The Long-Awaited Release of Henry Mancini’s Unused Score

I was excited when I learned that Quartet Records was releasing the complete original recordings for both Ron Goodwin’s and Henry Mancini’s scores for Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy. For decades, there was speculation surrounding Mancini’s rejected score, which allowed a myth to propagate that Hitchcock had dismissed Mancini for composing a score that was too much in the style of Bernard Herrmann. Of course, it was Herrmann himself who played perhaps the biggest role in creating and spreading that story. And with the first-ever release of Mancini’s complete score, I immediately set myself the task of reconstructing a Mancini-scored version of Hitchcock’s penultimate film during my semester break, which ended up involving the separation of dialogue tracks and in many instances recreating a good deal of sound effects and ambiance tracks as well.

Marrying (or Reuniting) the Picture to the Cues

It was a pleasure to present this “first-look” at Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy with Henry Mancini’s cues restored along with award-winning writer and filmmaker, Joel Gunz. I am grateful to Patricia Wheeler-Condon, whose dissertation on the unused Mancini score contains the composer’s detailed timing notes, along with many illustrations of Mancini’s score that includes both visual and dialogue references which allowed me to confirm proper placement of the cues. It’s fascinating to consider what might have been but in the end, it seems Ron Goodwin delivered what Hitchcock wanted for his film.

Our Watch-Party

In this HitchCon monthly event from January 23, 2023, Joel Gunz and I do a side-by-side comparison of scenes from the film with both Mancini’s and Goodwin’s music. A lively discussion with the webinar audience followed and is also included here. Enjoy!