Blake Edwards dark psychological film about the effects of alcoholism on a previously happy marriage, starred Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick. It has been described as "perhaps the most unsparing tract against drink that Hollywood has yet produced, more pessimistic than Billy Wilder's "The Lost Weekend"". The film gave another major boost to Edwards's reputation as an important director. "Darling Lili" star Julie Andrews married Edwards in 1969. While a few critics such as George Morris thought the film a major picture ("it synthesizes every major Edwards theme: the disappearance of gallantry and honor, the tension between appearances and reality, and the
Blake Edwards starring Peter Sellers as the inept Inspector Clouseau. The relationship between the director and the lead actor was considered a fruitful, yet complicated one, with many disagreements during production. At various times in their film relationship, "he more than once swore off Sellers" as too hard to direct. However, in his later years, he admitted that working with Sellers was often irresistible: Five of those films involved Edwards and Sellers in original material; those films being "The Pink Panther" (1963), "A Shot in the Dark" (1964), "The Return of the Pink Panther" (1975), "The Pink Panther Strikes Again" (1976), and