Born in Richmond, Indiana, George Duning's life was steeped in music. Duning had been born to musical parents. His mother taught organ and piano and his father, an oratorio singer and conductor, urged him to study music theory at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. While there, his mentor became Mario Castelnouvo-Tedesco. 

Playing the trumpet with concert band and jazz groups after graduating brought George Duning to the attention of NBC radio and hiring as musical director of "Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge" in the late 1930s, during the "Golden Age of Radio."  Duning quickly gained a reputation as an inventive arranger and music director. In 1942, he joined the Navy and, as a conductor and arranger, with the Armed Forces Radio Service, Duning was involved with a great variety of programs.

Out of the service in 1944, he was signed with Columbia Pictures by Morris Stoloff as an arranger and orchestrator. George Duning was with Columbia for 16 years, and it was with that studio that his name is identified.

Such was his skill as an orchestrator and arranger that it was difficult for him to persuade Columbia of his interest in serious film compositions. His first major assignment for Columbia after churning out scores for many minor films was the Dick Powell crime picture Johnny O'Clock in 1947; but despite that score's success, his abilities in arranging were so marked that the studio still insisted on his involvement in their musicals. He had worked on The Jolson Story in 1947; and when Columbia did Jolson Sings Again , Duning was again pressed into service. Happily it brought him his first Oscar nomination. In 1956 another came with the score for The Eddie Duchin Story. Pleased as he was, and is, about this aspect of his talent, Duning's real pride comes with the Oscar nominations for his original scores for From Here to Eternity, No Sad Songs for Me, and the film which contains his most successful theme from Picnic.

Among other prominent Duning scores are two of the best examples of western genre--3:10 to Yuma, and Cowboy--and those he composed for films as diverse as The World of Susie Wong, Me and the Colonel, The Devil at Four O'Clock, Bell, Book, and Candle, Any Wednesday, and Toys in the Attic. He worked in various capacities on more than one hundred films as well as series such as Star Trek, Big Valley and Naked City, and the quality of his work remained consistently and remarkably high. His last feature film was The Man With Bogart's Face, in 1980. 

Duning was an active citizen of the music industry, serving on the ASCAP Board of Directors from 1972 to 1985, and as ASCAP Vice President from 1978 to 1979. He also served on the Board of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and was active in numerous other music industry organizations. In addition to his Academy Award nominations, Duning was also honored with awards from the Society for the Preservation of Film Music, Downbeat Magazine, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association and his home state of Indiana (1993 Indiana Composer of the Year).

If Duning was not as well known to the public as some of the other major composers, it was possibly due to his nature, which is that of a modest and returning man. Publicity has never informed any of his thinking. Duning was a solid worker and a craftsman. No one knew this better than the esteemed orchestrator, Arthur Morton, who worked with Duning at Columbia and recalled, "Duning always had a shrewd sense of what would and wouldn't work in scoring films, of what you could and couldn't do. George is a first-class musician and working with him was a pleasure."