This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

And we return to our American stories.

And up next a story from the late Virginia Mancini, the wife of Henry Mancini, one of America's

greatest film composers.

If you don't know his name, you certainly know his compositions, which include the Pink Panther

theme and Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Here's our own Monte Montgomery to get us started

with the story.

American composer Henry Mancini was born in Cleveland, Ohio on April 16, 1924.

But that's not where he grew up. Here's his wife, Virginia, or Ginny, with the rest of the story.

Henry grew up in West Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, outside of Pittsburgh, in a steel steel town and his father worked at the

Jones and Loughlin steel mill and Henry had a very modest childhood West

Alequip you have to understand is on the wrong side of the tracks. And many Europeans settled there, especially Italians.

They were a very poor Italian family, and they were very close,

and it was a very small town.

So his life was fairly simple, and once his father realized that he didn't want his son to go to work in the steel mill,

he turned him on to the flute because his father played the flute and when his father came down with the mumps in his frustration, he handed Henry the flute and taught him to play

and they both played in the sons of Italy band in West Dallaquipa.

So that was Henry's introduction to music and he loved it and there's a part in his history that talks about his father

taking him into Pittsburgh to see the movie and the stage show at the I forget

the name of the theater but one of the most popular theaters in Pittsburgh. The drama captured Henry in ways that he never realized

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