Best known for his science fiction films, Jack Arnold also directed television episodes in different genres, not only science fiction but also westerns, comedies, and detective shows.  Among all of his television works, Peter Gunn provides an important example because this is the first television series that has an original score rather than library music for every episode (Withey, 2001). This meant that the score would be composed specifically based on the rough cut of the episode, considering the director’s choices. Before Peter Gunn, television networks were required to have 13 original scores for a television season and any additional shows relied on music libraries to piece together cues for a complete score (Wissner, 2013). Further, the series was in a style of television noir (Glover, 2019) that Arnold had to account for when directing and which series composer Henry Mancini had to consider when writing the score. Mancini  responded by composing a rock-jazz hybrid he deemed as West Coast Cool Jazz and this was the first television score to use jazz throughout, pioneering a new style of television scoring in the late 1950s and early 1960s. One of the hallmarks of the series was that its music was inseparable from the show and often, even its narrative, and the show’s creator, Blake Edwards, noted that the series’ music was responsible for at least half of its success (Burlingame, 2002). Much of the research on Arnold’s works concern his directorial practices and styles and the films themselves but there is little literature on his television episodes and virtually no literature on the music of these episodes. A discussion of the music in these episodes is important because the choice of music helps to heighten the directorial choices that Arnold made and understand how Mancini responded to those choices through his scores.

As a detective show, which differed from much of Arnold’s other works, Arnold had to fit the established parameters of the show when directing (he was called in to direct his first episode midway through the first season when Edwards had already established the series’ format). Similarly, Mancini had to incorporate jazz, which was pervasive in the detective genre in 1950s television, with a consideration of each episode’s plot, script, and Arnold’s directing style. Mancini also established a unique compositional style for the series based on the onscreen action. In this lecture, Reba Wissner will discuss how the composition of music amplifies Arnold’s directorial choices in his episodes of Peter Gunn (“The Hunt,” “Vendetta,” “Bullet for a Badge,” “Love Me to Death,” “Keep Smiling,” and “The Ugly Frame”). Wissner will plot out Mancini’s compositional process as a reflection of Arnold’s directing choices by using Peter Gunn as a case study and elaborate on how this small scale study of Mancini’s music for the show under one director can be expanded to the other directors who worked on the series.