The Music Factory

This chapter details events following Mancini's employment as a Universal Studios staff composer in 1952. The Universal Studios staff composers were a highly organized, well-oiled team, able to score any sort of film, any story or setting, albeit with fairly generic music and always in a rush. Mancini's daily routine at Universal, studying the clichés of Hollywood storytelling music, was the perfect on-the-job training for his career to come. Among his first assignments was to score the studio's glamorous two-reeler films with titles like The World's Most Beautiful Girls, Fun for All, and Calypso Carnival. The first feature-length film receiving more than a handful of music cues from Mancini was called Willie and Joe Back at the Front (1952). As a sign of growing confidence, conductor Joseph Gershenson gradually gave Mancini a shot at writing the opening main title music for several films, including The Raiders, All I Desire, and City Beneath the Sea. Mancini's first onscreen credit would come as an arranger in 1954 for the Universal bio-pic musical The Glenn Miller Story.