By 1969, Henry Mancini was the number one pop composer of his time. By this time he had composed scores for many famous movies, including The Pink Panther series, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Days of Wine and Roses and many more. But Henry Mancini wasn’t what you might call a Top 40 performer. He had hit the Top 40 five times with theme music from the various movies, but had never cracked the Top 10, let alone hit number one, until now. And, to make matters even more interesting, this is the first time he has charted with a song that he did not write.

The story goes that one night in late 1968, Henry attended the movie Romeo and Juliet which was a film directed by Franco Zeffirelli with a score by Nino Rota. Henry was mesmerized by the score and left the theater thinking “why hasn’t this been recorded?” So, he set about writing an arrangement of the theme song which he would record as the B-side of a new single that was in the works.

The A-side of that record was “The Windmills of Your Mind” which was the theme song of The Thomas Crown Affair and was meant to be the hit, but like happens quite frequently, radio stations started flipping the record over and playing “Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet” and it soon became a national hit. Andy Williams recorded a vocal version of the song called “A Time For Us” in 1969, but it did not chart.

What is so surprising about this song is that it was competing with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and acts like this for air time and it actually beat them all out to get to the top of the charts. In fact, it was the song that knocked “Get Back” out of the number one spot.

Henry Mancini was born Enrico Nicola Mancini (Henry was his nickname) in 1924 in the Little Italy neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio. The family moved soon after that and he grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. When he was twelve years old, he began piano lessons and after high school attended Juilliard School of Music in New York. In 1943, he was drafted and served in the Army band during World War II.

After the war, he returned to a life of music playing for the Glenn Miller Orchestra, under the leadership of Tex Beneke since Miller had died during the war. Henry went from there to writing music for Universal Pictures and wrote the music for many movies up until the day he arranged the piece for “Romeo and Juliet.”

Henry Mancini wrote the scores for more than 90 movies in his lifetime. He died in 1994 of pancreatic cancer at the age of 70. His music is still played to this day.

“Theme from Romeo and Juliet” entered the pop charts on May 24, 1969 and stayed at number one for two weeks. Henry Mancini never hit the Top 10 again and this was his only number one hit.