Henry Mancini: Reinventing Film Music

As producer-host for NPR’s The Cinema Soundtrack, Caps interviewed film composers. Now, in this lively, syncopated survey of Mancini’s movie music, Caps offers a comprehensive critique of the composer’s film/TV scores and hit albums. Although Mancini died in 1994 at age 70, the book benefits from in-depth interviews Caps conducted with him in 1976 and 1992. Playing piano and flute as a youth, Mancini briefly attended Juilliard in 1942 before joining the army. After WWII, he was an arranger with the Glenn Miller Orchestra, wrote music for radio dramas and then landed at Universal Studios, where he learned “the clichés of Hollywood storytelling music.” Scoring dozens of Universal movies, he received his first Oscar nomination for The Glenn Miller Story. An independent composer by 1958, TV’s Peter Gunn launched his long association with director Blake Edwards, resulting in such classic tunes as “Days of Wine and Roses,” “Moon River,” and “Dreamsville.” Tracing Mancini’s evolution and melodic growth, Caps believes his early success happened because he captured common yearnings with themes “so directly personal, so honest... it was as though he were speaking to you.” (Mar.)