Mancini, Henry [EnricoNicola] Page 1 of 4

Mancini, Henry [Enrico Nicola]

(b Cleveland, OH, 16 April 1924; d Beverley Hills, CA, 14 June 1994).
American arranger, composer, conductor and pianist. Raised in West
Aliquippa in Philadelphia, he learnt the flute and piano as a child. In his early
teens he developed an interest in jazz, especially music of the big bands; he
began to teach himself arranging, then had lessons with the theatre conductor
and arranger Max Adkins in Pittsburgh. In 1942 he enrolled at the Julliard
Graduate School, but was in the Air Force after less than a year and served
until 1946, mostly as a member of military bands. He then became a pianist
and arranger for the Glenn Miller-Tex Beneke Orchestra, in whose employ he
met the vocalist Virginia O’Connor, with whom he moved to Los Angeles and
married in 1947. For the next five years Mancini worked freelance, mostly as
an arranger for dance-bands and night-club acts, also composing music for
radio programmes. He studied composition privately with Castelnuovo-
Tedesco, Krenek and Sendrey.
In 1952 Mancini joined the staff of Universal, under Joseph Gershenson (the
studio's music director), and alongside such experienced men as Hans Salter,
Frank Skinner, Herman Stein and David Tamkin. He was employed as both an
arranger and a composer, and worked on films of many types, including
musicals (notably The Glen Miller Story) and many routine comedies,
mysteries, ‘B’ westerns, and monster pictures. Gradually he was given
increased responsibility, and in 1958 he worked with Orson Welles on Touch
of Evil, for which he composed an effective and innovative score. In the same
year, however, Universal let most of its music staff go. Now on his own,
Mancini was quickly hired by Blake Edwards (another budding talent at the
studio) as the composer for a new television series, Peter Gunn. A recording of
Mancini's theme music for the show became a hit, as did his music for
Edwards’ next series, Mr. Lucky. Thereafter, from the early 1960s until the late
80s, Mancini composed an average of three or four film scores per year,
including more than two dozen that were written, produced and directed by
Edwards.
Simultaneously Mancini developed a successful career as a recording and
concert artist, and he reworked many of his film scores into best-selling
commercial albums, most of them issued by RCA. However, these albums
normally contained commercial arrangements of the main themes and
consequently are not reliable indicators of his gifts as a dramatic composer.
Often he gave 50 or more concerts each year as a guest pianist and/or
conductor of bands and ‘pops’ orchestras. Some of his later albums (including
recordings with James Galway and Luciano Pavarotti) were milestones of the
popular/classical ‘crossover’ approach. He received four Academy Awards
(two for best score, two for best song), 20 Grammy Awards and several career
achievement awards. In 1989 he co-wrote an engaging and informative
memoir.
Mancini's greatest influence as a Hollywood composer was felt from 1958 to
about 1965, the period when he pioneered fundamentally new styles. He made
imaginative use of jazz and popular idioms, which he applied not only to
detective stories and film noir (building upon convention) but also to
sophisticated romantic comedy, slapstick and other genres. He became known
for well-crafted and dramatically apt theme songs, notably those for Breakfast
at Tiffany's (‘Moon River’), The Days of Wine and Roses, Charade and Darling
Lili (‘Whistling Away the Dark’) – and for witty instrumental pieces, as for

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Hatari!, The Pink Panther and The Great Race. In general he favoured subtlety
and restraint, and liked to score somewhat ‘against’ the scene. For example in
Breakfast at Tiffany's the first kiss between the romantic leads (Audrey
Hepburn and George Peppard) is underplayed, with a soft, shimmering
tremolo that evaporates into silence; and the ‘Baby Elephant Walk’ in Hatari!
matches an unexpected variant of a boogie-woogie for the animal's
movements. Repeatedly Mancini came up with novel instrumental effects (one
trademark being his fondness for alto and/or bass flutes), and he was equally
skilled in writing for orchestra, jazz band and small ensembles. In 1962 he
wrote and published a guide to orchestration which was widely used by
arrangers for years.
After 1965, notwithstanding his celebrity as a ‘pop’ artist, Mancini continued to
compose dramatic music for many serious films that either failed at the box
office or enjoyed only moderate success. Some fine examples are Two for the
Road, The Molly Maguires, The White Dawn, That's Life! and The Glass
Menagerie (and also Hitchcock's Frenzy, for which in 1968 he drafted a score
that was rejected as being too serious). His scores for two of the later Edwards
films, ‘10’ and Victor/Victoria, again brought him popular acclaim. The songs
for the latter film (lyrics by Leslie Bricusse) included Mancini's most familiar
trademarks: a poignantly lyric waltz, ‘Crazy World’, and a lively band number,
‘Le Jazz Hot’. The film's gender-bending ambiguities (a favourite theme of
Edwards throughout his career) has made it enduringly topical, and led to its
adaptation as a stage musical which opened on Broadway in 1995: Mancini,
suffering from cancer, died while the work was still in development; several
other musicians thus had a hand in the revised score, but his songs, including
several new ones, constitute the heart of the production.
WORKS
(selective list)

Collection: Henry Mancini Songbook, ed. M. Okun (n.p., 1981)

Film scores as co-composer and/or arranger (director in parentheses): Lost in
Alaska, 1952 (J. Yarbrough); Has Anybody Seen my Gal? (D. Sirk), 1952; All I
Desire (Sirk), 1953; It Came from Outer Space (J. Arnold), 1953; It Happens Every
Thursday (J. Pevney), 1953; Law and Order (N. Juran), 1953; The Lone Hand (G.
Sherman), 1953; Walking my Baby Back Home (L. Bacon), 1953; The Creature from
the Black Lagoon (Arnold), 1954; The Far Country (A. Mann), 1954; Four Guns to
the Border (R. Carlson), 1954; The Glenn Miller Story (Mann), 1954; Johnny Dark
(Sherman), 1954; Ma and Pa Kettle at Home (C. Lamont), 1954; So This is Paris (E.
Lubitsch), 1954; This Island Earth (J. Newman), 1954; Tanganyika (A. de Toth),
1954; Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops (Lamont), 1955; Ain’t
Misbehavin’ (E. Buzzell), 1955; The Benny Goodman Story (V. Davies), 1955; The
Private War of Major Benson (J. Hopper), 1955; The Spoilers (J. Hibbs), 1955;
Tarantula (Arnold), 1955; Behind the High Wall (A. Biberman), 1956; A Day of Fury
(H. Jones), 1956; Francis in the Haunted House (Lamont), 1956; The Great Man (J.
Ferrer), 1956; Rock, Pretty Baby (R. Bartlett), 1956; Man Afraid (H. Keller), 1957;
Mister Cory (B. Edwards), 1957; Flood Tide (Biberman), 1958; Operation Petticoat
(Edwards), 1959
Film scores as principal or sole composer (director in parentheses): Touch of Evil
(O. Welles), 1958; High Time (Edwards), 1960; Bachelor in Paradise (Arnold), 1961
[incl. title song; lyrics, M. David]; Breakfast at Tiffany's (Edwards), 1961 [incl. Moon
River; lyrics, J. Mercer]; The Great Impostor (R. Mulligan), 1961; Days of Wine and
Roses (Edwards), 1962 [incl. title song; lyrics, Mercer]; Experiment in Terror
(Edwards), 1962; Hatari! (H. Hawks), 1962 [incl. Baby Elephant Walk]; Mr Hobbs

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Takes a Vacation (H. Koster), 1962; Charade (S. Donen), 1963 [incl. title song;
lyrics, J. Livingston and R. Evans]; The Pink Panther (Edwards), 1963; Soldier in the
Rain (R. Nelson), 1963; Dear Heart (D. Mann), 1964 [incl. title song; lyrics, J.
Livingston and R. Evans]; Man's Favorite Sport? (Hawks), 1964; A Shot in the Dark
(Edwards), 1964; The Great Race (Edwards), 1965 [incl. The Sweetheart Tree;
lyrics, J. Mercer]; Arabesque (Donen), 1966; Moment to Moment (M. LeRoy), 1966;
What Did you Do in the War, Daddy? (Edwards), 1966; Gunn (Edwards), 1967; The
Party (Edwards), 1967; Two for the Road (Donen), 1967; Wait Until Dark (T.
Young), 1967; Gaily, Gaily (N. Jewison), 1969; Me, Natalie (F. Coe), 1969;
Sunflower (V. De Sica), 1969; Darling Lili (Edwards), 1970 [incl. Whistling Away the
Dark; lyrics, Mercer]; The Hawaiians (T. Gries), 1970; The Molly Maguires (M. Ritt),
1970; The Night Visitor (L. Benedek), 1971; Sometimes a Great Notion (P.
Newman), 1971 [incl. All His Children; lyrics, A. and M. Bergman]; Oklahoma Crude
(S. Kramer), 1973; The Thief Who Came to Dinner (B. Yorkin), 1973; The Girl from
Petrovka (R.E. Miller), 1974; The White Dawn (P. Kaufman), 1974; The Great
Waldo Pepper (G.R. Hill), 1975; The Return of the Pink Panther (Edwards), 1975;
Alex and the Gypsy (J. Korty), 1976; The Pink Panther Strikes Again (Edwards),
1976 [incl. Come to Me; lyrics, D. Black]; Silver Streak (A. Hiller), 1976; W.C. Fields
and Me (Hiller), 1976; House Calls (H. Zieff), 1978; Revenge of the Pink Panther
(Edwards), 1978; Who is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? (T. Kotcheff);
‘10’ (Edwards), 1979 [incl. It's Easy to Say; lyrics, R. Wells]; A Change of Seasons
(R. Lang), 1980; Little Miss Marker (W. Bernstein), 1980
Mommie Dearest (F. Perry), 1981; F.O.B. (Edwards), 1981; Trail of the Pink Panther
(Edwards), 1982; Victor/Victoria (Edwards), 1982 [lyrics, L. Bricusse; rev. for stage,
1995]; The Man Who Loved Women (Edwards), 1983; Harry and Son (Newman),
1984; Lifeforce (T. Hooper), 1985; Santa Claus (J. Szwarc), 1985; A Fine Mess
(Edwards), 1986; The Great Mouse Detective (J. Musker), 1986; That's Life!
(Edwards), 1986 [incl. Life in a Looking Glass; lyrics, Bricusse]; Blind Date
(Edwards), 1987; The Glass Menagerie (Newman), 1987; Sunset (Edwards, 1988;
Without a Clue (T. Eberhardt), 1988; Skin Deep (Edwards), 1989; Welcome Home
(F.J. Schaffner), 1989; Ghost Dad (S. Poitier), 1990; Switch (Edwards), 1991; Son
of the Pink Panther, 1993
TV series, mini-series and films incl. Peter Gunn, 1958; Mr. Lucky, 1959; NBC
Mystery Movie, 1971; The Shadow Box, 1980; Remington Steele, 1982; The Thorn
Birds, 1983; Peter Gunn, 1989; Fear, 1990; Never Forget, 1991
Orch: Beaver Valley ’37 Suite, ?1970
Some MSS, notes and sketches in A-LAuc

BIBLIOGRAPHY
GroveA (M. Marks) [incl. further bibliography]
H. Mancini: Sounds and Scores: a Practical Guide to Professional
Orchestration (Northridge, CA, 1963, 2/1973)
H. Mancini and G. Lees: Did They Mention the Music? (Chicago, 1989)
W. Darby and J. Du Bois: ‘Henry Mancini’, American Film Music: Major
Composers, Techniques and Trends, 1915–1990 (Jefferson, NC, 1990)
S. Elhaïk and D. Mangodt: ‘A Filmography/Discography of Henry Mancini’,
Soundtrack! [Belgium] (1990), no.34, pp.12–15; no.35, pp.37–43
S. Fry: ‘The Film and Television Music of Henry Mancini: a Selective
Annotated Bibliography of the Literature’, The Cue Sheet [Los Angeles],
ix/2 (1992), 27–33
R.S. Brown: Overtones and Undertones: Reading Film Music (Berkeley, 1994)
J. Burlingame: TV's Biggest Hits: the Story of Television Themes from
‘Dragnet’ to ‘Friends’ (New York, 1996)
G. Marmorstein: ‘A Passing Breeze Filled with Memories: Henry Mancini,

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from Universal to International’, Hollywood Rhapsody: Movie Music and its

Makers 1900 to 1975 (New York, 1997), 322–35
J. Smith: The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music (New
York, 1998)
MARTIN MARKS/R

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