Henry Mancini (1924-1994)
Among light music fans and film-buffs the now familiar
handful of popular tunes and ‘standards’ left by
composer, song-writer, arranger pianist and conductor
Henry Mancini are tinged with the halo of nostalgia.
The recipient of twenty Grammies, four Oscars,
eighteen Oscar nominations and various other ‘lifetime’
awards, Enrico (‘Henry’) Nicola Mancini was born in
Cleveland, Ohio on 16th April 1924, and grew up in
West Aquilippa, Philadelphia. A proficient multiinstrumentalist,
from an early age he was an adept
pianist and also took up the flute (the latter courtesy of
his steelworker father, a music-lover who was himself
an amateur piccolo-player in the Aqilippa, Philadelphiabased
Sons of Italy Band). During his early training at
the Carnegie Institute Music School in Pittsburgh,
Henry was also steadily drawn towards jazz and big
band and developed a keen interest in arranging. In
1942 he entered the New York Juilliard Graduate
School but by 1943 was drafted into the US Air Force,
where he remained until 1946, primarily in the capacity
of military band musician.
After demobilisation Mancini became pianistarranger
with Tex Beneke’s recently re-vamped Glenn
Miller Orchestra and from 1947, in Los Angeles,
worked variously as a nightclub freelancer and radio
staff arranger, undertaking advanced training in
composition in his spare time with, among others,
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968) and Ernst
Krenek (1900-1991). In 1951 he joined the staff of
Universal Pictures, working under music director
Joseph Gershenson (1904-1988) in the dual capacity of
arranger and composer. His unique talents were thus
brought to bear on various genres of film, ranging from
musicals including the major Hollywood biopics The
Glenn Miller Story, which earned him his first Academy
Award nomination, in 1954, and The Benny Goodman
Story (1955) to B-westerns (Four Guns To The Border,
1954), slapstick (Abbott And Costello Meet The
Keystone Cops, 1955), gangster comedies (Mister Cory,
starring Tony Curtis, 1957) and monster movies. In the
latter category his mastery of ‘suspense atmosphere’
produced backgrounds for such titles as The Creature
From The Black Lagoon (1954), Tarantula and Francis
In The Haunted House (both 1956) and Man Afraid
(1957) and by the time he contributed to the Citizen
Kane-inspired The Great Man (starring José Ferrer,
1956) and the classic Orson Welles ‘late film noir’
masterpiece Touch Of Evil (Mancini’s first complete
scoring, in 1958) he had evolved, in the words of
Nicolas Slonimsky, into “one of the most adroit
composers of melodramatic music”.
As a composer in his own right Mancini first
reached a wider audience in 1959 when, recently
released from contract by Universal (their association
continued freelance), he was commissioned to write a
Hollywood-style ‘cool jazz’ score for the American hit
television series Peter Gunn. Another, equally
successful series, Mr. Lucky, followed a year later, and
Mancini would thereafter maintain a close professional
link, working on both television and more than twenty
big-screen engagements, with the creator of the series,
director, producer and screenwriter Blake Edwards
(born 1922). His subsequent television series and film
scores included NBC Mystery Movie (1971), Remington
Steele (1982), The Thorn Birds (1983), Fear (1990) and
Never Forget (1991). In total Mancini would receive
five television awards.
Mancini’s other film-scores include, as partcomposer
or arranger, Lost In Alaska (an Abbott and
Costello comedy, Mancini’s entrée to Universal, in
1952), It Came From Outer Space (1953), The Far
Country (1954) and Flood Tide (1958). As principal
composer his credits include High Time (20th Century
Fox, 1960; Mancini scored, but the Oscar nomination
went to Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn for the song ‘The
Second Time Around’, sung by Bing Crosby),
Breakfast At Tiffany’s (Paramount, 1961; two Oscars –
for best score and best song ‘Moon River’, lyrics by
Johnny Mercer. Mancini’s own film album was a
twelve-week No.1.), The Great Imposter (United
Artists, 1961), Days Of Wine And Roses (Warner, 1962;
Oscar for title-song, lyrics again by Mercer), Hatari
(Paramount, 1962; this included the famous boogiewoogie-
inflected ‘Baby Elephant Walk’), The Pink
Panther (United Artists, 1963; Oscar nomination for
Mancini for the theme – a contemporary Top Forty hit
single for saxophonist Plas Johnson, and later a
favourite accompaniment to cartoons), Charade
(Universal, 1963), A Shot In The Dark (United Artists,
1964), The Great Race (Warner, 1965 – included the
song ‘The Sweetheart Tree’), Two For The Road (20th
Century Fox, 1967), The White Dawn (Paramount,
1973), The Return Of The Pink Panther (United Artists,
1975), ‘10’ (Warner, 1979; Oscar nomination for the
song ‘It’s Easy To Say’), Victor/Victoria (MGM, 1982;
Academy Award for score – lyrics by Leslie Bricusse;
adapted for Broadway; produced posthumously, in
1995), The Man Who Loved Women (Columbia, 1983),
Life Force (a 1985 vampire saga; for Cannon, GB),
That’s Life (Columbia, 1986; Oscar nomination for
song ‘Life In A Looking Glass’), The Glass Menagerie
(Cineplex, 1987), Blind Date (Tri-Star, 1987), Switch
(Columbia, 1991), Tom And Jerry: The Movie (a
cartoon, for First Independent, 1992) and Son Of The
Pink Panther (United Artists, 1993).
In parallel with his work in films and television,
Mancini enjoyed a prolific and successful career as a
commercial recording artist, primarily for RCA-Victor,
maintaining until the mid-1960s something of a pop
celebrity status. After about 1965 he continued,
however, to write dramatic background music for films,
ranging from box-office ‘top-grossers’ to abject
failures. As a conductor or guest pianist (and conductor)
his impact was more unequivocal; on tour he averaged
fifty concert appearances a year and charted, between
1959 and 1977 with 38 LP albums, eighteen of which
were bestsellers that made the Top Forty. Among his
biggest recording successes were the hit-single of his
own arrangement of the love-theme from Nino Rota’s
film-score to Zeffirelli’s Romeo And Juliet (a two-week
No.1 for Mancini in 1969) and his album of the score of
Alec North’s The Long Hot Summer (for MCA, 1958).
While innovative, the concert suite for orchestra,
Beaver Valley ’37, completed about 1970, harked back
to earlier Mancini themes.
Henry Mancini died in Beverley Hills, Los
Angeles, California, on 14th June 1994.
Peter Dempsey