MOVIE MUSIC UK

Composer Henry Mancini died ten years ago today, on June 14, 1994, at his home in Los Angeles, California, after a battle with pancreatic cancer. He was 70 years old.

Enrico Nicola Mancini, nicknamed Henry or Hank, was born in April 1924 in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Italian immigrants, and raised in a rural steelworking town in nearby Pennsylvania. He showed early musical promise and studied at the Juilliard School, but his education was interrupted by World War II, during which he served in the Army and worked with the Glenn Miller Air Force Band. After the war, Mancini joined Universal-International’s music department, where he gained experience scoring dozens of B-movies, including classics such as Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954).

Mancini’s big break came in 1958 when he collaborated with director Blake Edwards on the television series Peter Gunn, which featured a groundbreaking jazz score that became a hit in its own right. Their partnership continued through numerous films, with Mancini’s music often becoming as iconic as the films themselves. He won an Oscar for scoring Edwards’s film Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 1961, and co-wrote the iconic song “Moon River” for lead actress Audrey Hepburn. He won another Oscar in 1962 for the title song for Edwards’s film Days of Wine and Roses, received an Oscar nomination for timeless slinky jazzy main theme from The Pink Panther in 1964, and earned critical acclaim for his work on several other Edwards-directed films including The Great Race (1965), Darling Lili (1970), 10 (1979), and Victor/Victoria (1982), among many others.

Mancini had a rare ability to blend classical technique with contemporary popular styles, from swing and jazz to lush romantic ballads. Throughout the 1960s and 70s Mancini combined his scoring career with an equally successful parallel career as a songwriter, recording artist, touring conductor, and media personality, which made him one the most famous and popular American classical musicians of his era. His songs were recorded by the most popular vocalists of the day – Andy Williams, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Johnny Mathis, Tony Bennett, dozens of others – and many of them topped the charts.

Mancini was nominated for 72 Grammy Awards, winning 20 between 1958 and 1970. His album of music from Peter Gunn was the first-ever winner of the Grammy for Album of the Year, and he was awarded not only for the jazz arrangements of his own scores such as Hatari (1962) and Charade (1963), but also for his pop album arrangements of scores by other composers, such as Nino Rota’s Romeo and Juliet, Francis Lai’s Love Story, and Mikis Theodorakis’s Z. He also composed concert works, wrote two autobiographies, and was a strong advocate for music education and supported many arts initiatives throughout his life.

Among Mancini’s other successful and popular scores are titles such as Touch of Evil (1958), Arabesque (1966), Wait Until Dark (1967), Two for the Road (1967), Me Natalie (1969), Sunflower (1970), Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1972), The Thorn Birds (1983), Lifeforce (1985), The Great Mouse Detective (1986), Blind Date (1987), and numerous Pink Panther sequels. He also wrote television themes for shows such as Mr. Lucky (1959), Newhart (1982), and Remington Steele (1982). His last film credit was for Son of the Pink Panther (1993), the ninth film in the series, which was released a few months prior to his death.

He is survived by his wife, singer Ginny O’Connor, and their three children, including daughter Monica Mancini, a vocalist who frequently performed his music.