and producer. Edwards' career began in the 1940s as an actor but he soon turned to writing radio scripts at Columbia Pictures. He used his writing skills to begin producing and directing, with some of his best films including: Experiment in Terror, The Great Race, and the hugely successful Pink Panther film series with the British comedian Peter Sellers. Often thought of as primarily a director of comedies, he was also renowned for his dramatic work, Breakfast at Tiffany's and Days of Wine and Roses. His greatest successes, however, were his comedies, and most of his films were either musicals, melodramas, slapstick comedies, and thrillers. In 2004, he received an Honorary Academy Award in recognition of his writing, directing and producing an extraordinary body of work for the screen.
Inspector Clouseau is a loyal if one of the most unorthodox members of the Sûreté or French National Police and has been assigned to travel with a detachment to provide security detail for Princess Dala who has escaped the overthrow of her home country Lugash by its Secret Police who are sponsoring a religious fundamentalist regime and their own crime syndicates both wanting to impose an extremist Sharia law that grants them absolute power over all of Lugash's citizens. Only with the family jewel the Pink Panther will the claim to Lugash be sealed. Knowing that Dala's family jewel the Pink Panther will be too big of a prize for his archenemy the Phantom to resist, Clouseau hopes to set a trap for the thief he attempted to catch long ago while he, his comrades and extended family try to keep the princess safe and happy. The Phantom, also known as the English playboy Sir Charles Litton, steals jewels from very rich and corrupt people while leaving a white monogrammed man's glove with the initial 'P' on it as he enacts a breed of vigilante justice that baffles INTERPOL. As he moves to prepare a theft of the diamond, he starts to fall in love with the princess. Clouseau's stumbling, bumbling antics at times relieve the tension and keep the atmosphere from getting too grim, but they all take their toll on the sanity of Clouseau's immediate superior Chief Inspector Charles LaRousse Dreyfus, who at any moment could very well snap and try to do away with and kill Clouseau.
