Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing (film) - Soundtrack

Soundtrack

The sentimental and upbeat theme song, "Love is a Many-Splendored Thing" was one of the first songs written for a movie to become no. 1 in the charts in the same year. Written by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster, the song was recorded by The Four Aces and also by Jerry Vale, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra, among others. Italian-language versions were recorded by Nancy Cuomo, Neil Sedaka, and Connie Francis. Francis also recorded the song with its original English lyrics, and a German language version, Sag, weißt du denn, was Liebe ist.

Here's a sample of the song's lyrics:

Love is nature's way of giving

a reason to be living,

The golden crown that makes a man a king.

In the film, charged romantic moments occur on a high grassy, windswept hill in Hong Kong. In the bittersweet final scene on the hilltop, the song (heard on the sound track) recalls the earlier encounters:

Once on a high and windy hill,

In the morning mist, Two lovers kissed,

And the world stood still.

The theme song, as recorded by The Four Aces, went to #1 on the charts for four weeks in 1955 (in the midst of the rock-and-roll era) and won the Academy Award for Best Song.