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 International Studios 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 Theme," 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 has 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-and famously- 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.
