Franz Liszt is living in Chamonix with Countess Marie d'Agoult, the mother of his children, when Frédéric Chopin and George Sand visit him.

The success in 1945 of Charles Vidor's A Song to Remember about Frédéric Chopin was the germ for a biopic about Franz Liszt.

By 1946, Columbia had three spec scripts from musician Theodore Kolline, but serious production did not begin until studio head Harry Cohn announced the project in 1952.

[3] Cohn initially hired his friend Oscar Saul to write the screenplay and William Dieterle to direct.

When the studio delayed going forward with the project due to production and casting issues for three years, Saul backed out, and Columbia announced in 1955 that Gottfried Reinhardt had been commissioned to write a new screenplay.

[6] He replaced James Wong Howe with Charles Lang, changed the costumes, and even had Anna Lee dub Patricia Morrison's dialogue.

[5] Cukor also abandoned Liszt's famous long hair, opting to make Dirk Bogarde look more like Elvis Presley.

After selecting the pieces to be played, he engaged piano virtuoso Jorge Bolet, the Roger Wagner Chorale, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic to perform the score.

[5] Liberty Records released The Franz Liszt Story to showcase the arrangements Harry Sukman made for the film.

[10] New York Times critic Bosley Crowther praised the music: “A little bit of everything reflective not only of the talent of Liszt but also of most of the great composers of his highly romantic age—Wagner, Paganini, Beethoven, Verdi, Chopin—artists whose work he respected, assisted, embellished and often played, is packed into this picture.

However, as we say, the music thunders; the settings and costumes are superb—such Viennese concert halls and palaces and lush romantic trappings have never been surpassed in a color film—and, indeed, the sheer posing of the actors by the late Charles Vidor and George Cukor is so suave that anyone moved by musical richness and pictorial splendor should go quite nutty over this film.”[11] Song Without End has been praised as "among the finest biopics in terms of its musical content" because of its seamless incorporation of classical pieces throughout the film.