George W. Korngold; Record Producer, Film Music Editor

George Wolfgang Korngold, a record producer and film music editor who helped revive interest in the great motion picture film scores, died Wednesday after a brief bout with cancer. He was 58.

Korngold, who lived in Toluca Lake, perhaps was best known for leading the way in preserving and re-recording film music. As a producer for RCA Records from 1966 to 1976, he made such well-known recordings as the Classic Film Score Series, made up of 14 albums of music composed by Max Steiner, Dimitri Tiompkin and Miklos Rosza, among others, for movies like “Sea Hawk.” Later he founded the Society for the Preservation of Film Music.

The Austrian-born musician recorded dozens of symphonies and operas, including “Violanta” and “Die Tote Stadt,” as a free-lance record producer and consultant for such companies as CBS, Reader’s Digest, Phillips and ETC Records. Both operas were written by his late father, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, an Academy Award-winning composer and director of the Viennese State Opera Orchestra.

The younger Korngold also worked for several years at the Disney and 20th Century Fox film studios, where he edited the music for “The Turning Point,” “Hopscotch,” “Fedora,” “Outland” and “Pennies From Heaven,” among others.

He is survived by his widow, Gloria, two sons and six grandchildren.

Memorial services will be held Tuesday at 11 a.m. at the Church of the Hills at Forest Lawn in Hollywood Hills.