The Inspector the 1968 live-action film "Inspector Clouseau" (with Alan Arkin as Clouseau), the Inspector featured in the opening titles of later "Pink Panther" features beginning in the 1970s, changed dramatically to resemble Sellers, and then Steve Martin in the 2006 reboot of the series. The theme music heard during the titles of the cartoon was the instrumental "A Shot in the Dark" by Henry Mancini, from the 1964 feature film of the same name (the second entry in the "Pink Panther" film series). Additional music in the cartoons was composed initially by William Lava, then by Walter Greene. Two shorts had
Henry Mancini whom Mancini had a longstanding partnership was Stanley Donen ("Charade", "Arabesque", "Two for the Road"). Mancini also composed for Howard Hawks ("Man's Favorite Sport?", "Hatari!" – which included the well-known "Baby Elephant Walk"), Martin Ritt ("The Molly Maguires"), Vittorio de Sica ("Sunflower"), Norman Jewison ("Gaily, Gaily"), Paul Newman ("Sometimes a Great Notion", "The Glass Menagerie)", Stanley Kramer ("Oklahoma Crude"), George Roy Hill ("The Great Waldo Pepper"), Arthur Hiller ("Silver Streak"), Ted Kotcheff ("Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe?"), and others. Mancini's score for the Alfred Hitchcock film "Frenzy" (1972) in Bachian organ andante, for organ and an orchestra