HENRY MANCINI
Name: Henry Mancini
Birth name: Enrico Nicola Mancini
Born: 16 April 1924 Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.
Died: 14 June 1994 Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Henry Mancini (April 16, 1924 - June 14, 1994) was an Academy Award winning
American composer, conductor and arranger of Italian descent. He is remembered
particularly for being a composer of film and television scores. Mancini also
won a record number of Grammy awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement
Award in 1995. His best-known works are the jazz-idiom theme to The Pink Panther
film series and Moon River.
Mancini was born Enrico Nicola Mancini in the Little Italy neighborhood of
Cleveland, Ohio, and grew up near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the steel town of
West Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. His parents emigrated from the Abruzzo region of
Italy. Mancini's father, Quinto, was a steelworker, who made his only child
begin flute lessons at the age of eight. When Mancini was 12 years old, he began
piano lessons. Quinto and Henry played flute together in the Aliquippa Italian
immigrant band, "Sons of Italy". After high school, Mancini attended the
renowned Juilliard School of Music in New York
In 1943, after roughly one year at Juilliard, his studies were interrupted when
he was drafted into the army. In 1945, he participated in the liberation of a
South German concentration camp.
Upon discharge, Mancini entered the music industry and became a pianist and
arranger for the newly-formed Glenn Miller band, led by Tex Beneke. His greatest
musical passions have been for swing and jazz. After World War II, Mancini
broadened his composition, counterpoint, harmony and orchestration skills during
studies with two acclaimed "serious" concert hall composers, Ernst Krenek and
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.
In 1952, Mancini joined the Universal Pictures music department. During the next
six years, he contributed music to over 100 movies, most notably The Creature
from the Black Lagoon, It Came from Outer Space, Tarantula, This Island Earth,
The Glenn Miller Story (for which he received his first Academy Award nomination),
The Benny Goodman Story and Orson Welles' Touch of Evil. Mancini left Universal-International
to work as an independent composer/arranger in 1958. Soon after, he scored the
television series Peter Gunn for writer/producer Blake Edwards, the genesis of a
relationship which lasted over 35 years and produced nearly 30 films. Together
with Alex North, Elmer Bernstein, Leith Stevens and Johnny Mandel, Henry Mancini
was one of the pioneers who introduced jazz music into the late romantic
orchestral film and TV scores prevalent at the time.
Mancini's scores for Blake Edwards included Breakfast at Tiffany's (with the
standard, "Moon River"), and with "Days of Wine and Roses," "Experiment in
Terror," The Pink Panther, (and all of its sequels), The Great Race, The Party,
"Victor/Victoria". Another director with a longstanding partnership with Mancini
was Stanley Donen (Charade, Arabesque, Two for the Road). Mancini also composed
for Howard Hawks (Man's Favorite Sport, Hatari! - which included the well-known
"Baby Elephant Walk"), Martin Ritt (The Molly Maguires), Vittorio de Sica (Sunflower),
Norman Jewison (Gaily Gaily), Paul Newman (Sometimes a Great Notion, The Glass
Menagerie), Stanley Kramer's (Oklahoma Crude), George Roy Hill(The Great Waldo
Pepper), Arthur Hiller (Silver Streak), and Ted Kotcheff (Who is Killing the
Great Chefs of Europe?), and others. Mancini's score for the Alfred Hitchcock
film, Frenzy (1972), was rejected and replaced by Ron Goodwin's work.
Mancini scored many TV movies, including The Thorn Birds and The Shadow Box. He
wrote his share of television themes, including Mr. Lucky, NBC News Election
Night Coverage, "NBC Mystery Movie," What's Happening!!, Newhart,
Remington Steele, Tic Tac Dough (1990 version) and Hotel.
Mancini also composed the "Viewer Mail" theme for Late Night with David
Letterman.
Mancini recorded over 90 albums, in styles ranging from big band to classical to
pop. Eight of these albums were certified gold by The Recording Industry
Association of America. He had a 20 year contract with RCA Records, resulting in
60 commercial record albums that made him a household name composer of easy
listening music.
Mancini's range also extended to orchestral and ethnic scores (Lifeforce, The
Great Mouse Detective, Sunflower, Molly Maguires, The Hawaiians), and darker
themes ("Experiment In Terror," "The White Dawn," "Wait Until Dark," "The Night
Visitor").
Mancini was also a concert performer, conducting over fifty engagements per year,
resulting in over 600 symphony performances during his lifetime. Among the
symphony orchestras he conducted are the London Symphony Orchestra, the Israel
Philharmonic, the Boston Pops, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra. He appeared in 1966, 1980 and 1984 in command
performances for the British Royal Family. He also toured several times with
Johnny Mathis and with Andy Williams, who had sung many of Mancini's songs.
Mancini had experience with acting and voice roles. In 1994 he made a one-off
cameo appearance in the first season of the sitcom series Frasier, as a call-in
patient to Dr. Frasier Crane's radio show. Mancini voiced the character Al, who
speaks with a melancholy drawl and hates the sound of his own voice, in the
episode "Guess Who's Coming to Breakfast?" Mancini also had an uncredited
performance as a pianist in the 1967 movie Gunn, the movie version of the series
Peter Gunn, the score of which was originally composed by Mancini himself.
Mancini died at the age of 70 in Beverly Hills/Los Angeles, California of
pancreatic cancer. He was working at the time on the Broadway stage version of
Victor/Victoria. At the time of his death, Mancini was married to singer
Virginia O'Connor, with whom he had three children.
In 1996, the Henry Mancini Institute, an academy for young music professionals,
was founded by Jack Elliott in Mancini's honor, and later under the direction of
composer-conductor Patrick Williams. By the early 2000s, however, the institute
could not sustain itself and closed its doors on December 31, 2006.
Name: Henry Mancini
Birth name: Enrico Nicola Mancini
Born: 16 April 1924 Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.
Died: 14 June 1994 Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Henry Mancini (April 16, 1924 - June 14, 1994) was an Academy Award winning
American composer, conductor and arranger of Italian descent. He is remembered
particularly for being a composer of film and television scores. Mancini also
won a record number of Grammy awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement
Award in 1995. His best-known works are the jazz-idiom theme to The Pink Panther
film series and Moon River.
Mancini was born Enrico Nicola Mancini in the Little Italy neighborhood of
Cleveland, Ohio, and grew up near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the steel town of
West Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. His parents emigrated from the Abruzzo region of
Italy. Mancini's father, Quinto, was a steelworker, who made his only child
begin flute lessons at the age of eight. When Mancini was 12 years old, he began
piano lessons. Quinto and Henry played flute together in the Aliquippa Italian
immigrant band, "Sons of Italy". After high school, Mancini attended the
renowned Juilliard School of Music in New York
In 1943, after roughly one year at Juilliard, his studies were interrupted when
he was drafted into the army. In 1945, he participated in the liberation of a
South German concentration camp.
Upon discharge, Mancini entered the music industry and became a pianist and
arranger for the newly-formed Glenn Miller band, led by Tex Beneke. His greatest
musical passions have been for swing and jazz. After World War II, Mancini
broadened his composition, counterpoint, harmony and orchestration skills during
studies with two acclaimed "serious" concert hall composers, Ernst Krenek and
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.
In 1952, Mancini joined the Universal Pictures music department. During the next
six years, he contributed music to over 100 movies, most notably The Creature
from the Black Lagoon, It Came from Outer Space, Tarantula, This Island Earth,
The Glenn Miller Story (for which he received his first Academy Award nomination),
The Benny Goodman Story and Orson Welles' Touch of Evil. Mancini left Universal-International
to work as an independent composer/arranger in 1958. Soon after, he scored the
television series Peter Gunn for writer/producer Blake Edwards, the genesis of a
relationship which lasted over 35 years and produced nearly 30 films. Together
with Alex North, Elmer Bernstein, Leith Stevens and Johnny Mandel, Henry Mancini
was one of the pioneers who introduced jazz music into the late romantic
orchestral film and TV scores prevalent at the time.
Mancini's scores for Blake Edwards included Breakfast at Tiffany's (with the
standard, "Moon River"), and with "Days of Wine and Roses," "Experiment in
Terror," The Pink Panther, (and all of its sequels), The Great Race, The Party,
"Victor/Victoria". Another director with a longstanding partnership with Mancini
was Stanley Donen (Charade, Arabesque, Two for the Road). Mancini also composed
for Howard Hawks (Man's Favorite Sport, Hatari! - which included the well-known
"Baby Elephant Walk"), Martin Ritt (The Molly Maguires), Vittorio de Sica (Sunflower),
Norman Jewison (Gaily Gaily), Paul Newman (Sometimes a Great Notion, The Glass
Menagerie), Stanley Kramer's (Oklahoma Crude), George Roy Hill(The Great Waldo
Pepper), Arthur Hiller (Silver Streak), and Ted Kotcheff (Who is Killing the
Great Chefs of Europe?), and others. Mancini's score for the Alfred Hitchcock
film, Frenzy (1972), was rejected and replaced by Ron Goodwin's work.
Mancini scored many TV movies, including The Thorn Birds and The Shadow Box. He
wrote his share of television themes, including Mr. Lucky, NBC News Election
Night Coverage, "NBC Mystery Movie," What's Happening!!, Newhart,
Remington Steele, Tic Tac Dough (1990 version) and Hotel.
Mancini also composed the "Viewer Mail" theme for Late Night with David
Letterman.
Mancini recorded over 90 albums, in styles ranging from big band to classical to
pop. Eight of these albums were certified gold by The Recording Industry
Association of America. He had a 20 year contract with RCA Records, resulting in
60 commercial record albums that made him a household name composer of easy
listening music.
Mancini's range also extended to orchestral and ethnic scores (Lifeforce, The
Great Mouse Detective, Sunflower, Molly Maguires, The Hawaiians), and darker
themes ("Experiment In Terror," "The White Dawn," "Wait Until Dark," "The Night
Visitor").
Mancini was also a concert performer, conducting over fifty engagements per year,
resulting in over 600 symphony performances during his lifetime. Among the
symphony orchestras he conducted are the London Symphony Orchestra, the Israel
Philharmonic, the Boston Pops, the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Royal
Philharmonic Orchestra. He appeared in 1966, 1980 and 1984 in command
performances for the British Royal Family. He also toured several times with
Johnny Mathis and with Andy Williams, who had sung many of Mancini's songs.
Mancini had experience with acting and voice roles. In 1994 he made a one-off
cameo appearance in the first season of the sitcom series Frasier, as a call-in
patient to Dr. Frasier Crane's radio show. Mancini voiced the character Al, who
speaks with a melancholy drawl and hates the sound of his own voice, in the
episode "Guess Who's Coming to Breakfast?" Mancini also had an uncredited
performance as a pianist in the 1967 movie Gunn, the movie version of the series
Peter Gunn, the score of which was originally composed by Mancini himself.
Mancini died at the age of 70 in Beverly Hills/Los Angeles, California of
pancreatic cancer. He was working at the time on the Broadway stage version of
Victor/Victoria. At the time of his death, Mancini was married to singer
Virginia O'Connor, with whom he had three children.
In 1996, the Henry Mancini Institute, an academy for young music professionals,
was founded by Jack Elliott in Mancini's honor, and later under the direction of
composer-conductor Patrick Williams. By the early 2000s, however, the institute
could not sustain itself and closed its doors on December 31, 2006.