The album maintains the recording's original cozy close-miked sound but is brighter, cleaner and clearer than the last CD edition issued on MCA. Deutsch's reissue makes note that "the best possible analog sources" were used but there is no need for disclaimers here. Unlike some expanded editions of soundtracks which increase the amount of music available but not necessarily the listening pleasure, this Hit Parade Records edition offers approximately 30 minutes of extra and extended cues from the original soundtrack recording that will have previous fans exultant.ĭidier C. Now, acknowledging the motion picture's 50th anniversary, is a new, digitally remastered and greatly expanded recording of the original soundtrack cues. Certainly, the score, like the movie it was written for, is a crowd pleaser and one of the most enjoyable listening experiences of any soundtrack album released in the 1950s. In short, there was probably a copy of this Decca album, or a rival recording, in almost every home that owned a record player. The soundtrack album, first released in monaural sound, then later in a stereo, was constantly in print for decades and spawned dozens of rival recordings. The title theme was one of the most popular and most recorded pieces of music of the decade. No small part of the movie's success must be given to the score by Victor Young. Adjusted for inflation, the film went on to gross an astounding $357 million in the U.S. )īetween the spectacular scenery, the spectacular stars and the spectacular huge screen Todd A-O process, audiences were wowed. (For a complete listing of the incredible cast go to the IMDB entry on Around the World. One might call it "stunt" casting when Todd talked over three dozen well known stars into performing what he dubbed "cameos," short, single scenes, sometimes barely a walk-through, for his movie. Todd's film shot all over the world with one of the largest casts ever assembled for one picture. Mike Todd, the legendary showman, is best known today as the producer of Around the World in 80 Days, the force behind the development of the 70mm screen process Todd A-O, and the husband of Elizabeth Taylor, not necessarily in that order, but all three tied together (Todd acknowledges Taylor at film's end). One of the films to take biggest advantage of this new trend was Michael Todd's gargantuan 1956 production of Around the World in 80 Days. So it was that filmmakers began traveling further afield, shooting their pictures "on location" in order to take advantage of seldom, if never, seen foreign sights. Although, movies, television and the print media had presented many views of foreign countries and customs, travel and its destinations was still considered unusual and exotic. Similarly, in motion pictures of the 1950s, far-off lands were still usually created on the studio backlot. In a day when much of the world was still mysterious and unknown, Verne's word pictures allowed readers to travel the planet and glimpse the marvels of the Earth. Around the World in 80 Days was one such adventure, a travelogue of sorts, really, doled out to his anxious and curious readers, like the work of Dickens, in newspaper installments rather than as we read them today in book form. Not all of his voyages fell into the science fiction genre (a term that didn't even exist at the time) and many were simply adventures, usually of an exotic nature and set in foreign lands. Jules Verne, the father of science fiction, was the enormously popular best-selling author of a series of "fantastic voyages" that brought him immortal fame as well as earthly riches. The Thunder Child Science Fiction and Fantasy Review: Around the World in 80 Days Soundtrack
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