Suite (The Pink Panther)

Mancini wrote the theme for Blake Edwards's The Pink Panther in 1963, for an animated title sequence that had been designed before the music existed. He gave the melody to a tenor saxophone — Plas Johnson played it — over a walking bass and brushed drums, at a tempo slow enough to suggest someone moving carefully in the dark. The rest of the score leans on Italian dance music, the film being set at a ski resort at Cortina d'Ampezzo. The cartoon panther invented for the credits outlasted the picture, and the theme followed it through four decades of sequels.