Edward Bernds (July 12, 1905 - May 20, 2000) was an American film director born in Chicago, Illinois.
While in his junior year in Lake View High School, he and several friends formed a small radio clique and obtained amateur licenses. In the early 1920s there was considerable prestige for an amateur operator to have commercial radio licenses, and Bernds was in a good position to get into broadcasting when he graduated in 1923, a year when radio stations began popping up all over Chicago. He found employment — at age 20 — as chief operator at Chicago's WENR.
When talking pictures burst onto the scene in the late 1920s, Bernds and broadcast operators like him relocated to Hollywood to work as sound technicians in "the talkies." After a brief stint at United Artists, Bernds quit and went to work at Columbia, where he worked as sound man on many of Frank Capra's '30s classics. He soon established himself as Columbia's best recording technician.
In 1945, Bernds became a screenwriter and director, first for the Three Stooges short subjects. His first effort with the team was A Bird in the Head, which featuring an ailing Curly Howard, requiring Bernds to direct around Curly's illness. When Shemp Howard replaced his brother Curly as the third, Stooge, it breathed new life into the Stooges' films, and allowed Bernds to add new flair and wit to the team's antics.
Bernds also began directing the feature-length Blondie comedies with Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake. While at Columbia, Bernds usually worked for producer Hugh McCollum; when the Columbia shorts department downsized in 1952, McCollum was fired and Bernds quit the studio, out of loyalty to McCollum.
An assignment at the Allied Artists studio, directing action features starring Stanley Clements, led Bernds into Allied Artists' breadwinning series starring The Bowery Boys. Bernds directed Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, and company as though he was still working with the Three Stooges; the Bernds efforts in the series have the most slapstick content.
Bernds has the distinction of receiving an Oscar nomination by mistake. In 1956 the Academy nominated him and co-writer Elwood Ullman for the screen story to High Society. The Academy actually intended the nomination to be for the big-budget Frank Sinatra-Bing Crosby musical. Bernds and Ullman did make a film in 1955 called High Society — but theirs was a low-budget feature with The Bowery Boys. Graciously and voluntarily, Bernds and Ullman withdrew their nomination, though it still stands in the record books.
Bernds graduated to dramatic features in the late 1950s, although he was reunited with the Three Stooges in the 1960s for their feature films, and the live-action portions of their TV cartoons. He and Ullman also collaborated on an Elvis Presley feature for Allied Artists, Tickle Me.
Bernds's autobiography is "Mr. Bernds Goes to Hollywood," ISBN 0810836025, published in 1999. It details the earlier stages of his career, before he was a director. Bernds's directorial career is chronicled in "The Columbia Comedy Shorts," ISBN 0786405775, first published in 1986; Bernds wrote the foreword and is quoted throughout.
Edward Bernds died on May 20, 2000 in Van Nuys, California at age 94.