[78-L] Anachronisms in film music (was Brighten the Corner Where You Are)

[William A Brent]

Its usually more likely to see a hair style, manner of dress or style 
of transportation - in the wrong
time frame, than it is music. one can usually look up a copyright 
date, or publication date to discover
if a particular song belongs in the film's setting.  When you use a 
specific and identifiable recording -
the task is even easier.  Of course historical accuracy in early 
Warner "ripped-from-the-headlines"
crime dramas was not a major concern.

Fewer of these Anachronism turn up as movie making matured - note the 
overblown big boat movie
of a few years back (Titanic) - they intentionally did not have the 
band play the correct tune as the
ship went down - but every tune in that film was one the band of 
April 1912 could have played.

Now I was going to demonstrate how clever I am by pointing out that a 
1935 song was sung in
John Wayne's Alamo (set, as you might guess, in 1836). The song was 
"Happy Birthday to You".
Well a couple of things happened.  I discovered that the scene where 
this song is sung is NOT
on the DVD.  In fact - it was never widely shown, and is available 
only on a long out of print
Laser disc or special edition VHS tape.

okay - but it was used, so I'm not too far off.

then came the song itself. While it certainly was not known to the 
men (or children) of the Alamo in
1836 - the 1935 copyright date is really bogus as well.  Seems it was 
published (words and music)
in 1912 - making the 1935 copyright invalid (except, of course, it 
was upheld in the US courts - wow!

so I dug a bit deeper and came to my favorite fountain of knowledge - 
wikipedia. And now we learn how some
simple facts can be editorialized into nonsense.

In one short paragraph we learn that 1893 is the mid 19th century and 
the song had its origins in 2
people with whom it did not originate.....

 >The origins of "Happy Birthday To You" date back to the 
mid-nineteenth century, when two sisters,
 >Patty and Mildred J. Hill, began singing the song "Good Morning To 
All" to their kindergarten class
 >in Kentucky. In 1893, they published the tune in their songbook 
Song Stories for the Kindergarten.
 >However, many believe that the Hill sisters most likely copied the 
tune and lyrical idea from other
 >songs from that time period.[10] There were a number of popular and 
substantially similar nineteenth-
 >century songs that predated the Hill sisters' composition, 
including Horace Waters' "Happy Greetings
 >to All"; "Good Night to You All", also from 1858; "A Happy New Year 
to All", from 1875; and "A Happy
 >Greeting to All", published 1885

In my day, I would have been handed a failing mark for writing such as that.

but I digress :-(