George Duning

George William Duning was born in Richmond, Indiana in February, 1908.  His mother taught him piano and organ, and his father was an oratorio singer and conductor.  Duning took up trumpet as a teenager and majored in theory at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and The University of Cincinnati.  He played trumpet professionally in the musical worlds of burlesque, jazz, theater, classical, and military bands.  Duning became Music Director and Supervisor of Kay Kyser’s “Kollege Of Musical Knowledge” on NBC radio, and during WWII he served in the naval unit of the Armed Forces Radio Service, where he arranged and conducted for Meredith Willson.  He studied composition with Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco and joined Columbia Pictures in 1944, where he was a contract arranger, orchestrator, and then a composer. 

Some of his many film scores were for Affair in Trinidad, Around the World, Cargo to Capetown, Count Three and Pray, Cowboy, The Dark Past, The Devil’s Mask, Eadie Was a Lady, Ensign Pulver, The Flying Missile, The Gallant Blade, Gidget, The Guilt of Janet Ames, Houseboat, I Love Trouble, Johnny Allegro, Johnny O’Clock, The Last Angry Man, Man on a String, Miss Sadie Thompson, Nightfall, Pal Joey, Paula, Between Midnight and Dawn, Salome, Scandal Sheet, That Touch of Mink, Then Came Bronson, Tight Spot, Toys in the Attic, and The World of Suzie Wong,  He also composed for the theater, ballet, dance, cartoons, movies of the week, and television shows, including The Big Valley, The Bobby Sherman Show, Goliath Awaits, Naked City, The Partridge Family, Star Trek, and Then Came Bronson

Duning was nominated for Academy Awards® for The Eddy Duchin Story, From Here to Eternity, Jolson Sings Again, No Sad Songs for Me, and Picnic, and he won two “Downbeat Magazine” awards.  His songs include “Any Wednesday,” “Forbidden Love,” “Half Of My Heart,” “Manhattan Romance,” and “Song Without End.”  He passed away on February 27, 2000 in La Jolla, California, where he lived with his wife Lois.

 

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