Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, June 17, 1994 TAG: 9407130036
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD HARRINGTON THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The romantic yearning of ``Moon River.''
The playful insouciance of ``The Pink Panther.''
The jazzy muscular abandon of ``Peter Gunn.''
The mischievous bounce of ``Baby Elephant Walk.''
The elegant melodic curve of ``Charade.''
The maudlin sentimentality of ``Days of Wine and Roses.''
Henry Mancini, who died Tuesday of cancer at age 70, chose to describe himself as ``a film composer, plain and simple,'' and while there was indeed a simplicity to his best melodies - that's what made them so casually memorable - there was nothing plain about his work. If a pretty girl is like a melody, Henry Mancini was clearly a Lady's Man.
``I don't want to say I can't write a bad melody,'' he said earlier this year, ``but I try not to.'' Mancini was diagnosed with inoperable cancer in February, but, ever the consummate craftsman, the composer chose to devote his final days to working on his first stage project - a Broadway version of ``Victor/Victoria'' - with Blake Edwards, his longest-time and most-frequent collaborator. It was Mancini's theme for Edwards' 1958 private-eye drama, ``Peter Gunn,'' that made Mancini a star and started him on a Grammy Award roll, and it was Edwards' 1982 film version of ``Victor/Victoria'' that earned Mancini his fourth and final Oscar for best original song score. The Mancini-Edwards duo would collaborate on 26 films, and while many were less than memorable, as either films or scores, that could be excused. It wasn't the undistinguished scores that wormed their way into your mind, and it wasn't the bad ones that got rewarded with those four Oscars or 20 Grammys, the fourth-highest total in Grammy history.
Born in Cleveland, on April 16, 1924, and raised in small-town Aliquippa, Pa., Mancini took up the flute at 8 under the eye, and ear, of his Italian steelworker father, Quinto, himself an avid amateur flutist. The son moved to cello and then, at age 12, to the piano bench, even as his energies seemed more devoted to football formations than practice scores. While still in high school, he developed a prescient fascination with the works of bandleader Glenn Miller - Mancini knew all Miller's arrangements by heart - and the notation under his picture in the high school yearbook called Mancini ``a true music lover.''
It added ``has even composed several beautiful selections.'' Mancini went on to New York's famed Juilliard School of Music, but his studies were interrupted in 1943 by military service, though even that underscored his musical intentions. Writing music for Army big bands, Mancini once explained, alerted him to his own creative instincts, and his subsequent works reflected and balanced both the formal world of classical music and the populist experience of jazz and big bands.
After he was discharged in 1946, Mancini's Miller fixation proved valuable as he signed up as pianist and arranger with the Glenn Miller Orchestra, reorganized under Tex Beneke. Better still, he met the singer in the band, Virginia O'Connor, and married her in 1947. Ginny Mancini was at her husband's side in their Beverly Hills home Tuesday when he died of complications from liver and pancreatic cancer.
Mancini's film career did not crystallize immediately. In 1952 he joined Universal-International Studios' music department, contributing to more than 100 films over six years. Again providentially, Mancini's arrangements for ``The Glenn Miller Story'' in 1954 earned him his first critical notices and his first Academy Award nomination. In that same period, he wrote less noteworthy scores for ``Tarantula,'' ``Creature From the Black Lagoon'' and ``It Came From Outer Space.''
Things took a turn for the better when producer Blake Edwards ran into Mancini at the studio's barbershop and casually asked him if he had any interest in scoring a new television series he was working on titled ``Peter Gunn.'' Mancini took some risks - working with a small combo and favoring racing, jazz-tinged instrumentals that dramatically underscored the action. It was a new style of television music and besides earning some crucial awards - most notably a pair of Grammys, including album of the year, at the very first Grammy Awards show in 1959 - it made a star of its composer. Edwards, who attributed 50 percent of the show's success to the music, once said a full third of ``Peter Gunn's'' fan mail was addressed to Henry Mancini.
An increasing number of job offers were, as well, and while Mancini did a few more television themes (his lush orchestral theme for ``Mr. Lucky'' sold well and earned two Grammys of its own), it was the film world that called him most effectively. By 1962, Mancini had a pair of Oscars to add to the collection, as ``Breakfast at Tiffany's'' won for Best Musical Score and its ``Moon River'' was named Best Song. With elegant lyrics by Johnny Mercer (who also penned ``Days of Wine and Roses'') and a simple melody designed to skirt Audrey Hepburn's limited vocal abilities, ``Moon River'' quickly wove its way into a nation's consciousness; there are now more than 1,000 recorded versions and countless unrecorded ones that never went beyond the shower.
``Breakfast at Tiffany's'' also earned Mancini five Grammys (including song of the year and record of the year). Describing ``Moon River's'' enduring appeal in his 1989 autobiography, ``Did They Mention the Music?,'' Mancini wrote ``it's simple, in the key of C. You can play it all on the white keys.''
As always, that answer was the only thing that was too simple. Over the years, Mancini showed a penchant for unorthodox instrumentation, offbeat effects and the stretching of boundaries. Of more than 150 scores, only one was ever rejected by the director: Alfred Hitchcock did the deed on ``Frenzy.''
When Mancini was honored last April at an emotional birthday charity gala in Los Angeles, singer Andy Williams spoke praise that now serves as apt epitaph: ``The wonders of Henry Mancini will be heard in every corner of the world right up to the minute this planet cools and shrinks to the size of an eighth note.''
by CNB