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Kritzerland is proud to present a new limited edition soundtrack CD release and the world-premiere of the complete score to:
THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG
Music Composed by George Duning
The World of Suzie Wong began life as a novel by British author Richard Mason. The book, published first in England and then in the United States, proved very popular. It led to a stage adaptation by Paul Osborn, which opened on Broadway at the Broadhurst Theater on October 14, 1958, and ran for over a year. Because of the success of both novel and play, Paramount brought The World of Suzie Wong to the screen in 1960, starring William Holden and Nancy Kwan. The film version was beautifully directed by Richard Quine, its story set against stunningly photographed locations (Geoffrey Unsworth was the cameraman) and played out against the gorgeous musical score of George Duning.
Duning and director Richard Quine had already worked together several times – beginning with Quine’s first film, The Sunny Side of the Street, and continuing with My Sister Eileen, Full of Life, Operation Mad Ball, Bell, Book and Candle, It Happened to Jane and Strangers When We Meet. Duning had an innate musical sense of what made Quine’s films tick, and their collaboration together produced some unique and wonderful film scores, of which Suzie Wong is a classic example. It is filled with Duning’s incredible gift for melody, starting with his stunning main theme and working its way through some of the best dramatic scoring Duning ever did, right up there with Picnic. James Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn also wrote a song for the film called “Suzie Wong (The Cloud Song),” and Duning uses that as a secondary theme throughout the score. There is some source music, mostly heard coming from the bar in the Namkok Hotel – a lot of those cues are Duning originals, but he sprinkles in some classic standards, too. The score has a lot of variety and perfectly blends the picturesque visuals with the human drama, capturing every emotion and every scene perfectly. In a career filled with classic scores, Suzie Wong is one of Duning’s finest achievements.
The World of Suzie Wong had a soundtrack release on RCA Records back in 1960. Side A of the album basically had the main title and then a lot of the Duning source music, while Side B had some of the score cues – the album ran around thirty-five minutes. For this release, we have Duning’s entire score, which we’ve put in film order because it plays so beautifully that way. We’ve kept all the Duning source music cues in the film sequence because they’re really part of the fabric of his score. In the bonus section, we’ve put the source music cues that aren’t by Duning, along with the LP version of the main title and a few other alternates and odds and ends, all totaling seventy-eight minutes of film music heaven. For the transfers, we went from the original three-track album masters as well as the original scoring masters, all in glorious stereo sound.
The World of Suzie Wong is limited to 1000 copies only. The price is $19.98, plus shipping.
CD will ship the second week of June, but preorders placed at Kritzerland usually ship one to five weeks early (we’ve been averaging four weeks). To place an order, see the cover, or hear audio samples, just visit www.kritzerland.com.
NOTE: The first orders placed at Kritzerland will receive Suzie Wong's CD booklet signed by the film's star - MISS NANCY KWAN! We don't know exactly how many she'll sign but we will reserve them in strict order as the orders come in.
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Ordered!!!
As a soundtrack collector from Hong Kong, I am glad to see Kritzerland releases the soundtrack of a movie filmed in Hong Kong again (the previous one is Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing).
Although I got a copy of Spanish RCA version 3 years ago, I am going to grab one because of Nancy Kwan's autograph and the complete score presentation.
Thank you very much, Mr. Kimmel!
For those who have the RCA Spain and are hesitating - the sound on the RCA Spain is horrifying - shrill and ugly and hugely distorted. This is an interesting thing about the actual recording, which was done in London. It was recorded too hot - guess no one caught it as they were doing it, but the entire session had distortion right on the session masters. You can hear it on the original LP, you can hear it in the film itself, and it's a 1000 times worse on the RCA Spain because it's from a sub-master many generations away. We had all the original tapes to work with - the session masters, the three-track album masters, etc. We sent them to Chris Malone who worked some rather unbelievable audio restoration magic and I don't know what exactly that entailed I can only tell you the result is pretty astonishing - and all done without sacrificing one iota of clarity or high end. He deserves huge kudos. Lukas was very involved in this one - he loves this score, and he was hugely pleased with what he heard from Chris, and then as mastered by James Nelson.
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Posted: |
Apr 29, 2013 - 8:05 AM
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By: |
joec
(Member)
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Ordered!!!
As a soundtrack collector from Hong Kong, I am glad to see Kritzerland releases the soundtrack of a movie filmed in Hong Kong again (the previous one is Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing).
Although I got a copy of Spanish RCA version 3 years ago, I am going to grab one because of Nancy Kwan's autograph and the complete score presentation.
Thank you very much, Mr. Kimmel!
For those who have the RCA Spain and are hesitating - the sound on the RCA Spain is horrifying - shrill and ugly and hugely distorted. This is an interesting thing about the actual recording, which was done in London. It was recorded too hot - guess no one caught it as they were doing it, but the entire session had distortion right on the session masters. You can hear it on the original LP, you can hear it in the film itself, and it's a 1000 times worse on the RCA Spain because it's from a sub-master many generations away. We had all the original tapes to work with - the session masters, the three-track album masters, etc. We sent them to Chris Malone who worked some rather unbelievable audio restoration magic and I don't know what exactly that entailed I can only tell you the result is pretty astonishing - and all done without sacrificing one iota of clarity or high end. He deserves huge kudos. Lukas was very involved in this one - he loves this score, and he was hugely pleased with what he heard from Chris, and then as mastered by James Nelson.
Really looking forward to this one!
The artwork is wonderful!
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And I'm sure you know Bruce, your e-mail about this headlined: Two New Kritzerland Limited Edition CDs!
I am assuming that was an error.
James
Yes I'm still figuring out the ins and outs of the new Constant Contact forms. That was held over from the previous email and I didn't notice
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Great to see more Duning released and this is an especially good one. Still waiting on definitive versions of 3:10 to Yuma and Picnic (on CD...I guess the Twilight Time Blu-ray does have the complete score?)
Yavar
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