Henry Mancini
Celebrating His 100th Birthday This Year
Henry Mancini’s famous melodies are part of America’s cultural DNA: the loopy perambulation of a fluty organ with an e-flat clarinet in “Baby Elephant Walk,” the pile-driving trombones in “The Theme from Peter Gunn,” a tenor saxophone that creeps up from behind like a “Pink Panther.” Three eponymous movies gave us Charade, Days of Wine and Roses, and the syrupy Chopin-esque intro to Love Story. And “Moon River” gushed through Breakfast at Tiffany’s. In 1987, PBS gave Mancini a star-studded salute with a TV special featuring recording artists who scored hits with his beloved tunes. I was booked to photograph a group of them for a TV Guide cover. But there was a caveat: All nine stars, my subjects, would be together in the same place at the same time for only ten minutes during a break, and — oh, yeah! — they would all be dressed in black formalwear.
This was to be a color photograph. Given my responsibility to make everybody look good, not to mention correctly expose the film, I was afraid their dark and unreflective wardrobe would suck up my lights like a black hole. But each star in this constellation had to shine. I was also concerned about how to tie nine impatient personalities together conceptually. What kind of hook, what visual common denominator could I come up with to engage viewers?
