Harry Edwards

Who was Harry Edwards?

Harry Edwards was a Canadian-born American film director and actor best known for his work from the 1910s to the 1950s.

He once worked for the now largely forgotten L-KO Kompany during the silent era. In his later years at Columbia Pictures, Edwards established a reputation as the studio's worst director. Both Vera Vague and the Three Stooges requested they not work with him.

He is best remembered for his collaboration with comedian Harry Langdon. He worked with Langdon in the 1920s in some of his best short films, and directed one of Langdon's best known films, the feature Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, made in 1926. Langdon became somewhat swell-headed with success and later dispensed with Edwards and Frank Capra, who also directed some of Langdon's most successful films, deciding he could direct himself. Langdon's decision proved to be a costly one as his career declined, though he later reconciled with Edwards and worked with him again in various short comedies in the 1930s and 1940s until Langdon's death in 1944.

Shortly after directing his first television production, Edwards died of carbon tetrachloride poisoning on May 26, 1952.