One of the under-appreciated Kings of Film Comedy, Blake Edwards did “Pink Panther” movies, and “10,” “Victor/Victoria” and the pretty good skewering of Hollywood, “SOB.”

The Panther movies are a grand thing to be remembered for, kid-friendly slapstick “sex farces” that immortalized Peter Sellers and thrilled generations, including mine. I think he was the second movie maker I remembered by name. And Hitchcock was first only because he tried a lot harder to be a household name.

He was “politically incorrect” before that was “cool,” casting Sellers — who considered it a part of his repertoire to play Asian and South Asian characters as well as Italian and French ones. Edwards indulged this most famously in the hilarious Sellers farce “The Party,” about an Indian extra showing up at the wrap party and bringing mayhem with him.

Edwards kept pushing boundaries and bending the culture. The first “gay” movie millions of Americans flocked to? “Victor/Victoria.” A midlife crisis about the emptiness of an idealized, much-younger (“Trophy wife” age) bombshell? Bo Derek was the perfect “10,” and Dudley Moore the perfect sap to worship her…from afar. Because reality in that May-October romance is a lot less than it seems.

Edwards married Julie Andrews and worked and worked until he gave her the grand comeback she deserved.

Robert Preston, James Garner, William Holden, John Ritter, Bruce Willis and Bette Midler, a LOT of actors worked with Blake Edwards, a LOT of them more than once. They knew a safe bet when they saw one.

No, you probably don’t remember Ritter in the sex comedy “Skin Deep.” But the blackout nude “glow in the dark condoms” scene in that may have been the biggest laugh I’ve ever heard in a theater.

Musicals, Westerns (“Wild Rovers”), Edwards did it all and did it all well.

An “American Master?” Damned straight. About time they got around to him. Aug. 27 on PBS.