November 13, 2025 • 20 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, before the Pink Panther ever tiptoed across a screen, Henry Mancini was a steelworker’s son from Pennsylvania with a trumpet and a dream. Music took him from Army bands in World War II to the backlots of Hollywood, where he helped shape the sound of American film. Through hits like Peter Gunn and Moon River, Mancini turned simple themes into lasting emotions. His late wife, Gini Mancini, shares the story of their life together.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories, and up next
a story from the late Virginia Mancini, the wife of
Henry Mancini, one of America's greatest film composers. If you
don't know his name, you certainly know his compositions, which
include the Pink Panther theme and Moon River from Breakfast
(00:31):
at Tiffany's. Here's our own Monte Montgomery. They get us
started with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
American composer Henry Mancini was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on
April sixteenth, nineteen twenty four. But that's not where he
grew up. Here's his wife, Virginia Virginny with the rest
of the story.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Henry grew up in West all Equippa, Pennsylvania, outside of Pittsburgh,
in a steel town, and his father worked at the
Jones and Laughlin steel mill, and Henry had a very
modest childhood. West all equipp you have to understand, is
(01:21):
on the wrong side of the tracks, and many Europeans
settled there, especially Italians. They were a very poor Italian family,
and they were very close and it was a very
small town. So his life was fairly simple. And once
his father realized that he didn't want his son to
(01:44):
go to work in the steel mill. He turned him
on to the flute because his father played the flute,
and when his father came down with the months in
his frustration, he handed Henry the flute and taught him
to play, and they both played in the Sons of
Italy band in West all Equippa. So that was Henry's
(02:08):
introduction to music and he loved it. And there's a
part in his history that talks about his father taking
him into Pittsburgh to see the movie and the stage
show at the I forget the name of the theater,
but one of the most popular theaters in Pittsburgh. The
(02:30):
drama captured Henry in ways that he never realized because
he thought the music was being played live behind the screen,
and when he found out that it was recorded, he
was fascinated with the whole way movies are put together
and the music is there to create the emotional reaction
(02:51):
that you're looking for, and that fascinated him to the
point where his instincts told him to just do what
he felt like doing. Eventually, you know, he followed his
intuition and it paid off because once he graduated from
(03:12):
high school, he had a chance to go to Juilliard
and the music.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Business Mancini would also serve during World War Two, where
he'd make strong connections with fellow musicians, meeting members of
the Glenn Miller Band after the war, and when the
Glenn Miller Band reformed sans Gle Miller, he'd become their
piano player. But how did Ginny meet Henry? It starts
(03:41):
with American musician Melotormee.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
I worked with Meltormee for three and a half years,
some of the most fun times of my young life.
And when mel was advised to go out on his
own as a solar performer, I didn't know where my
next Neil was going to come from.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
So I got a.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Call one day from a friend who said that tex
Benecket was out here with the Glenn Miller Orchestra and
was going to be at the Hollywood Palladium. And the
vocal group that had been with the band decided to
leave in Hollywood and they needed a new girl singer.
(04:29):
So I had nothing better to do, and I went
down to the Million Dollar Theater in downtown LA and
walked into Texas dressing room where the auditions were being
held and There was a tall, young Italian at the
piano named Henry Mancini who was playing for the auditions.
(04:49):
All the rest of the orchestra was out on the
golf course, so he was a little bit peeved that
he had to stay back to play for the auditions.
I don't remember what I sang for my audition, but
I did get hired, and never having been out of
California before, I left on a train with thirty six
(05:12):
strange musicians for a tour for two months, for a
tour across the country, starting with a week at the
Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco. On the way to
San Francisco, the young Italian piano player sat down on
(05:34):
the train beside me and said, you know, I do
some arranging for the band. Is there anything in particular
you would like to sing? And it was October of
nineteen forty six and Nat king Cole had just recorded
the Christmas song the one that is such a standard today,
(06:00):
Roasting on.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
The open fire. That one.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
It was about to be released and it was timely,
so I suggested that meanwhile, we're in San Francisco and
now we're on a tour for two months across the country.
When we arrived in New York mid December, I.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
Was rather stupid about weather.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Arrived in a cloth coat mid December in freezing New
York City. At any rate, it was there that I
heard what Henry wrote on score paper that got my attention.
I knew I never wanted to be married to a
traveling musician because I saw how hard it was on
(06:51):
the orchestra wives. It was only when I realized that
he had potential that I really sought his attention, and
I on one side of the stage, he at the
piano on the other side of the stage. The band
(07:12):
certainly knew that I had eyes for the young Italian
piano player. We began to date, go out to dinner
after the job.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
And on our week off at Christmas time. I didn't
have it.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
I wasn't making enough money to fly home to California.
So he said, I'm going to my home in Aliquippa,
and you're welcome to come with me. So I agreed
to go, knowing that would give me an opportunity to
see what his relationship was with his mother. My measure
(07:51):
of a good husband was a loving relationship with his mother,
and I had the opportunity to witness Henry's loving kindness
with his mother, and I was impressed with that.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
And you've been listening to Virginia Mancini tell the story
of Henry Mancini, the world famous composer. And when she
met him, he was a keyboardist piano player for a
large traveling band, the old Glenn Miller Band, And in
the end they struck up a romance and she got
to take not only the musical measure of the man,
(08:32):
but the character of the man as well. As she said,
I had eyes for the young Italian piano player, but
by invitation to his home she was able to, as
she said, quote take my measure of a good husband, which,
as she said, was his relationship with his mother. When
we come back, more of the life story of Henry Mancini,
(08:54):
and in a way, the story of his bride, Virginia Mancini,
and the story of a time in America, a distinct
time in America, post War America. Here on our American stories,
(09:39):
and we're back with our American stories and the story
of Henry Mancini, the composer of such classics as Moon
River and the Pink Panther Theme, among other compositions, and
it's being told by his bride, Virginia Mancini. We were
commenting during the break about the fact that Henry Mancini
came up and grew up in a steel town, and
(10:02):
what a thing about this country that you can grow
up in a working class town like that and imagine
yourself to become well, almost anything. When we last left off,
Virginia Mancini, his widow, was telling us about Henry's early
life in Pennsylvania and how they met after World War Two.
Let's continue with the story.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
When we got married, I was making thirty six dollars
a year on the fifteen.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Minute radio show.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Henry was making fifty two dollars unemployment insurance, and we
didn't have a care in the world. We managed to
pay our bills, pay our rent. I was still singing
back up for people. One of them was Betty Hutton,
major major star at Paramount Studios, and she asked me
(10:54):
if I would accompany her to London where she was
playing a month at the London Palladium.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
And she was opening.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
On my first wedding anniversary, and she was offering me
some good money. So I went home and I said Henry,
I would never do this except without your permission. But
Betty Hutton has asked me to go with her to
the London Palladium for a month. How do you feel
(11:25):
about that? And he said, well, why don't you do that? Said,
it's okay with me. So on our opening night, my
first wedding anniversary, a big bouquet of flowers came into
my big tub of a dressing room of you know,
washing tub. While I'm at the London Palladium, he has
(11:51):
a gig at the Hollywood Palladium playing the Glockenspiel on
I'm looking over a four leaf clover.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
And he hated singing it.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
He didn't mind playing the Glockenspiel, but the whole band
had a sing I'm looking over a rough four leaf clover,
and he would not sing. He would play the glockenspiel
but not sing, And one night the bandleader saw him
not singing fired him off the bandstand right then and there.
So when I came home from the London Palladium, he
(12:24):
picked me up at the airport and I said.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
Henry, how did he go with the Hollywood Palladium.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
He said, I got fired because I wouldn't sing I'm
looking over a four leaf clover.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
Anyway. That was that chapter in Our Lives.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
And in nineteen fifty two, Mancini would join the Universal
Music Department, where he'd gone to have a hand in
working with the scores of over one hundred different films.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
His time at Universal was like going to her great
training experience for him to be on salary, and we
knew we could always depend on a check at the
end of the week, and that's where he got his training.
He was working constantly on every film you could think of.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
And it was there that he met Blake Edwards, an
American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter. If you don't know him,
he directed Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Just by accident, Blake Edwards and Henry were on the
Universal lot at the same time. Henry was there to
get a haircut and they were about to have lunch
and they met in the commissary. Blake happened to mention
to Henry that he was about to do a television
series called Peter Gunn would he be interested in doing
(13:49):
the music. Henry, of course, thinking it was a Western,
said sure, why not, I'd love to do it. He
said no, no, no, no, this is not a western
this is about a private detective named Peter gunn Well.
That was a turning point in our lives because it
became such a worldwide hit, and still today that album
(14:13):
cover is treasured worldwide. We had always tried to plan
to go to Europe at some point in our lives,
and we would say, one day we're going to go
to Europe.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
One day, we're going to go to Europe.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
And I said, Henry, I don't care when, but let's
book it.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
Let's book it now.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
So we booked a trip from New York to Southampton
on the SS France, first class all the way for
six weeks. We had saved six thousand dollars. So when
we sailed on the SS France, it so happened that
Blake Edwards and Maurice Rischlin were writing a script on
(15:01):
a story called The Pink Panther. So they would be
in their estate rooms writing all day long, and at
dinner time we would all converge at the dinner table
for drinks and laughs, and the rest of the evening
we were on a six week tour of every wonderful
(15:22):
country Spain, France, the Netherlands of.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
Finland, Sweden.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
We did it all in six weeks on six thousand dollars.
Can you imagine. So while we were there, it's when
Peter Gunn hit and we knew that when we came
home we didn't have to worry. The first royalty check
from ASCAP for Peter Gunn was thirty two thousand dollars.
(15:53):
We couldn't imagine having that much money in the bank.
When Henry had an assignment, I used to hear him
composing a way upstairs in his music room, and it
always sounded so beautiful to me, just to hear the
(16:13):
notes come out. Anyway, when he was finished with a segment,
he would call me on the phone. He said, you
want to come up and hear something. And I was
always the first one to react to what he had written,
and it was mostly always always positive. I loved the
experience of hearing what he wrote for the first time
(16:37):
of anybody.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I'll planet and one song that Henry composed and Jenny
managed to hear pretty early on was moon River from
Breakfast at Tiffany's. It's a song that sins been covered
by Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Chevy Chase, Frank Ocean and
Morrissey of all people. But the song almost didn't make
it onto the big screen.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
You know.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
When Breakfast at Tiffany's was finished, Paramount decided to take
it to San Francisco to preview it, and when it
was over, we all met in Blake Edward's suite in
San Francisco to discuss, you know, what work what didn't work,
And it was obvious that things had that was a
(17:24):
little long, and there needed to be cuts made here
and there. One of the suggestions by the head of
the studio was that they cut the song moon River.
There was such silence in the room that even Audrey
(17:44):
took exception to that suggestion, after having worked so hard
to do it and learn it and anyway, it definitely
stayed in a picture, as you know, and thank got it.
He had a sense of melody that very few good
(18:05):
musicians have. And Moon River, I do believe will live.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
Longer, longer, longer.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Than any of us. People will know that song forever.
It has a lasting quality about it that expresses everybody's feelings.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Henry Mancini would pass away on June fourteenth, nineteen ninety four,
at the age of seventy and Ginny adored every second
of their time together.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
My life with Henry was such a joy because his
temperament was so even. He would never get angry. He
would always He used to say, Ginny, when I to
fly off the handle, he used to say, Ginny, let
four bars go by, meaning four bars of music before
(19:08):
you say anything, before you react.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
Anyway, he taught me a lot. He taught me a lot.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
My time with Henry was over much too early. This
year we would have celebrated sixty nine years of marital bliss.
Unfortunately I was I was not able to keep him
that long. So I keep him alive through listening to
(19:40):
his music all the time. He's always there. He's always there.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
And a great job on the production by Monty Montgomery
and a special thanks to Philip Graham for helping us
gather the audio for this story. And a special thanks
to Virginia Mancini for telling her story and the story
of her husband, composer Henry Mancini. And it turns out
that Universal Music Department gig was life changing the story
(20:10):
of Henry Mancini. Here on our American Story
And we returned to our American stories, and up next
a story from the late Virginia Mancini, the wife of
Henry Mancini, one of America's greatest film composers. If you
don't know his name, you certainly know his compositions, which
include the Pink Panther theme and Moon River from Breakfast
(00:31):
at Tiffany's. Here's our own Monte Montgomery. They get us
started with the story.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
American composer Henry Mancini was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on
April sixteenth, nineteen twenty four. But that's not where he
grew up. Here's his wife, Virginia Virginny with the rest
of the story.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Henry grew up in West all Equippa, Pennsylvania, outside of Pittsburgh,
in a steel town, and his father worked at the
Jones and Laughlin steel mill, and Henry had a very
modest childhood. West all equipp you have to understand, is
(01:21):
on the wrong side of the tracks, and many Europeans
settled there, especially Italians. They were a very poor Italian family,
and they were very close and it was a very
small town. So his life was fairly simple. And once
his father realized that he didn't want his son to
(01:44):
go to work in the steel mill. He turned him
on to the flute because his father played the flute,
and when his father came down with the months in
his frustration, he handed Henry the flute and taught him
to play, and they both played in the Sons of
Italy band in West all Equippa. So that was Henry's
(02:08):
introduction to music and he loved it. And there's a
part in his history that talks about his father taking
him into Pittsburgh to see the movie and the stage
show at the I forget the name of the theater,
but one of the most popular theaters in Pittsburgh. The
(02:30):
drama captured Henry in ways that he never realized because
he thought the music was being played live behind the screen,
and when he found out that it was recorded, he
was fascinated with the whole way movies are put together
and the music is there to create the emotional reaction
(02:51):
that you're looking for, and that fascinated him to the
point where his instincts told him to just do what
he felt like doing. Eventually, you know, he followed his
intuition and it paid off because once he graduated from
(03:12):
high school, he had a chance to go to Juilliard
and the music.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Business Mancini would also serve during World War Two, where
he'd make strong connections with fellow musicians, meeting members of
the Glenn Miller Band after the war, and when the
Glenn Miller Band reformed sans Gle Miller, he'd become their
piano player. But how did Ginny meet Henry? It starts
(03:41):
with American musician Melotormee.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
I worked with Meltormee for three and a half years,
some of the most fun times of my young life.
And when mel was advised to go out on his
own as a solar performer, I didn't know where my
next Neil was going to come from.
Speaker 4 (04:04):
So I got a.
Speaker 3 (04:06):
Call one day from a friend who said that tex
Benecket was out here with the Glenn Miller Orchestra and
was going to be at the Hollywood Palladium. And the
vocal group that had been with the band decided to
leave in Hollywood and they needed a new girl singer.
(04:29):
So I had nothing better to do, and I went
down to the Million Dollar Theater in downtown LA and
walked into Texas dressing room where the auditions were being
held and There was a tall, young Italian at the
piano named Henry Mancini who was playing for the auditions.
(04:49):
All the rest of the orchestra was out on the
golf course, so he was a little bit peeved that
he had to stay back to play for the auditions.
I don't remember what I sang for my audition, but
I did get hired, and never having been out of
California before, I left on a train with thirty six
(05:12):
strange musicians for a tour for two months, for a
tour across the country, starting with a week at the
Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco. On the way to
San Francisco, the young Italian piano player sat down on
(05:34):
the train beside me and said, you know, I do
some arranging for the band. Is there anything in particular
you would like to sing? And it was October of
nineteen forty six and Nat king Cole had just recorded
the Christmas song the one that is such a standard today,
(06:00):
Roasting on.
Speaker 4 (06:00):
The open fire. That one.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
It was about to be released and it was timely,
so I suggested that meanwhile, we're in San Francisco and
now we're on a tour for two months across the country.
When we arrived in New York mid December, I.
Speaker 4 (06:23):
Was rather stupid about weather.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Arrived in a cloth coat mid December in freezing New
York City. At any rate, it was there that I
heard what Henry wrote on score paper that got my attention.
I knew I never wanted to be married to a
traveling musician because I saw how hard it was on
(06:51):
the orchestra wives. It was only when I realized that
he had potential that I really sought his attention, and
I on one side of the stage, he at the
piano on the other side of the stage. The band
(07:12):
certainly knew that I had eyes for the young Italian
piano player. We began to date, go out to dinner
after the job.
Speaker 4 (07:24):
And on our week off at Christmas time. I didn't
have it.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
I wasn't making enough money to fly home to California.
So he said, I'm going to my home in Aliquippa,
and you're welcome to come with me. So I agreed
to go, knowing that would give me an opportunity to
see what his relationship was with his mother. My measure
(07:51):
of a good husband was a loving relationship with his mother,
and I had the opportunity to witness Henry's loving kindness
with his mother, and I was impressed with that.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
And you've been listening to Virginia Mancini tell the story
of Henry Mancini, the world famous composer. And when she
met him, he was a keyboardist piano player for a
large traveling band, the old Glenn Miller Band, And in
the end they struck up a romance and she got
to take not only the musical measure of the man,
(08:32):
but the character of the man as well. As she said,
I had eyes for the young Italian piano player, but
by invitation to his home she was able to, as
she said, quote take my measure of a good husband, which,
as she said, was his relationship with his mother. When
we come back, more of the life story of Henry Mancini,
(08:54):
and in a way, the story of his bride, Virginia Mancini,
and the story of a time in America, a distinct
time in America, post War America. Here on our American stories,
(09:39):
and we're back with our American stories and the story
of Henry Mancini, the composer of such classics as Moon
River and the Pink Panther Theme, among other compositions, and
it's being told by his bride, Virginia Mancini. We were
commenting during the break about the fact that Henry Mancini
came up and grew up in a steel town, and
(10:02):
what a thing about this country that you can grow
up in a working class town like that and imagine
yourself to become well, almost anything. When we last left off,
Virginia Mancini, his widow, was telling us about Henry's early
life in Pennsylvania and how they met after World War Two.
Let's continue with the story.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
When we got married, I was making thirty six dollars
a year on the fifteen.
Speaker 4 (10:31):
Minute radio show.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
Henry was making fifty two dollars unemployment insurance, and we
didn't have a care in the world. We managed to
pay our bills, pay our rent. I was still singing
back up for people. One of them was Betty Hutton,
major major star at Paramount Studios, and she asked me
(10:54):
if I would accompany her to London where she was
playing a month at the London Palladium.
Speaker 4 (11:02):
And she was opening.
Speaker 3 (11:03):
On my first wedding anniversary, and she was offering me
some good money. So I went home and I said Henry,
I would never do this except without your permission. But
Betty Hutton has asked me to go with her to
the London Palladium for a month. How do you feel
(11:25):
about that? And he said, well, why don't you do that? Said,
it's okay with me. So on our opening night, my
first wedding anniversary, a big bouquet of flowers came into
my big tub of a dressing room of you know,
washing tub. While I'm at the London Palladium, he has
(11:51):
a gig at the Hollywood Palladium playing the Glockenspiel on
I'm looking over a four leaf clover.
Speaker 4 (11:59):
And he hated singing it.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
He didn't mind playing the Glockenspiel, but the whole band
had a sing I'm looking over a rough four leaf clover,
and he would not sing. He would play the glockenspiel
but not sing, And one night the bandleader saw him
not singing fired him off the bandstand right then and there.
So when I came home from the London Palladium, he
(12:24):
picked me up at the airport and I said.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
Henry, how did he go with the Hollywood Palladium.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
He said, I got fired because I wouldn't sing I'm
looking over a four leaf clover.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
Anyway. That was that chapter in Our Lives.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
And in nineteen fifty two, Mancini would join the Universal
Music Department, where he'd gone to have a hand in
working with the scores of over one hundred different films.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
His time at Universal was like going to her great
training experience for him to be on salary, and we
knew we could always depend on a check at the
end of the week, and that's where he got his training.
He was working constantly on every film you could think of.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
And it was there that he met Blake Edwards, an
American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter. If you don't know him,
he directed Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Just by accident, Blake Edwards and Henry were on the
Universal lot at the same time. Henry was there to
get a haircut and they were about to have lunch
and they met in the commissary. Blake happened to mention
to Henry that he was about to do a television
series called Peter Gunn would he be interested in doing
(13:49):
the music. Henry, of course, thinking it was a Western,
said sure, why not, I'd love to do it. He
said no, no, no, no, this is not a western
this is about a private detective named Peter gunn Well.
That was a turning point in our lives because it
became such a worldwide hit, and still today that album
(14:13):
cover is treasured worldwide. We had always tried to plan
to go to Europe at some point in our lives,
and we would say, one day we're going to go
to Europe.
Speaker 4 (14:27):
One day, we're going to go to Europe.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
And I said, Henry, I don't care when, but let's
book it.
Speaker 4 (14:34):
Let's book it now.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
So we booked a trip from New York to Southampton
on the SS France, first class all the way for
six weeks. We had saved six thousand dollars. So when
we sailed on the SS France, it so happened that
Blake Edwards and Maurice Rischlin were writing a script on
(15:01):
a story called The Pink Panther. So they would be
in their estate rooms writing all day long, and at
dinner time we would all converge at the dinner table
for drinks and laughs, and the rest of the evening
we were on a six week tour of every wonderful
(15:22):
country Spain, France, the Netherlands of.
Speaker 4 (15:27):
Finland, Sweden.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
We did it all in six weeks on six thousand dollars.
Can you imagine. So while we were there, it's when
Peter Gunn hit and we knew that when we came
home we didn't have to worry. The first royalty check
from ASCAP for Peter Gunn was thirty two thousand dollars.
(15:53):
We couldn't imagine having that much money in the bank.
When Henry had an assignment, I used to hear him
composing a way upstairs in his music room, and it
always sounded so beautiful to me, just to hear the
(16:13):
notes come out. Anyway, when he was finished with a segment,
he would call me on the phone. He said, you
want to come up and hear something. And I was
always the first one to react to what he had written,
and it was mostly always always positive. I loved the
experience of hearing what he wrote for the first time
(16:37):
of anybody.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
I'll planet and one song that Henry composed and Jenny
managed to hear pretty early on was moon River from
Breakfast at Tiffany's. It's a song that sins been covered
by Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Chevy Chase, Frank Ocean and
Morrissey of all people. But the song almost didn't make
it onto the big screen.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
You know.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
When Breakfast at Tiffany's was finished, Paramount decided to take
it to San Francisco to preview it, and when it
was over, we all met in Blake Edward's suite in
San Francisco to discuss, you know, what work what didn't work,
And it was obvious that things had that was a
(17:24):
little long, and there needed to be cuts made here
and there. One of the suggestions by the head of
the studio was that they cut the song moon River.
There was such silence in the room that even Audrey
(17:44):
took exception to that suggestion, after having worked so hard
to do it and learn it and anyway, it definitely
stayed in a picture, as you know, and thank got it.
He had a sense of melody that very few good
(18:05):
musicians have. And Moon River, I do believe will live.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
Longer, longer, longer.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Than any of us. People will know that song forever.
It has a lasting quality about it that expresses everybody's feelings.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Henry Mancini would pass away on June fourteenth, nineteen ninety four,
at the age of seventy and Ginny adored every second
of their time together.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
My life with Henry was such a joy because his
temperament was so even. He would never get angry. He
would always He used to say, Ginny, when I to
fly off the handle, he used to say, Ginny, let
four bars go by, meaning four bars of music before
(19:08):
you say anything, before you react.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
Anyway, he taught me a lot. He taught me a lot.
Speaker 3 (19:17):
My time with Henry was over much too early. This
year we would have celebrated sixty nine years of marital bliss.
Unfortunately I was I was not able to keep him
that long. So I keep him alive through listening to
(19:40):
his music all the time. He's always there. He's always there.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
And a great job on the production by Monty Montgomery
and a special thanks to Philip Graham for helping us
gather the audio for this story. And a special thanks
to Virginia Mancini for telling her story and the story
of her husband, composer Henry Mancini. And it turns out
that Universal Music Department gig was life changing the story
(20:10):
of Henry Mancini. Here on our American Story
Host
Lee Habeeb
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