Henry Mancini

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Preston Neal Jones

Peter Gunn was the breakthrough moment for Mancini, and the beginning of the Americanization of film music. Edwards wanted a fresh sound for his series, which often found the detective visiting a jazz club called Mother's. Taking his cue from the milieu, Mancini injected jazz inflections into the dramatic underscore. Distinguished film composers prior to Mancini had pioneered the use of jazz in movie scoring. Chief among these composers were Alex North in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and Elmer Bernstein in The Man With the Golden Arm (1955). But jazz had rarely been given the emphasis Mancini gave it in Gunn; and it had never been used on television, which reached a wider audience than the movies. The now-famous main-title theme, with its hard-driving piano base, gained such immediate popularity that RCA commissioned an entire album of Mancini's Peter Gunn music. The LP became a runaway bestseller, earning a Grammy Award as album of the year and generating a follow-up disc, More Music From Peter Gunn. Mancini's gift for innovative, pop-oriented orchestration demonstrated itself again with the score (and LP) for Edwards' next TV series, Mr. Lucky, whose main theme featured a jazz organ against strings.

It was Edwards who brought Mancini back into the movie scoring fold with the Bing Crosby comedy High Time in 1960. From then on, movies were Mancini's chief occupation, with occasional forays back into television. He was also persuaded to inaugurate a series of "pops" concert tours that proved immensely successful and, coupled with the continued success of his soundtrack recordings, kept Mancini in the public eye more than any film composer until the advent of John Williams. Many of Mancini's most important movies were written and directed by Blake Edwards, chief among them Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Days of Wine and Roses, and The Pink Panther. The title theme for Panther, and the "Baby Elephant Walk" from Howard Hawks' Hatari!, became popular instrumental hits which are still heard to this day. The title songs from Wine and Roses and Charade, with lyrics by Johnny Mercer, also made the hit parade and remain standards. But Mancini's most enduring achievement was written for Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Having heard her sing the Gershwins' "How Long Has This Been Going On?" in Funny Face, Mancini knew that Miss Hepburn could handle a range of an octave plus a note. Noodling at the keyboard with that range of notes, Mancini in the space of half an hour came up with the melody which, again with Mercer's masterful lyric, has become immortal under the name, "Moon River." (After the first preview of Tiffany's, the studio executives wanted to cut the song, but Edwards fought for its inclusion; ironically, the same near-disaster once befell "Over the Rainbow" after a preview of The Wizard of Oz.)