Born in Cleveland, Ohio but brought up in Pennsylvania, where he played the flute in a local band as a youth before sending some arrangements to Benny Goodman. Goodman offered him a job and after serving in WWII he joined the rearranged Miller band. In 1952 he was given a two-week assignment at Universal to work on an Abbott and Costello film and ended up staying for six years. Success with the Glenn Miller Story allowed him to score many other films, helping along the way to change the style of film background music by injecting jazz into the traditional orchestral arrangements of the 1950s. He was nominated for 18 Oscars and won four; in addition, he won 20 Grammys and 2 Emmys, made over 50 albums and had 500 works published. Mancini collaborated extensively with Blake Edwards - firstly on TV's "Peter Gunn", then on Breakfast at Tiffany which won him two Oscars; he won further Oscars for the titles song for Days Of Wine and Roses and the score for Victor/Victoria; he will be best remembered for the theme tune for The Pink Panther.


Father of twin daughters: singer Monica Mancini, Felice Mancini (head of Mr. Holland's Opus Foundation) and son Chris Mancini. For Hatari! (1962), he wrote a brief piece of incidental music to accompany a scene where a baby elephant is taken for a walk. To Mancini's astonishment, it became an international hit as "Baby Elephant Walk," and was re-recorded by a large number of artists and in many styles. Was reassigned to the band unit shortly after he joined the U.S. Army in World War II. This actually saved his life, as the unit to which he'd originally been assigned was wiped out to a man in the Battle of the Bulge. He was awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for Recording at 6821 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, California.