POP MUSIC REVIEW : Mancini’s Birthday Tribute Filled With Song, Celebrities

The 70th-birthday tribute to Henry Mancini at Pauley Pavilion on the UCLA campus Tuesday night was produced with the smooth professionalism and polish that always has been associated with the veteran film composer.

The floor of the Pavilion was filled with softly lit tables for a post-concert gala, while the side bleachers overflowed with high school and university music students--the immediate beneficiaries of the event’s fund-raising effort for the UCLA Center for the Performing Arts and the Los Angeles County High School for the Arts. In a rousing opening, the colorful UCLA Marching Band trooped in with a brassy rendering of “The Pink Panther.”

The first two-thirds of the program mixed montages of Mancini’s film music with a series of tributes. Blake Edwards recalled a producer’s insistence that “we have to drop that (expletive) song” (“Moon River”) from “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”; Bob Newhart and Dudley Moore offered a humorous send-up of more obscure Mancini accomplishments such as his music for “The Creature From the Black Lagoon”; and Quincy Jones conducted the theme from “Peter Gunn.”

Andy Williams, hosting the show, reprised his hit versions of “Moon River,” “Days of Wine and Roses” and “Dear Heart,” and John Williams and Jack Elliott conducted various Mancini works. Best of all, Julie Andrews sang three lesser-known Mancini tunes--”Crazy World,” “Whistling Away in the Dark” and the superb “Two for the Road”--with grace and musical understanding.

The final third of the program was given to an overly long and oddly out of context “Operatic Salute” by Luciano Pavarotti. Granted the presumed need for a headliner to generate ticket sales for the benefit, it still was difficult to comprehend why Pavarotti’s segment needed to be fleshed out with two utterly irrelevant (in this setting) operatic overtures.