Edd Griles, Director of Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” Music Video, Dies at 78
Edd Griles, who directed Cyndi Lauper in the bouncy music video for “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” the singer’s breakthrough hit and a wildly popular tune in the early days of MTV, has died. He was 78.
Griles died Tuesday at the Actors Fund Home in Englewood, New Jersey, after a long battle with Alzheimer’s, his daughter, Allyson Monson, told The Hollywood Reporter.
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The New York native also directed music videos for Huey Lewis and the News (“The Heart of Rock & Roll,” “If This Is It,” “Stuck with You”); Eddie Murphy (“Party All the Time”); Lee Greenwood (“God Bless the USA”); Peter Wolf (“Come as You Are”); Sheena Easton (“Jimmy Mack”); Deep Purple and Rainbow; and others.
He also produced the inaugural MTV Video Music Awards in 1984; the first ESPY Awards in 1993; and from 1996-99, the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants.
Griles began directing music videos in 1979, and he did one for a band called Blue Angel, which included Lauper. When that group split, he and the Brooklyn-born singer teamed for “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” to promote Lauper’s first major single as a solo artist and the lead single from her debut studio album, 1983’s She’s So Unusual.
The video for what became a feminist anthem was shot on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the summer of 1983 and premiered on MTV in December 1983. Lauper’s mother, Catrine, was her mom in the video, while the flamboyant pro wrestler Captain Lou Albano portrayed her dad.
(Griles and producer Ken Walz had developed a relationship with Vince McMahon’s World Wrestling Federation when they attempted to make a movie set in the world of pro wrestling.)
“Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” which made it to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in March 1984, won the first-ever VMA for best female video, and it passed 1 billion views on YouTube in January 2022.
Griles also directed music videos for Lauper’s “Time After Time” — he was nominated as director of the year at the VMAs for that — “She Bop” and “Hole in My Heart.”
Born on Nov. 18, 1945, Edward Mori Griles graduated from Flushing High School in Queens and the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. He started out in advertising in 1965 as an art director at DDB Worldwide, then joined the National Hockey League in 1972 as editor and creative director of Goal Magazine and executive producer of NHL Films.
Griles’ directing and producing résumé was not limited to music videos.
For Shelley Duvall‘s Tall Tales & Legends in 1985, he directed the episode “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” which starred Ed Begley Jr., Charles Durning and Beverly D’Angelo, and he was a producer on a 1988 CBS adaptation of Herman Wouk‘s The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial that was directed by Robert Altman.
He also created and produced awards shows for automobiles and bikes.
In addition to his daughter, survivors include his wife, Danielle; his son-in-law, David; and his grandchildren, Max and Carly.
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