Mancini, Henry

views updated

Henry Mancini

Composer

“Whatever style you have comes out of years of synthesizing your own mind. In your daily work, certain harmonies, certain intervals, certain colors in orchestration come back because they express you. Whatever came into your ear comes out of the hand in some way or another. That’s what I like about movies. The canvas is always empty when you start and you can always go in any direction you want.” The number of films that Henry Mancini has scored—more than 70—attests to the statement of individual creativity that he made to Filmmusic Notebook in 1978.

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, on April 16, 1924, Mancini was raised in the industrial town of Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, where his father was a steelworker. His introduction to music came from his father’s avocation, playing flute and piccolo in the local Sons of Italy band. Mancini, who learned his father’s instruments, has credited that amateur band with sparking his interest in both classical and new music and wrote a tribute to it in his orchestral work, Beaver Valley ’37. In the Pittsburgh Symphony program for its premiere in May 1970, he described “our weekly ration of Puccini, Rossini, Leoncavallo and Verdi … Sunday morning at about eleven o’clock. ‘The William Tell Overture’ was my big feature number.” He became expert enough to be named first flute in the All-State Band and taught himself piano by imitating a neighbor’s player piano rolls. Mancini’s formal training in orchestration and arranging began at 14 when he studied with Max Adkins, then the leader of the pit band at the Stanley Theatre in Pittsburgh. He attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology and Juilliard briefly before he was drafted into the Air Force.

As well as Adkins, Mancini credits formal studies with composers Ernst Krenek and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and an apprenticeship with Universal’s orchestrator David Tamke. He has written a highly acclaimed textbook himself—Sounds and Scores: A Practical Guide to Professional Orchestration.

On Glenn Miller’s recommendation, Mancini joined the Army Air Forces band. Following the end of World War II, during which Miller had been killed, he began to perform and arrange with the Miller Orchestra, now led by Tex Beneke. With his wife, Ginny O’Connor (then a vocalist with the MelloLarks), he moved to Hollywood. Radio scoring from 1947 to 1952 taught him the “craft of writing for dramatic shows,” as he later told Filmmusic Notebook. His wife’s recording job with Jimmy Dorsey’s Orchestra in 1952 led him to Universal Studios, where he soon became a staff composer and arranger. He has estimated that he worked on several hundred films before his first complete scoring assignments on the jazz-oriented movies “The Glenn Miller Story” (for

For the Record…

Born April 16, 1924, in Cleveland, Ohio; son of Quinto (a steelworker) and Anna Mancini; married Ginny O’Connor (a vocalist), 1947; children: one son; twin daughters. Education: Attended Carnegie Institute of Technology and Juilliard School of Music.

Studied flute and taught himself piano as a child; after serving as a musician in the U.S. Army Air Forces band in World War II, began to perform and arrange with Glenn Miller Orchestra; moved to Hollywood, Calif., and composed scores for radio shows, 1947-52; staff compser and arranger for Universal Studios; freelance composer and arranger; has scored numerous films and television programs.

Awards: Four Academy Awards and sixteen nominations for film work; thirty Grammy Awards; numerous awards from magazines and several honorary degrees.

Addresses: Offices —c/o RCA, 1133 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10036. Agent— Rogers & Cowan, Inc., 9665 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90212.

which he received his first Oscar nomination in 1954) and “The Benny Goodman Story” (1956). He came to public attention with his atmospheric score for the Orson Welles thriller “Touch of Evil” in 1958. In the trade magazine Action, Mancini described that film’s unique challenge:“Touch of Evil” was one of the first pictures to take advantage of what we call ‘Source’ music (that means music coming from a source such as a radio). In this film, we used horns outside of all the bars in a Mexican border town.”

In 1959, Mancini’s theme for the Blake Edwards television series “Peter Gunn,” which was set in a jazz club, became a top-selling record and earned him Grammy Awards for Album of the Year and Best Arrangement. “The Theme from Peter Gunn” is considered the first television title music to stand on its own as a single. Mancini wrote in Action that Edwards “challenged me weekly with long scenes without any dialogue—already hearing the musical score in his mind’s eye. Blake regarded the music as a vital voice in the total picture.”

Many of Mancini’s complete film scores included theme or title songs that went on to success as singles with lyrics by Johnny Mercer. “Moon River” was played in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961) on an amplified harmonica to represent the main character’s past, but it soon became a standard pop ballad that won the Best Song Oscar and Grammy for 1961. It has been recorded by scores of male and female vocalists and was a top-seller and signature tune for Andy Williams.

The themes from “Charade” (1963), “Dear Heart” (1964) and “Days of Wine and Roses” also became award-winning pop standards with added lyrics. All were nominated for Oscars—”Days of Wine and Roses” (with lyrics by Mercer) won Best Song in 1962. It also won 1963 Grammy awards for Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Background Arrangement. The 1962 Grammy for Best Instrumental Arrangement went to Mancini for the novelty, “Baby Elephant Walk,” from “Hatari” (1962). Mancini described the process of creating it for Filmmusic Notebook: “[Director Howard Hawks] said, ‘The girl’s going down to take a bath with the elephants, you know, that’s cute’…. So he said, ‘Write Something.’ I looked at the thing several times and … thought of an old Will Bradley-Freddie Slack record called ‘Down the Road Apiece.’ And it was as simple as that. The elephants were walking down the road and I could hear ‘Down the Road Apiece.’ It was a boogie-woogie piece, with the eight top the bar, and that was the clue. It was the funny gait that the elephants had.”

Mancini’s most famous film theme is probably the lurking vamp that he wrote to go under the animated credits in Blake Edwards’ “The Pink Panther” (1964). Like “Inspector Clouseau,” the bumbling hero of the series, the animated animal (complete with theme song) had a long and prosperous life in six films, a cartoon series, and advertisements. The theme won 1964 Grammy awards for Best Instrumental Arrangement, Best Instrumental Composition, and Best Instrumental Performance in the non-jazz catagories. Among his many other Edwards collaborations have been the backstage musicals “Darling Lili” (1970) and “Victor-Victoria.” (1982), for which he won the 1983 Best Song Score Oscar. Plans were announced to create a Broadway musical based on “Victor/Victoria” in 1985. Alan Warner described the score for the former film in Film and Filming: “Mancini weaves in some suprises including a delightful short melody sing by small children’s chorus. Also worked into the score are a couple of World War One ‘hits,’ namely Tipperary’ and ‘Pack Up Your Troubles.’ The film closes with [Julie] Andrews singing probably the best Lili number, ‘Whistling Away the Dark.’”

Having, as he told the New York Sunday News in 1964, “put music on everybody’s minds far as TV is concerned,” Mancini continued to write for the medium. A second private eye show with a jazz background, “Mr. Lucky,” (1960) also spawned a top-selling record. “How Soon,” the theme from the 1963 “Richard Boone Show” was popular in the United States and in England, when it was shown on the BBC. He composed themes for NBC News and NBC election coverage. Among his recent projects have been the jazzy theme for “Remington Steele,” the romantic background for the mini-series “The Thorn Birds,” and the lyrical “travelogue” music for “Newhart.”

Mancini has also won Grammy awards for Best Instrumental Arrangements of film themes by other composers, among them “Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet” by Nino Rota and “Theme from Z and other Film Music” by Mikis Theodorakis. He records for London/Poly-Gram and RCA with his own studio orchestra or, as a guest conductor, symphony orchestras around the world, among them, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the Milwaukee Symphony, and the Boston Pops. His music is also played by many soloists, especially the flutist James Galway. There are over 60 Mancini albums currently available and hundreds of recorded versions of Mancini songs.

“In most cases,” Mancini told Electronic Age (a television trade magazine), “a composer must not approach the score as though he is the star of the show. He has to know when to hold back, when not to blast the audience, when not to intrude on the dialogue.” Although every filmgoer and television watcher can hum a Mancini tune, he has become most celebrated for obeying his own dictum. As a composer, arranger, orchestrator and film scorer, he creates atmosphere but does not intrude on the product on the screen.