Elizabeth Taylor In London

Elizabeth Taylor in London was a CBS-TV television special broadcast on 6 October 1963 that was directed by Sidney Smith and co-produced by Philip D’Antoni and Norman Baer. The 58 minute show featured Elizabeth Taylor being filmed in various parts of London, England such as Westminster Bridge, Battersea Park, the House of Parliament of the United Kingdom and a London Blitz bomb damaged church in the East End of London reminiscing about her birthplace and reciting several famous English poems and speeches.

The music was composed by John Barry, who was nominated for a 1964 Grammy Award for Outstanding Original Music. The original album has been rereleased on CD with many of the tracks available in the public domain on various John Barry collections. "Greensleeves" occurs throughout the score. In addition to showcasing Taylor at the height of her popularity, the show informed Americans of English history and London locations. Her lover Richard Burton (who would soon become her fifth husband) coached Taylor on her delivery of the speeches. Taylor was paid US$250,000 (equivalent to approximately $1,925,815 in today’s funds then the highest price ever paid for a person to be on television. The BBC paid US$28,000 for broadcast rights to be shown near Christmas. However television critic Anthony Burgess gave the show a scathing review calling it "the most deplorable programme of the year". However the success of the show led to the same team doing a Sophia Loren in Rome television show.
Interestingly, the hour-long film has an utterly brilliant soundtrack, with a score written by a 29-year-old John Barry and arranged by the awesome Johnnie Spence. Emmy-nominated on its release, Elizabeth Taylor in London is a truly fantastic record that pitches Barry’s innate jazz cool up against Spence’s super-lush orchestrations. A piece such as The Fire of London sounds more like a dapper-suited, Bond-in-peril moment than some (tinder) dry attempt to recreate the music of the 17th century, while London Theme, 48 years on, still trips, swings and sways (with a neat nod to Greensleeves) in a way that makes you feel glad to live in England, and a little sad if you don’t.

The soundtrack as issued on CD has always been of poor quality from vinyl or poor tapes sources. For this restoration I have used a very rare near Mint Colpix Hi Fidelity pressing PXL459. The LP was copied at 24 bit 96k and a pure mono extraction made. The CD release contained a track called Churchill’s Speech not on the original LP this has been restored in to this version mixing both LP and CD sources for the final track

link and thread closed

Thank you for your great work on this project! 🙂

Thank you share!

Thank you very much!
Like this album a lot, pretty sure that sound of your rip blew away my CD
and what a shame that film not available anywhere

Thank you once again for your great work, Filmcollector!

I beg your pardon, but the "London can take anything" speech of Sir Winston Churchill is missing
Rip sounds terrific, always prefer mono to stereo for early 60’s recordings

Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

that poem is not on the soundtrack LP

Thank you for the album and the very interesting notes !

Many thanks for your hard work on this interesting release.

that poem is not on the soundtrack LP

Sorry, I wasn’t aware that piece is not on the UK LP, but only on CD re-issues!

Thank you for another thrilling project 🙂

thank you!

Excellent! 🙂

Although… it’s almost unforgivable that you put no "John Barry" in the title! Many of the young folks here will skip the topic – and never know what they’re missing! 😉

Thanks 🙂

Nice one. Thanks

Thanks a lot, link is received.

gracias

Thanks! I was hoping I had something that wasn’t here—and not only do I find it is here, but it’s better quality than what I had…:)