Page 133 - Weiss, Jernej, ur./ed. 2026 Skladateljska društva nekoč in danes.../Composers’ Societies Past and Present...

How Music Works: Film Composers, Labour, and the Screen Composers Association …
of the theme song “Tomorrow” from the film The Constant Nymph (Warn-
er Bros. 1943), published with Warner Bros.’ music subsidiary Witmark
& Sons, Korngold was entitled to 50% of the net profits from sheet music
55
sales. Yet, at a time when sheet music revenues were minor compared to
income from records or radio broadcasts, these payments likely remained
modest. Similarly, for the extra-filmic distribution of Miklós Rózsa’s Spell-
bound Concerto from the eponymous Hitchcock film, the composer was
contractually granted royalties of five cents of every record sold (with a
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shop price of USD 3.95 per record). For the Hal Willis Production Sorry,
Wrong Number with Paramount Pictures in 1948, Franz Waxman explicit-
ly made sure that he was to receive ASCAP composer royalties, although he
did not hold the copyright of the score:
If any of Mr. Waxman’s music is published he is to receive the usual
composers’ royalties. In the event any musical theme in the score is
composed by Mr. Waxman is acceptable for adaptation into a popular
song, then a lyricist is to be supplied by Hal Wallis Productions, Inc.,
at its own expense, and Wallis will assign all rights except non-exclu-
sive synchronization rights of the song to Famous Music Corporation,
which will enter into an agreement to pay to Wallis the same royalties
as we pay them with regard to other pictures, in addition to royalties to
be paid to Waxman and the lyricist. 57
These examples demonstrate how the terms of performing rights var-
ied widely across the industry, depending not only on the practices of studi-
os and their affiliated music publishing houses, but also on the negotiation
skills of the composers themselves – a process often facilitated by the SCA.
SCA strategically aligned their argument concerning the re-use of film
music with AFM policy, advocating that composers should be credited
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with performing rights when their compositions were reused. Unlike Ital-
ian performing-rights societies, however, ASCAP in the late 1940s only ad-
ministered non-dramatic performing rights – the so-called “small rights”.
Whenever “dramatic rights” came into play, such as the re-use of a score in
a different film, ASCAP declined responsibility unless special contractual

55 See: Zechner, “Hollywoods Filmmusik und ihr Weg zur Populärkultur,” 82–3.
56 See: Memo by Richard H. Dann, 20 Sept. 1945 [US-AUS, David O. Selznick Collec-
tion, 980.5].
57 Memo from Louis Lipstone to Sidney Justin, 16 April 1948 [MHL, Paramount Pic-
tures Contract Summaries, Franz Waxman, f. 1551].
58 See: International Musician 49, no. 8 (1951), 34–5 [MHL, SCA Collection, Folder 9.
American Federation of Musicians].

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