Pink Panther

The Pink Panther is a series of comedy films featuring the bumbling French police detective Jacques Clouseau. The role was originated by, and is most closely associated with, Peter Sellers. more...

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Most of the films were directed and co-written by Blake Edwards, with notable theme music composed by Henry Mancini.

Despite its use in the titles of most of the films of the series, "The Pink Panther" is not the Clouseau character, but a large and valuable fictitious diamond which is the "MacGuffin" of the first film in the series. It bears that name because the flaw at its center, when viewed closely, is said to resemble a leaping pink panther. The phrase reappears in the title of the fourth film, The Return of the Pink Panther, in which the theft of the diamond is again the center of the plot. The film marked the return of Sellers to the role after a gap of ten years. The phrase has been used for all the subsequent films in the series, even when the jewel does not figure into the plot (the diamond has only appeared in five of the ten films in the series).

The first film in the series had an animated opening sequence (created by DePatie-Freleng) set to the theme music by Henry Mancini, featuring The Pink Panther cartoon character. This character, designed by Hawley Pratt, was subsequently given its own series of animated films—as well as being featured in the opening of every film in the series except A Shot in the Dark—and came to be known simply as "The Pink Panther".

Films and themes

The best-known of the films starred Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau and were directed and co-written by Blake Edwards. The popular jazz-based theme music was composed by Henry Mancini. In addition to the credits sequences, the theme accompanies any suspenseful sequence involving "the Phantom" at work on a theft, both in the first and in subsequent films.

Mancini's other themes for the first film include an Italian-language set-piece called "Meglio Stasera" whose purpose seems primarily to introduce young actress Fran Jeffries. Portions of its instrumental version also appear in the underscore of the film several times. Other segments include "Shades of Sennett", a "honky tonk" piano number introducing the film's climactic chase scene through the streets of Rome. Most of the soundtrack album's other entries are early 1960s orchestral/jazz pieces, befitting the style of the era. Although variations of the main theme would be reprised for many of the Pink Panther series entries, as well as the cartoon series, Mancini composed a different theme for A Shot in the Dark.

The Pink Panther of the title is a diamond supposedly containing a flaw which forms the image of a "leaping panther", which can be seen if held up to light in a certain way. The beginning of the first film explains this, and then the camera zooms in on the diamond to reveal the blurry flaw, which focuses into the Panther (albeit not actually leaping) to start the opening credits sequence. The plot of the first film centers around the theft of this diamond, which is mentioned in only four other films in the series (The Return of the Pink Panther, Trail of the Pink Panther, Curse of the Pink Panther, and The Pink Panther (2006 film)). The name stuck once "the Pink Panther" became synonymous with Inspector Clouseau, in much the way that "Frankenstein" was used in film titles to refer to Dr Frankenstein's monster or The Thin Man was used in a series of detective films.

Read more at Wikipedia.org