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The "Jaws Theme" Can Be Found in Henry Mancini's Un-Used Music for Frenzy(1972)

posted 6 months ago by roger1 (3703)
5 replies | jump to latest

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy5kryT0xrJMno-rZfYeXYtc6mQxTvtYX

Above:

A link to some "musical score cues" for Alfred Hitchcock's 1972 thriller "Frenzy."

These cues were made by the famous musical composer Henry Mancini, who "ruled the 1960s" with scores to the Pink Panther comedies and thrillers like "Wait Until Dark," "Experiment in Terror," "Charade" and "Arabesque." Mancini also did the "jazz thriller" theme for the TV show called Peter Gunn.

In 1971, Alfred Hitchcock hired Mancini to score "Frenzy" but soon fired Mancini and threw out his score ("Too sinister" said Hitchcock.) Ron Goodwin did the score instead.

I LIKE Mancini's score better than the Goodwin score that ended up in the movie.

But in these "Mancini cues" (discovered by MC poster horrorlover656) is one called "Babs Grabs" -- eventually in it you can HEAR: the Jaws theme.

Yep, there it is. Three years before "Jaws" came out and made that theme famous.

I don't think that John Williams in any way "stole" Henry Mancini's UNUSED Frenzy music to create the Jaws theme but:

ONE: "Great minds sometimes think alike" -- two men heard the same music in their minds

AND:

TWO: Let's be thankful that Frenzy didn't use this music. Tens of millions more people saw Jaws than saw Frenzy -- so the music got more famous than it might have been.

[–] doctorc1970 (278) 6 months ago

Wow. That's a great catch. Absolutely can hear it.

[–] EdwardHaskell (145) 6 months ago

Having listened to it a couple of times (hated it, BTW) I think your really reaching on this one. There is a similarity between the two but I don't think it can be said that you actually hear the Jaws theme.

[–] roger1 (3703) 6 months ago

Wow. That's a great catch. Absolutely can hear it.

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Well...thank you for agreeing !

Having listened to it a couple of times (hated it, BTW)

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Well...so did Alfred Hitchcock. Henry Mancini wrote that different opening credit theme(TWO versions on the album) scored the whole film and...Hitchcock fired Mancini(nicely, I assume he was paid) threw out the score and picked Ron Goodwin for a revamp.

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I think your really reaching on this one.

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Well, thank you for taking the time to listen to it and to disagree...

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There is a similarity between the two but I don't think it can be said that you actually hear the Jaws theme.

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Well, I will clarify by saying that the theme is NOT "the Jaws theme," start to finish. Jaws shows up rather in the middle of this piece --definitely with the chugging locomotive theme, but I ALSO hear the counterbalancing trumpet under it -- just like in Jaws. But then the "Jaws theme" leaves the piece and disappears.

I suppose what I am saying is that Henry Mancini did NOT have the charge to write "a theme for a killer shark" in Frenzy, but in writing a theme for "a killer psychopath" (an insane rapist-strangler) somehow simlilar NOTES rose into his head. Who knows why?

Movie music composers fascinate me -- the script is written to provide a story, the director makes the film visually but ONLY the musical composer IMAGINES those notes and gives the movie his or her "personal point of view." (This is why Quentin Tarantino has refused to work with composers, save Morricone on The Hateful Eight -- QT "doesn't want someone else imposing their creative vision on MY movie."

CONT

[–] roger1 (3703) 6 months ago

The piece is entitled "Babs Grabs" -- I am guessing it is for a very brief but shocking flashback to a woman named Babs being strangled with a necktie..and GRABBING the monogrammed "R" tiepin as she dies. (It becomes a clue in her cold, dead, hand.) This "Jaws" music is rather too long for the sequence on screen, had it been used, I expect only a LITTLE of it WOULD have been used.

Maybe just the "Jaws" part?

[–] tsrts (407) 6 months ago

😮 There is a real similarity. This was no scoring accident…
Williams and Mancini…great minds think alike….