MOVIES : His Pain, His Gain : Despite a string of comedy classics, life has never been a laughing matter for Blake Edwards--but he’s working on it

In Blake Edwards’ comedies there is pain in every pratfall.

Dudley Moore, in “10,” hiding amid a floral display in a church during a wedding, gets stung by a bee. Herbert Lom, Inspector Clouseau’s neurotic boss in “A Shot in the Dark,” stabs himself in the stomach with a letter opener. Richard Mulligan, the failed movie producer in “S.O.B.,” attempts to hang himself on the second floor of his house only to have the rope break, sending him crashing through to the first floor, severely maiming a Hollywood gossip columnist.

The pain, Edwards makes clear, is autobiographical.

“I would not be able to get through life had I not been able to view its painfulness in a comedic way,” he says. “So when I put (life) up there on the screen, quite often it resembles things that happen to me or at least comic metaphors for those things.

“Leo McCarey (the late comedy writer-producer-director) used to talk about breaking the pain barrier, where you’re faced with so much pain it compounds itself and you can’t take it anymore. So you laugh.”

In his bungalow on the Culver Studios lot, relaxing on a recent afternoon in a sofa with his feet on a coffee table, the 68-year-old director gave the appearance of a man at ease with himself and his film career, which spans six decades.

The appearance can be deceiving. It belies a life of continual physical and emotional pain. That pain inevitably turns up in his films’ dark humor.

Friday, Warner Bros. will release “Switch,” Edwards’ 48th film as a writer, director, producer or a combination of all three.

In “Switch,” a womanizing ad executive (Perry King) is murdered by a trio of furious ex-lovers and is reincarnated as a woman (Ellen Barkin). With his male soul--and libido--trapped inside a woman’s body, he finds himself flirting with a lesbian cosmetics magnate (Lorraine Bracco) while fending off the advances of his best friend (Jimmy Smits). Familiar Blake Edwardian themes all--mortality, role playing and sexual confusion.

The world Edwards portrays is often a heartless, chaotic place, with potential for destruction as well as creation. It falls to his characters to straighten out the chaos and make sense of the nonsense.

“What Blake does is comedy, but there’s so much sadness in his characters,” says John Ritter, who starred in Edwards’ “Skin Deep.” “The man who gave you ‘The Pink Panther’ is mixed with the man who gave you ‘Days of Wine and Roses.’ ”

Edwards’ physical pain can be traced to a dive he took into a swimming pool while serving in the Coast Guard during World War II. Too much alcohol and his unfamiliarity with the pool resulted in a fractured skull and broken neck. What happened as he lay in a traction cast for five months at Long Beach Naval Hospital perfectly illustrates his theory about the pain barrier.

“I nearly died. Lying in that hospital, I watched them bring these poor bastards out of the Pacific, shot to hell in sea battles, and I looked worse than anybody. ‘Jesus,’ they’d say, ‘what happened to you?’ I couldn’t say that I dove into a Beverly Hills swimming pool. I’d groan and turn away.

“It was hell, right to the day I woke up and saw Eleanor Roosevelt, standing at the foot of my bed, where she said those terrifying words: ‘What happened to you? Where were you wounded?’ The whole ward erupted in laughter.

“Stories like that I’ve somehow been able to turn into life’s funny moments.”

That particular funny moment has resulted in a chronic bad back that, according to his close friend, composer Henry Mancini, who has scored 26 Edwards features, can act up “when things get tense.”

His emotional pain, though, began much earlier. Edwards grew up with parents he terms “dysfunctional.” There was not much love “because they didn’t know how (to love). I don’t blame them although I did for a long time.”

Edwards’ natural father left his mother before he was born. After his birth, in Tulsa, Okla., his mother turned him over to an aunt and uncle. When he was 3, he moved to Los Angeles, where his mother had remarried. For several years, he shuttled between Tulsa and L.A.

“I was raised by a flock of women--all very well intentioned--and a Pennsylvania Dutch uncle who was secretly very generous and kind but couldn’t express it. My stepfather was not much different.”

As an only child with parents who could communicate neither with him nor themselves, Edwards felt “the only way I could communicate was by throwing a tantrum.”

He escaped his unhappiness at the Saturday movie matinees. “I naturally embraced the Laurel and Hardys, the Keatons and the great comics. I laughed and made my hours there happy. I could take a certain residual of that home with me.”

Edwards says he didn’t meet his biological father until he was 40. “I thought he was dead. He’d been a phantom through my life. It was a very interesting experience--an unfortunate experience. I never should have opened that Pandora’s Box.

“I couldn’t feel much for him, but he suddenly wanted a relationship with me. I couldn’t provide it. It became very sad. I had to face it one day: I said, ‘Look, why didn’t I ever hear from you?’ He could never really answer--just a lot of corny speeches. I said, ‘I’m not angry at you. I just don’t buy it. If you buy it, you’d better resolve it yourself or you’re never going to be happy.’ ”

Edwards’ stepfather, Jack McEdward, was a successful assistant director and production manager. Young Blake worked as a child actor, but treated this first exposure to moviemaking as a lark. After the war, that attitude changed. He needed a job.

So in 1947 Edwards co-wrote and produced with a friend “Panhandle,” a low-budget Western that starred Rod Cameron and--for the only time in his career--Blake Edwards.

Thus was launched a career that has certainly been one of the most checkered in Hollywood history. His early hits in TV--”Peter Gunn” (114 episodes) and “Mr. Lucky” (34 episodes)--and in film--”Operation Petticoat,” “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” “Experiment in Terror,” “Days of Wine and Roses,” “The Pink Panther,” “A Shot in the Dark”--were followed by a trio of fabulous movie disasters.

“Darling Lili,” made for Paramount in 1969 and starring Julie Andrews, who soon became his wife, was that era’s “Heaven’s Gate.” Its very name became a code word for an extravagant director going wildly over budget. Edwards places the blame with the studio’s insistence on adding musical numbers and shooting aerial combat sequences in Ireland where weather was terrible. His next two films at MGM, “Wild Rovers” and “The Carey Treatment,” were taken away from him and brutally cut by studio head James Aubrey.

Edwards fled to Europe. “I banished myself. I said I’m leaving, not coming back and not going to direct anymore. It hurt too much. I was too angry and depressed.”

Then, quicker than you can say Pink Panther, Edwards was hot again. Edwards and actor Peter Sellers, both down on their luck, agreed to reunite to make another film about the bumbling Inspector Clouseau.

“The Return of the Pink Panther” was followed in quick succession by “The Pink Panther Strikes Again” and “Revenge of the Pink Panther.” All were huge hits. All caused, says Mancini, “a great deal of pain for both Peter and Blake.”

The two men didn’t get along. Yet, as Edwards acknowledges, “we had a common field of comedy dreams. And probably, if I had to admit it, we shared a certain childlike quality. The child in both of us was very domineering and powerful. The difference was I knew it and he didn’t.”

When the two finally split, Edwards’ career continued its rebound with a trio of his best comedies--”10,” “S.O.B.” and “Victor/Victoria.”

Despite contracting a chronic-fatigue virus eight years ago, which Edwards describes as “like ongoing mononucleosis,” he has continued making nearly a movie a year. Not all have been successful, however. Or don’t you remember “A Fine Mess” and “Sunset”?

Along with the silent comics he enjoyed as a youngster, Edwards’ cinematic and comedic forebears include Leo McCarey, Preston Sturges, Frank Tashlin and Billy Wilder. Jack Lemmon, a close friend and star of six of his films, remarks: “I don’t know a director better at visual comedy than Blake. He’s the best I’ve ever worked with at what is not shown on the screen.”

Lemmon points to a sequence in the “Panther” series in which Clouseau comes into his flat anticipating an ambush by his servant-cum-martial arts instructor, Cato (Burt Kwouk). When none is forthcoming, Clouseau draws a bath. Moving in and out of a stationary frame, he starts water running, removes his clothes, dons a robe and disappears into the bathroom. A moment later, Cato runs through the frame and into the bathroom.

“You hear a horrendous splash, a scream, and see water shoot out the bathroom doorway,” recalls Lemmon. “Ninety-nine percent of directors would have hired two stunt guys and you would have seen one guy fly through the air and land on the other. It would not have been as funny.”

Edwards helps actors by finding greater interest in their work than his camera angles, says Ellen Barkin. “Doing an Edwards film is much more akin to doing a play. You don’t do two lines of dialogue and go to a new angle. If you watch his movies, he treats the set like a proscenium. There’s not a lot of close-ups, but actors moving in and out of shots.”

Sight gags and physical confrontations abound. The slapstick, critics have noted, springs from the frantic attempts by characters to find order in an absurd, anarchic world. Edwards’ heroes ultimately learn that order must come from within. This is often accomplished by modifying their self-image. Thus, Edwards is frequently preoccupied with role playing, especially sexual roles and stereotypes.

In “10,” “Victor/Victoria,” “Skin Deep” and “Switch,” Edwards seemingly equates survival with the ability to explore ambisexuality.

“I’ve always been totally fascinated by the opposite sex. Because I’ve had an interesting life with women and been very introspective about myself and how I relate to women and they to me, I’ve pursued this theme.

“In the beginning, I didn’t think it would be as obsessive. But the more I tried to figure it out and dramatize it, the more I discovered that one two-hour film was not enough. I’m very much focused on my own feelings and confusions I have about the roles we play, both male and female, and feelings we deny.”

JoBeth Williams, who co-stars in “Switch,” notes that Edwards “has enormous compassion for people stuck in roles they may not be comfortable playing. In his own life, he has chafed under the masculine role he had to play. You can see he feels it somehow screwed up things and he resents that. Blake feels that if we can get in touch with the opposite sex in ourselves, we will have greater understanding and communication between the sexes.”

The compassion and insight Edwards has brought to his several portraits of gay life may partially account for rumors that he himself is gay. He has continually denied this, most recently in an interview in the April 23 issue of the gay magazine the Advocate, saying: “If I were gay, I’d be the first person to step out and say so.”

The headstrong nature of his heroes is another autobiographical element. Throughout his career, he has squabbled with studios and executives over everything from meddling in his artistic vision to marketing. (Orion’s ads for “10” he called “vulgar” and “sexist.”) Nor has he been shy about filing lawsuits.

“He’s a loon,” remarks an agent who has dealt with Edwards on occasion. “He wants things done his way and expects to be treated as somebody special. But he’s in a position to expect it because he is a major creative entity.”

Of his feisty personality, Edwards says, “It’s my character. I’m not sorry about it, but I do regret the energy wasted.”

Edwards says that he has not so much mellowed as found ways around confrontations. Which didn’t prevent him from filing a $25-million lawsuit in February against MGM-Pathe over the studio’s refusal to finance another “Pink Panther” film with Gerard Depardieu playing Inspector Clouseau’s illegitimate son.

This combativeness apparently doesn’t carry over into his work with actors or crews. “I fell in love with making movies with Blake,” says Richard Mulligan, who has appeared in four of his films. “It’s a very relaxed, easy day. He comes fully prepared, but he embraces anything you come up with.”

JoBeth Williams appreciates his behavior toward women. “I always felt he took me very seriously as a person. Some male directors look at you like a sweet little actress--do your job and shut up. Blake treats women with high regard and interest.”

On an Edwards set, practical jokes abound, actors say. Lemmon reports Edwards drove studio head Jack Warner crazy while making “Days of Wine and Roses” by shooting innumerable gag scenes he had no intention of leaving in the final cut.

“Afterwards, I realized making such a heavy drama about two people who were roaring drunks would have been unbearable without his practical jokes.”

Certainly, the relaxed practical joker on the set is at odds with his emotional life off the set.

Edwards has been in psychoanalysis or therapy for a good part of his adult life. He even wrote two scripts--”That’s Life” and “The Man Who Loved Women”--with his analyst, Dr. Milton Wexler.

But it was at a group therapy session about a dozen years ago that he says he received the biggest shock of his life. In listening to the story of a successful woman whose life in many ways paralleled his own, he realized that his own life, to that point, had not been worth the struggle.

“That was a horrendous shock to me, a moment of truth. I thought, ‘All those years and it wasn’t worth it?’ I went home about as depressed as I’d been in a long time. I then faced the issue: OK, are you going to dwell on the fact everything up to now hasn’t been worth it or get on with trying to make something of the time you have left?

“Of course, the answer was to try to make something out of life so at the last moment, if asked was it worth it, I’ll say, ‘Well, maybe.’ ”

Asked to give a progress report, Edwards says he’s “getting closer to the maybe. I have more forgiveness, more humanity, maybe greater bouts of depression as a result, but I’m begining to see just a glimmer of what I consider to be what this (life) is all about. In the final analysis, I really am the master of my own destiny.”

For Edwards, true happiness may lie in burying himself in work. Presently, he is trying to launch a film based on Saul Bellow’s novel “Henderson the Rain King,” for which John Briley (“Gandhi”) has written a script, while simultaneously preparing to direct the first six episodes of “Millie,” his wife’s TV sitcom for Viacom and ABC.

Then there’s his family life. Along with their grown children from previous marriages, he and Julie Andrews have adopted two Vietnam war orphans who are now teen-agers. He and his wife are actively involved in Operation America, an international relief agency, and charities dedicated to helping children.

It’s obvious in talking to Edwards and those who know him that his wife has been the stabilizing influence in his life.

“Julie doesn’t stand for any b.s.,” he says. “She won’t let me get away with things like my hypochondria. She’s a tough one to follow. But you either follow or don’t. And there are too many interesting things about her that make me want to keep following. She’s very steadying. She’s my main sail. I’ve been running around with jibs and spinnakers most of my life.”

Edwards stops dead, astonished at what he’s said. “I’ve never used that analogy before! Where did that come from? I’m not a big sailing man. But she is my main sail--you run that big sheet up when you need steadying. She’s my big sheet.”

How will his wife react to reading his description of her as a big sheet?

Edwards smiles. “Just make sure you spell it right.”