George Duning

George Duning (b. Richmond, February 25, 1908 – d. San Diego, California, February 27, 2000) – Composer, arranger, and trumpet player. Born into a family of classical musicians, Duning studied at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. Following graduation, he played trumpet professionally and was hired by NBC as musical director for Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge (a radio program) in the late 1930s. (He had also played trumpet for the Kay Kyser Band.) From 1947 to the early 1960s, Duning worked almost exclusively with Columbia Pictures as a composer, arranger, and orchestrator. In that span of years, he was nominated for an academy award for five films, one of them being From Here to Eternity (1953). By the time of his retirement in 1981, he had worked on over 300 scores for film and television, including several episodes of Star Trek in the late 1960s.