Originally from Scanno, Abruzzo, his father Quintiliano "Quinto" Mancini was a laborer at the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company and amateur musician who first came to the U.S. as a teenager around 1910.

[10][11] At age 12, he began studying piano and orchestral arrangement under Pittsburgh concert pianist and Stanley Theatre (now Benedum Center) conductor Max Adkins.

[5][12] According to Mancini biographer John Caps, the young Mancini "preferred music arranging to any kind of musical performance, but taking apart a Chopin mazurka or Schumann sonata in order to play it helped him see...how the puzzle of form, meter, melody, harmony, and counterpoint had been solved by previous composers.

[14][15] Later that year, Mancini transferred to the Juilliard School of Music in New York City following a successful audition in which he performed a Beethoven sonata and improvisation on "Night and Day" by Cole Porter.

Owing to a recommendation by Miller, Mancini was first assigned to the 28th Air Force Band before being reassigned overseas to the 1306th Engineers Brigade in France.

After World War II, Mancini broadened his skills in composition, counterpoint, harmony and orchestration during studies, opening with the composers Ernst Krenek and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.

During the next six years, he contributed music to over 100 movies, most notably Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Creature Walks Among Us, It Came from Outer Space, Tarantula, This Island Earth, The Glenn Miller Story (for which he received his first Academy Award nomination), The Benny Goodman Story and Orson Welles' Touch of Evil.

His first hit as a pop songwriter was a single by Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians titled "I Won't Let You Out of My Heart".

Along with Alex North, Elmer Bernstein, Leith Stevens and Johnny Mandel, Henry Mancini was a pioneer of the inclusion of jazz elements in the late romantic orchestral film and TV scoring prevalent at the time.

Mancini's scores for Blake Edwards included Breakfast at Tiffany's (with the standard "Moon River")[9] and Days of Wine and Roses (with the title song, "Days of Wine and Roses"), as well as Experiment in Terror, The Pink Panther (and all of its sequels), The Great Race, The Party, 10 (including "It's Easy to Say") and Victor Victoria.

He wrote many television themes, including Mr. Lucky (starring John Vivyan and Ross Martin),[20] NBC Mystery Movie,[21] Tic Tac Dough (1990 version),[22] Once Is Not Enough, and What's Happening!!

In the 1984–85 television season, four series featured original Mancini themes: Newhart, Hotel, Remington Steele, and Ripley's Believe It or Not.

Salute to the President was published only in a school-band arrangement, although Mancini performed it frequently with symphony orchestras on his concert tours.

[23] Some of the artists who have recorded Mancini songs include Duane Eddy, Andy Williams, Paul Anka, Pat Boone, Anita Bryant, Jack Jones, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Connie Francis, Eydie Gorme, Steve Lawrence, Trini Lopez, George Maharis, Johnny Mathis, Jerry Vale, Ray Conniff, Quincy Jones, The Lennon Sisters, The Lettermen, Herb Alpert, Eddie Cano, Frank Chacksfield, Warren Covington, Sarah Vaughan, Shelly Manne, James Moody, Percy Faith, Ferrante & Teicher, Horst Jankowski, Andre Kostelanetz, Peter Nero, Liberace, Mantovani, Tony Bennett, Julie London, Wayne Newton, Arthur Fiedler, Secret Agent and the Boston Pops Orchestra, Peggy Lee, and Matt Monro.

He had a 20-year contract with RCA Victor, resulting in 60 commercial record albums that made him a household name among artists of easy listening music.

1 hit "Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet") and its accompanying album A Warm Shade of Ivory, Mancini began to function more as a piano soloist and easy-listening artist recording music primarily written by other people.

Among Mancini's orchestral scores are (Lifeforce, The Great Mouse Detective, Sunflower, Tom and Jerry: The Movie, Molly Maguires, The Hawaiians), and darker themes (Experiment in Terror, The White Dawn, Wait Until Dark, The Night Visitor).

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

In 1961, Mancini won two Academy Awards, one for "Moon River" for Best Original Song and one for Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture for the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's.

[35] On April 13, 2004, the United States Postal Service honored Mancini with a thirty-seven cent commemorative stamp.

Painted by artist Victor Stabin, the stamp shows Mancini conducting in front of a list of some of his film and television themes.

Mancini's contracts allowed him to release his own albums for which he rearranged the score music into arrangements more appropriate for listening outside of the context of the film/theater.