Popular Music and Culture Collection
Johnny Mercer Oral History Project
Interview with Ginny Mancini May 30, 1996
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CITATION:
Ginny Mancini, M133, Johnny Mercer Oral History Project, Popular Music & Culture Collection, Special Collection and Archives, Georgia State University Library, Atlanta, GA.
INTERVIEWEE: Ginny Mancini INTERVIEWER: Chris Paton LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA DATE: May 30, 1996 MANUSCRIPT NUMBER: M133 ACCESSION NUMBER: M96-4
Tape 1 of 1
PATON: Okay, today is May 30th, and this is Chris Paton, I think, if I’m on the right day, and I'm here today with Ginny Mancini, and we are checking to see if the sound works before we go ahead and record an interview relating to Johnny Mercer.
[PAUSE]
PATON: One of the questions that we are asking everybody is how did you first come to know or to meet Mr. Mercer? And, in your case, of course, your husband may have met him independently, or in a different way from you.
MANCINI: I met him long, long, long before I even knew Henry because I was a singer, and I was one of Mel Tormé's 'Mel-Tones.' And during those days, in the forties, everybody hung around on Vine Street, and in particular at the corner of Sunset and Vine was Music City. And
Glenn Wallichs and Johnny Mercer and Buddy DeSylva started Capitol Records. So I was there at the birth of Capitol Records. And, then, it was during the war years, and there were armed forces radio shows being done in Hollywood with major, major stars of radio and movies. And I was fortunate enough to sing on one of those shows called Jubilee, and it was a show with Martha Raye and Johnny Mercer and Mel Tormé and the Mel-Tones. So every week we did -- no, excuse me, the name of the show was Swing Time. And I would -- it was a kick to sing with him. We did
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'Accentuate the Positive' and 'Dream,' and so I've known Johnny for a long, long, long time. So as
luck would have it, years later, when Henry and he began to collaborate, it was wonderful. We had
some great times together.
PATON: I didn't know that you were involved with the AFRS programs --
MANCINI: Um-hmm.
PATON: -- with Johnny. We get servicemen who were in service at the time calling us and saying: 'I wish I had recordings of those.'
MANCINI: Oh, the best shows!
PATON: What was it like to do them?
MANCINI: Oh, it was wonderful. This show in particular was a fifteen-minute show once a week, and we'd go into radio recorders and just have fun doing wonderful, wonderful music, great arrangements, and it was -- it was terrific.
PATON: Sounds wonderful. Did they do specific arrangements and things for the
shows -- different from -- what might have been elsewhere?
MANCINI: Well, yes, whatever was current at the time -- you know, whatever was
popular and that the servicemen would relate to. Sure. It was great.
PATON: Well, it worked. The servicemen still remember it, because we’re still getting
phone calls.
MANCINI: Oh, it was a wonderful time for those shows. It really was. Because
everybody volunteered their time and services to entertain them.
PATON: One man told us that it was the only thing that made getting up at 8:00 in the 2
morning on Tuesday in England worth it, was that he knew that he was going to get to hear that show that morning.
MANCINI: Um-hmm.
PATON: Regarding -- as Mr. Mercer and your husband came to work together, the first collaboration that we understand was 'Joanna,' which your husband had actually written first. And then Mr. Mercer called him and asked if he could write a lyric to it. Do you know anything about it?
MANCINI: 'Joanna'?
PATON: Um-hmm.
MANCINI: I don't even recognize the title.
PATON: You don't remember it. Well, they both said, independently, in their memoirs, that it didn't go anywhere.
MANCINI: Well, I would love to dig it out. [Laughing.]
PATON: We don't have it, as far as I know.
MANCINI: Well, my goodness, I am going to have to see if it’s in our archives somewhere.
PATON: Apparently Mr. Mercer heard it on the radio or somewhere and called and said
--
MANCINI: 'Joanna.' Hmm.
PATON: -- ' Would you mind if I wrote some words to go with this?'
MANCINI: Um-hmm.
PATON: After that, as far as we know, the first one was 'Moon River.' 3
MANCINI: I think so. He had been through a rather -- oh, a period of depression, actually, because of the fact that music was changing so drastically in the fifties. And, of course, with the advent of rock and roll, that's what young people wanted to hear. So, the poet that he was, the demand for his -- for that kind of lyric, you know, just -- wasn't there.
So, when Breakfast at Tiffany's came along, and there was a need for a certain, haunting song that would depict Holly Golightly as a little girl from a small town who is trying to be very sophisticated in big, bad New York City, there had to be a happy medium that would work for this -- for this young woman. And the melody came, after a while, to Henry. And John certainly put a wonderful lyric to it. I believe that it was Johnny who really had the title ‘Moon River.’
PATON: Um-hmm. We understand they sort of fooled around with different titles -- before --
MANCINI: Yes.
PATON: -- settling on that one. And there was a river in Savannah that was later renamed 'Moon River.'
MANCINI: Oh, great.
PATON: And now people think that he lived on Moon River, and that's why the title came to him, so the story is getting a little twisted.
MANCINI: Well, every -- yes, I have a little house at Malibu, and whenever there's a full moon, and that moon is shining down on the Pacific Ocean, to me, it's ‘Moon River.’
PATON: Such a beautiful song.
We understand, from a couple of sources, that your husband -- I guess, early in 4
his relationship, working relationship with Mr. Mercer, called him to check on a lyric, and reportedly
said he found out you don't do that with Johnny Mercer. Do you know anything about that?
MANCINI: No.
PATON: Okay. They then worked together for about ten years, off and on.
MANCINI: Yes, they did. I believe the next thing was ‘Days Of Wine and Roses.’ And I
remember Henry coming home from Paramount Studios the day that they 'demo-ed' it for Blake
Edwards and Jack Lemmon, and it was on the sound stage at Paramount Studios. And just in an empty sound stage with Henry at the piano and Johnny singing the lyric to ‘Days of Wine and
Roses.’ When they were finished, both Blake and Jack had tears streaming down their faces, they
were so moved by it. And when I first heard it, I said, ‘My goodness, that undoubtedly is going to
win an Academy Award.’ And it did.
PATON: Beautiful song.
MANCINI: Um-hmm.
PATON: And then after that, there was ‘Charade,’ and ‘Whistling Away the Dark’ and
‘A Sweetheart Tree,’ and --
MANCINI: -- lots of things. ‘A Sweetheart Tree.’ Funny thing about ‘Sweetheart Tree’--
As was his habit, he would come in with several sets of lyrics, depending upon, you know, the assignment. And when he came in with some lyrics to the ‘Sweetheart Tree’ the first thing he sang, and it might have been his way of joking, but the first lyric was: ‘There are 99 cars on a freight train.’
And, so, Hank said, ‘What else have you got?’ So that was -- became ‘The Sweetheart Tree.’
PATON: So when they were working together, Mercer got the tune and then sort of 5
went off --
MANCINI: Yes --
PATON: -- somewhere on his own, and then they came back together when he thought he had something to share with him.
MANCINI: Right. Uh-huh, yes.
PATON: Okay. Any particular stories about ‘Charade’ or --
MANCINI: Not that I can think of -- no, not that I can think of. There again, the wonderful metaphors that he had in his lyrics, you know, depicting life and losses and loves in terms of the stage and the theater and the love affair that was so great and fell apart, but --. It was a lovely metaphor that he had written.
PATON: It's a beautiful song, all the way around. Given that you said that Mercer had been depressed in the fifties with the changing of the music scene and the lack of interest anymore, apparently, in the type of work that he did, when the Academy Award nominations started to come again in '61 and '62, and apparently pretty regularly after that, what was the reaction or how did they feel, both of them?
MANCINI: Oh, he was -- oh, elated, elated. And, of course, to collaborate with a master like Johnny Mercer was wonderful for Henry because Henry never considered himself a songwriter.
He was a film composer, and because of his gift of melody, his mentors were Victor Young and the composers who had a great gift of melody, which he had as well. And, so the fact that the melodies were so strong and lent themselves to a song, you know, a typical song, in the Tin Pan Alley fashion.
It was a thrill for him to collaborate with Johnny Mercer. 6
PATON: Did the two of them see each other much in between jobs, or was it mostly job
to job to job?
MANCINI: Oh, not too much socially, although when we were together socially, just lots
of good times and laughs and reminiscences. It was wonderful. He was fun to be with.
PATON: We've heard that from people so --
MANCINI: Yeah.
PATON: -- occasionally, it would be you and your husband and Mr. and Mrs. Mercer?
MANCINI: That's it, uh-huh.
PATON: Anything in particular that you did together, or places to go or --
MANCINI: No, I can remember [that] they came to our Malibu home on many occasions
for a relaxing casual dinner, but that was about the extent of it.
PATON: Um-hmm. What was Mrs. Mercer like?
MANCINI: I didn't spend a lot of time with Ginger. She was very soft-spoken, so I
remember having to really strain to hear her when she spoke. She kind of just sat back and let John
have the glory.
PATON: We found something in going through Mr. Mercer's ASCAP list -- somebody
years ago printed out from microfilm a list of things that he had on his list, and we were stunned.
He's down there for incidental music to the Pink Panther. Do you know anything about that? We've
been trying to figure out what.
MANCINI: Incidental music for the Pink Panther. Gosh. There were lots of wonderful themes in the Pink Panther. Oh, gee, I forget the titles of them now, but they are all in the Pink 7
Panther -- the original Pink Panther album. So it could be that John was fascinated with some of those melodies and might have put a lyric to them. I'm not sure.
PATON: We couldn't figure out if the two of them were sort of talking music back and forth and they sang or something, and something came out.
MANCINI: I have no idea.
PATON: It kind of fascinated us. It doesn't credit lyrics. It credits music --
MANCINI: I see.
PATON: -- which is even stranger, for Mr. Mercer.
Aside from the projects that we know ended up in songs, to your knowledge, were they working on any other projects at any time, just casually or -- not related to a particular film?
MANCINI: I'm not aware.
PATON: Okay. A question for you that would have helped if I had remembered to bring a copy of the picture that I am going to talk about. We have two or three pictures of them together, the Academy Awards pictures with the --
MANCINI: The Oscars.
PATON: -- statuettes. One that we have is the two of them standing side by side. And our copy says nothing about who took it or where it was taken. And they both kind of have their arms crossed, and they are looking at something. And there are two shots taken just a few seconds apart, as near as we can tell. They look relaxed. They look happy. It's the most beautiful picture of both of them that we have. Does that ring any bells? 8
MANCINI: No, I have one on the piano that I think is the best one of the both of them. I
don't know if you could be referring to that one, but you are welcome to take a look at it.
PATON: I'll take a look on the way out. Okay. I think that pretty well wraps it up --
That's what we were about to ask.
MANCINI: Well, good.
PATON: Thank you so much.
MANCINI: I'm happy to have been a part of it.
PATON: Thank you for your time.
MANCINI: Certainly.
[Whereupon, recording ends on Tape 1, Side A.]
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