Henry Mancini (April 16, 1924 – June 14, 1994) was an Academy Award winning American
composer, conductor and arranger. He is remembered particularly for being a composer of film
and television scores. Mancini also won a record number of Grammy awards, including a Grammy
Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. His best known works are the jazz-idiom theme to The Pink
Panther film series and Moon River.

He has a son with the name Chris Mancini.

Mancini was born Enrico Nicola Mancini in the Little Italy neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, and
grew up near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the steel town of West Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. His parents
emigrated from the Abruzzo region of Italy. Mancini's father, Quinto, was a steelworker, who made
his only child begin flute lessons at the age of eight. When Mancini was 12 years old, he began piano
lessons. Quinto and Henry played flute together in the Aliquippa Italian immigrant band, "Sons of Italy".
After high school, Mancini attended the renowned Juilliard School of Music in New York. In 1943,
after roughly one year at Juilliard, his studies were interrupted when he was drafted into the [[United
States Air Force. In 1945, he participated in the liberation of a South German concentration camp.

Mancini was nominated for an unprecedented 72 Grammys, winning 20 Additionally he was nominated
for 18 Academy Awards, winning four. He also won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for
two Emmys.

Mancini won a total of four Oscars for his music in the course of his career. He was first nominated for
an Academy Award in 1955 for his original score of The Glenn Miller Story, on which he collaborated
with Joseph Gershenson. He lost out to Adolph Deutsch and Saul Chaplin's Seven Brides for Seven
Brothers. In 1962 he was nominated in the Best Music, Original Song category for "Bachelor in Paradise"
 from the film of the same name, in collaboration with lyricist Mack David. That song did not win.
However, Mancini did receive two Oscars that year: one in the same category, for the song "Moon River"
(shared with lyricist Johnny Mercer), and one for "Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture"
for Breakfast at Tiffany's. The following year, he and Mercer took another Best Song award for "Days of
Wine and Roses," another eponymous theme song. His next eleven nominations went for naught, but he
finally garnered one last statuette working with lyricist Leslie Bricusse on the score for Victor/Victoria,
which won the "Best Music, Original Song Score and Its Adaptation or Best Adaptation Score" award for
1983. All three ofthe films for which he won were directed by Blake Edwards. His score for Victor/Victoria
was adapted for the 1995 Broadway musical of the same name.

Mancini scored the music for numerous films from the 50s until the early 90s. During this time he frequently
teamed up with director Blake Edwards. Perhaps because of this the films he worked on tended to be
light-hearted stories, even the thrillers being more like romantic comedies, and his light Jazz style was very
suited to this type of film. Although there are rarely any dark moments in Mancini's music, thereis a wistful
sadness to some of his songs. For these songs Mancini would frequently team up with lyricist Johnny
Mercer, for example on "Breakfast at Tiffany's", "Days of Wine and Roses" and "Charade".

When he crossed that Big Moon River at the age of 71 Mancini left the rest of us a legacy of light popular
music as mountainous as the riches he accrued scoring nearly 80 films, plus about two dozen television
shows and series, and recording more than 80 albums.

Mancini he of the gentle smile, the mellow demeanor, one of those not corrupted by Hollywood as a unique
crossover in what is normally a fairly secular profession. John Barry turned out terrific themes, Jerry
Goldsmith created musical cues that were at once dramatic and melodramatic, and European emigres like
Max Steiner and Erich Korngold reinvented classical symphonic music for the movies.

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 "Ginny" O´Connor, with whom he had three children. Ginny Mancini went
on to found the Society of Singers a non profit organization which benefits the health and welfare of
professional singers worldwide. Additionally the Society awards scholarships to students pursuing an
education in the vocal arts and holds the annual Ella Awards.

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.
[citation needed] However, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers(ASCAP)
Foundation "Henry Mancini Music Scholarship" has been awarded annually since 2001.