Henry Mancini

Cleveland, Ohio, USA

Biography

Enrico Nicola "Henry" Mancini (April 16, 1924 – June 14, 1994) was an American composer, conductor and arranger, who is best remembered for his film and television scores. Often cited as one of the greatest composers in the history of film, he won four Academy Awards, a Golden Globe, and twenty Grammy Awards, plus a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995. His best known works include the jazz-idiom theme to The Pink Panther film series ("The Pink Panther Theme") and the theme to the Peter Gunn television series. The Peter Gunn theme won the first Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Mancini also had a long collaboration on film scores with the film director Blake Edwards.

Movies

The Julie Andrews Hour is a television variety series starring Julie Andrews that was produced by ATV and distributed by ITC Entertainment. It aired on the ABC network in the United States. In order to secure Andrews for the series, Sir Lew Grade and ABC offered her an extremely lucrative contract. In 1963, when another major star, Judy Garland was signed to a weekly television variety series, it failed to catch on with the public. One of the main reasons for its demise was its constant change of format and the fact that critics and audiences felt that Garland was not shown off to her best advantage. In order to avoid that error, Andrews asked producer Nick Vanoff what the premise of the show would be about. Vanoff immediately answered her by saying "Julie Andrews...without Julie Andrews there is no 'Julie Andrews Hour'". The show premiered on ABC Wednesday, September 13, 1972 at 10:00 P.M. ET to rave reviews. Unfortunately, its time slot proved to be daunting because it was up against the popular CBS detective series, Cannon. Another reason for the low ratings was that the lateness of the hour was not conducive to family viewing since children were in bed by that time. On Thanksgiving Eve, November 22, 1972, "The Julie Andrews Hour" devoted an entire episode saluting Walt Disney. To make it more of a "family special", ABC switched the time slot of "The Julie Andrews Hour" that night to 8:30 P.M. and The ABC Wednesday Movie Of The Week to 9:30 P.M. The ratings improved a little so ABC then made a decision to alternate Andrews' time period each week This continued until January, 1973 when the series was moved to Saturday nights at 9:00 P.M. The ratings went from bad to worse as Andrews' chief competition was The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show on CBS. "The Julie Andrews Hour" was finally canceled by ABC after its 24th episode in April, 1973.

More info
The Julie Andrews Hour
1972