Henry Mancini (April 16, 1924 – June 14, 1994) was an American composer, conductor, arranger, pianist and flautist. Often cited as one of the greatest composers in the history of film, he won four Academy Awards, a Golden Globe, and twenty Grammy Awards, plus a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995.
If the recognition of one's peers is the true measure of success, then few men are as successful as composer, arranger, and conductor Henry Mancini. In a career that spanned 40 years, writing for film and television, Mancini won four Oscars and twenty Grammys, the all-time record for a pop artist. For 1961's Breakfast at Tiffany's alone, Mancini won five Grammys and two Oscars. Breakfast at Tiffany's includes the classic "Moon River" (lyrics by Johnny Mercer), arguably one of the finest pop songs of the last 50 years. At last count, there were over 1,000 recordings of it.
His other notable songs include "Dear Heart,""Days of Wine and Roses" (one Oscar, two Grammys), and "Charade," the last two with lyrics by Mercer. He also had a number one record and won a Grammy for Nino Rota's "Love Theme From Romeo and Juliet." Among his other notable film scores are The Pink Panther (three Grammys), Hatari! (one Grammy), Victor/Victoria (an Oscar), Two for the Road, Wait Until Dark, and 10. His television themes include "Peter Gunn" (two Grammys, recorded by many rock artists), "Mr. Lucky" (two Grammys), "Newhart,""Remington Steele," and The Thorn Birds television mini-series.
Henry
Mancini was born Enrico Nicola Mancini in Maple Heights, Ohio and raised in
West Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. Both his parents were Italian
immigrants. Originally from Scanno, Abruzzo, his father Quintiliano
"Quinto" Mancini was a labourer at the Jones and Laughlin Steel
Company and amateur musician who first came to the U.S. as a teenager around
1910 His mother Anna (née Pece) came to the U.S. from Forlì del Sannio as an
infant.
At age eight, Mancini began learning the piccolo. He later studied piano and orchestral arrangement under Pittsburgh concert pianist and Stanley Theatre conductor Max Adkins. Not only did Mancini produce arrangements for the Stanley Theatre bands, but he also wrote one for Benny Goodman, an up-and-coming bandleader introduced to him by Adkins. After graduating from Aliquippa High School in 1942, Mancini first attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh.
Later that year, Mancini transferred to the Juilliard School of Music in New York City following a successful audition in which he performed a Beethoven sonata and improvisation on "Night and Day" by Cole Porter. Because he could only take orchestration and composition courses in his second year, Mancini studied only piano in his first year at Juilliard, in a condition Caps called "aimless and oppressed—a far cry from Adkins's enabling protective environment."
After turning 18, Mancini enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces in 1943. While in basic training in Atlantic City, New Jersey, he met musicians being recruited by Glenn Miller. Owing to a recommendation by Miller, Mancini was first assigned to the 28th Air Force Band before being reassigned overseas to the 1306th Engineers Brigade in France. In 1945, he helped liberate the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria.
After the war, he was hired by Tex Beneke, the leader of the Glenn Miller Orchestra, as a pianist and arranger. In the late '40s, he began writing scores for record and film studios, first for a recording session by the Mel-Tones, which featured his wife Ginny O'Connor, and then the Abbot & Costello film Lost in Alaska, the first movie he scored. Lost in Alaska led to more film scores, in particular 1954's The Glenn Miller Story and 1956's The Benny Goodman Story, which both showcased his big band roots. Soon, he was working on a large number of films and television, including Orson Welles' Touch of Evil and the TV show Peter Gunn. Mancini's scores frequently straddled the line between jazz and Hollywood dramatics, making his music both distinctive and influential.
Much sought after for concerts, the affable maestro made about 50 appearances a year around the world. Among the groups he conducted were the London Symphony Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic, the Boston Pops, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He appeared in command performances before Britain's royal family in 1966, 1980 and 1984.
Mancini's heyday was the early '60s, when his score for Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) yielded the Oscar-winning hit single "Moon River," which instantly became a pop standard. The following year, he wrote the music for Days of Wine and Roses, which also won an Oscar for its title song. Throughout the next three decades, he continued to be one of the most successful film composers in the world, as well as a popular concert conductor. He continued working up until his death. Just prior to his demise, he was writing the score for the musical adaption of Victor/Victoria which he never saw on stage.
Mancini was diagnosed with pancreatic and liver cancer less than four months before he died at his home in Los Angeles on June 14, 1994.
(Edited
from AllMusic, Wikipedia & Los Angeles Times)