Probably the most accomplished film composer of his time, Henry Mancini is responsible for many of the most popular and enduring movie soundtracks ever recorded. Mancini was born Enrico Nicola Mancini in the Little Italy neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio on April 16, 1924. His father taught him the flute and piccolo and he later took singing lessons and studied at the Julliard School in New York City. After getting out of the army, Mancini spent the next few years scraping by as a free-lance arranger and musician. In 1952, Mancini was hired to do fill-in work for an
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Abbott and Costello movie, and ended up becoming a house arranger for Universal-International films. His big break came when Orson Welles asked him to score his film-noir masterpiece Touch of Evil. A former editor at Universal, Blake Edwards, remembered Mancini's work on this film and asked him to write music for a television series he was now directing: "Peter Gunn. Although television soundtracks had been released on albums before, Music from "
Peter Gunn" was a phenomenon. It reached #1 on Billboard's chart, stayed there 10 weeks, and stayed on the list for the next two years. It was so successful, RCA put together a sequel soon after. Mancini received an Emmy nomination for the theme and won two Grammys for the album.
With these successes, Mancini was able to operate as a freelancer. Beginning a long and very productive film partnership, Edwards hired him to do the music for his 1961 film, "
Breakfast at Tiffany's". He and lyricist Johnny Mercer wrote "
Moon River" for a reflective scene with Audrey Hepburn, and the song became a huge hit. Andy Williams' cover outsold the original, and "Moon River" eventually became one of the biggest sellers of the 1960s, with over 500 covers. Mancini and Mercer repeated the feat in 1962 with the theme song to Edwards' "The Days of Wine and Roses." Both songs won Oscars. Mancini then provided two memorable instrumental singles for the films "Hatari" ("
Baby Elephant Walk") and "The Pink Panther" ("The Pink Panther Theme"). By early 1964, Mancini had become the best known and most successful film composer around. He continued to concentrate on film scoring until the early 1980s, winning a total of 20 Grammys, 7 gold records, and 4 Oscars before his death on June 14, 1994.
