The Pink Panther has had more than one incarnation: a massive diamond, a sly cartoon cat who both the star of a series of animated shorts and the "spokesman" for a line of home insulation products; but none can be separated from The Pink Panther Theme, written by Henry Mancini in 1964, to accompany the main credits of the United Artists film The Pink Panther—the classic movie that introduced Inspector Jacques Clousseau and his nemesis, The Phantom, to the world's moviegoers. Mancini had just garnered a bagful of Grammy and Oscar awards for his music for Breakfast at Tiffany's when The Pink Panther writer/director Blake Edwards approached him to join the project. The resulting Panther music was almost as successful: three Grammys, an Oscar nod (though not an Oscar win), and over a year and a half riding on the charts.

By sheer repetition, perhaps, the Theme (which is heard in all but one of the Edwards/Sellers Clousseau sequels and also in the cartoons), with its unforgettable da-dum da-dum—or as the old joke goes, "dead ant, dead ant"—introductory rhythm and suave sax solo, is the part most remembered from Mancini's score. The other cues he provided, however, are hardly less wonderful, displaying Mancini's knack for veering with surprising alacrity between velvety 1960s lounge jazz, sleek European-style pop (pretty good for a guy born in Cleveland, OH, and raised in Pennsylvania), and occasionally, more traditional incidental music.

After the famous theme, the score's most successful single is the song, "It Had Better Be Tonight". Recorded in several versions (the English lyrics are by Breakfast at Tiffany's "Moon River" collaborator Johnny Mercer), the song figures into the movie most memorably at one of Blake Edward's signature "high life" scenes; it would later reappear in the Edwards/Sellers comedy, The Party), where an entertainer sings it onscreen.

© Blair Johnston, Rovi