Notablog

Song of the Day: Darling Lili (“Whistling Away the Dark”), music by Henry Mancini, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, is a singular musical moment for Julie Andrews in this 1970 film, co-written by Blake Edwards and William Peter Blatty (yes, the novelist who wrote “The Exorcist“). The film also starred Rock Hudson and Jeremy Kemp. Edwards and Mancini had one of the most prolific collaborative relationships in cinema history. As David McGee writes: “It may seem that if Henry Mancini had not existed, Blake Edwards would have had to invent him. Or vice versa. Of Edwards’s 38 films, 28 are graced by Mancini’s music—music so evocative, so beautiful, at times so daring that the films and their scores are inseparable, impossible to imagine without each other.” Ironically, Mancini appeared uncredited as a piano player in only one of Edwards’s films—the 1967 neo-noir movie version of “Gunn,” also co-written by Edwards and Blatty, and based on the classic television series that Mancini scored. I featured that “Peter Gunn” theme way back in August 2006. Today’s Oscar-nominated “Best Original Song” is yet one more sample of Mancini’s magic in an Edwards production [YouTube link].