Edward Sedgwick

Edward Martin Sedgwick (November 7, 1889 – May 7, 1953) was an American film director, writer, actor and producer.

Early life Edward Martin Sedgwick was born in Galveston, Texas, the son of Edward Sedgwick Sr. and Josephine Walker, both stage actors. At the age of four, young Edward Sedgwick joined his show business family in what was then the Sedgwick Comedy Company, a vaudeville act, doing a "singing speciality". with promising short-subject director Fred Zinnemann. Sedgwick was reassigned to a more suitable project, the Laurel and Hardy comedy Air Raid Wardens. It was his last assignment for three years, but he remained on the MGM payroll, sharing an office with the almost-as-idle Buster Keaton.

Lucille Ball, under contract to MGM, spent much of her free time with Sedgwick and Keaton. When the studio remade its 1936 hit Libeled Lady (as Easy to Wed, 1946), Ball was one of the stars, and she recruited Sedgwick and Keaton to stage a physical-comedy sequence involving duck hunting.

Sedgwick next worked on the Red Skelton comedy A Southern Yankee (1948). Two sources differ on Sedgwick's participation. Author Michael Zmuda wrote that S. Sylvan Simon directed the film in its entirety, despite Sedgwick's screen credit. Another source, Keaton biographer James Curtis, says that Simon had indeed filmed A Southern Yankee in its entirety, but it previewed so poorly that producer Paul Jones asked Buster Keaton and Edward Sedgwick to add new gags, and writer Nat Perrin to insert their material into a revised script. Between them they fashioned 40 pages of sight gags, including a horse-and-buggy chase and a Civil War skirmish (which Red Skelton halts by carrying both Union and Confederate flags). Sedgwick directed the retakes, which saved the film, and received sole credit as director.

In September 1950 Sedgwick and Keaton worked on the Red Skelton comedy Excuse My Dust (released 1951), assisting director Roy Rowland. It was their final project for MGM; dozens of longtime employees, including Sedgwick and Keaton, were released by the studio as an economy measure in 1950. Sedgwick's final released film was Universal's Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm (filmed 1952, released 1953), featuring a Keatonesque railroad chase.

New opportunity In 1952 Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, then enjoying enormous popularity in their I Love Lucy television series, pursued the idea of compiling a few first-season episodes into a full-length feature film. Ball asked her old friend Ed Sedgwick to direct new scenes connecting the footage already prepared for television. Sedgwick was careful to make the new scenes match the old ones and turned in an efficient job. Ball and Arnaz named him a senior officer in their new Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Film Company.

The completed feature was previewed successfully in a Bakersfield, California theater. Ball and Arnaz were set to release the film through United Artists until MGM intervened—the studio had already signed Ball and Arnaz for a new feature film, and didn't want the I Love Lucy film to blunt the MGM film's potential appeal. Ball and Arnaz reluctantly shelved their own film, and Edward Sedgwick's final picture went unreleased. Decades later it was rediscovered, and released to home video in 2010 under the title I Love Lucy: The Movie.

Death On May 7, 1953, Sedgwick died of a heart attack at his home in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, at the age of 63. He is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City.

Rediscovered film Sedgwick's 1923 silent film The First Degree was long thought to have been a lost film until a complete copy was discovered at the Chicago Film Archives. Chicago Film Archives has preserved and digitally transferred the film.

Filmography

The Haunted Pajamas (1917) Fantômas (1920) Live Wires (1921) The Rough Diamond (1921) Bar Nothing (1921) Boomerang Justice (1922) The Bearcat (1922) The Flaming Hour (1922) Chasing the Moon (1922) Do and Dare (1922) Out of Luck (1923) Romance Land (1923) Single Handed (1923) The Gentleman from America (1923) Dead Game (1923) Shootin' for Love (1923) The First Degree (1923) Blinky (1923) The Ramblin' Kid (1923) The Thrill Chaser (1923) Hook and Ladder (1924) Ride for Your Life (1924) 40-Horse Hawkins (1924) Broadway or Bust (1924) The Sawdust Trail (1924) Hit and Run (1924) The Ridin' Kid from Powder River (1924) The Hurricane Kid (1925) The Saddle Hawk (1925) Let 'er Buck (1925) Lorraine of the Lions (1925) The Phantom of the Opera (1925) Two-Fisted Jones (1925) The Runaway Express (1926) Tin Hats (1926) The Flaming Frontier (1926) Under Western Skies (1926) There You Are! (1926) Slide, Kelly, Slide (1927) The Bugle Call (1927) Spring Fever (1927) West Point (1927) Circus Rookies (1928) The Cameraman (1928) Spite Marriage (1929) Free and Easy (1930) Estrellados (1930) Doughboys (1930) Remote Control (1930) Parlor, Bedroom and Bath (1931) Maker of Men (1931) A Dangerous Affair (1931) The Big Shot (1931) The Passionate Plumber (1932) Speak Easily (1932) What! No Beer? (1933) Horse Play (1933) Saturday's Millions (1933) The Poor Rich (1934) I'll Tell the World (1934) Death on the Diamond (1934) Here Comes the Groom (1934) Father Brown, Detective (1934) Murder in the Fleet (1935) The Virginia Judge (1935) Mr. Cinderella (1936) Pick a Star (1937) Riding on Air (1937) Fit for a King (1937) The Gladiator (1938) Burn 'Em Up O'Connor (1939) Beware Spooks! (1939) So You Won't Talk (1940) Air Raid Wardens (1943) Easy to Wed (1946) A Southern Yankee (1948) Excuse My Dust (1951) Ma and Pa Kettle Back on the Farm (1951) I Love Lucy (1953)