Wizard of Oz: Over The Rainbow.....Plagiarism?
Scandal in Oz: Was “Over the Rainbow” Plagiarized?
The Academy Award-winning ballad from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ is perhaps the most enduring melody ever to come out of Hollywood. But its uncanny similarity to a long-forgotten piece by a Nazi-era composer has some questioning its authorship.
BY ANTHONY TRINGALI, STEPHEN COX
MARCH 6, 2024/Hollywood Review
EDITED FOR CONTENT...read the entire piece
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/the-wizard-of-oz-over-the-rainbow-plagiarized
Norwegian pianist Rune Alver carefully unfolded the brittle sheet music and began caressing the keys of the baby grand. He had found the classical piece buried in an archive and believed it hadn’t been heard in maybe a century. But as he delved into the second section, Cantando, he felt a shiver run down his spine. The melody wasn’t just reminiscent of something he’d heard before — it was iconic. He instantly recognized the unforgettable, yearning opening notes of “Over the Rainbow,” the Academy Award-winning anthem Judy Garland performed in The Wizard of Oz, perhaps the most famous song to come out of Hollywood. How could this be? The sheet music was dated 1910, and The Wizard of Oz premiered nearly 30 years later. But the melody hung there (“Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high …”). It was hauntingly similar. Too similar, he thought.
About 10 years ago, Alver, now 67, was researching the works of a Scandinavian composer named Signe Lund when he made this disturbing discovery. In the late 19th century, Lund had been the toast of Oslo and went on to a successful career in the United States, before her Nazi sympathies late in life turned her into a pariah. She was now long forgotten. It was at an archive in Bergen, Norway, that Alver unearthed the pages of her composition titled “Concert Étude, Opus 38,” which she had written in the United States and copyrighted in Chicago in 1910 during one of her visits to America. Lund had performed the piece in many American cities. It was “the most popular of her pieces” in her lifetime, Alver says.
The similarities between Lund’s “Opus 38” and composer Harold Arlen and lyricist E.Y. “Yip” Harburg’s “Over the Rainbow” cannot be dismissed. Though there are notable variations (the former is in a minor key, for example, and follows a different time signature), the melodies of the main themes are nearly identical. Decades after the deaths of Arlen and Harburg, it is impossible to unequivocally determine whether the similarities are unintended or deliberate — a notoriously difficult thing to prove even when all participants are living. But to Alver, who included “Opus 38” on his 2020 CD Étude Poétiques: Works by Signe Lund, there is no debate about it. “Of course it is plagiarism,” he says today. Given the sacred aura that surrounds “Over the Rainbow,” the accusation borders on the blasphemous, akin to smudging the Mona Lisa. Yet Alver has no doubt that Lund’s DNA can be found in Harold Arlen’s melody.
Behind the Curtain
Arlen began composing his own music in his early 20s. His massive catalog would come to include such standards as “Stormy Weather,” “That Old Black Magic,” “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” “I’ve Got the World on a String,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “Accentuate the Positive” and his debut hit, “Get Happy.”
It’s fair to wonder why such a prolific composer would bother pilfering melodies from others when so many great musical ideas came naturally to him. However, in a 1932 article in the Buffalo Evening News, one reporter observed that the first song the 26-year-old Arlen tried to sell “was the sort that could have gotten him into several plagiarism suits.” That early accusation may have haunted the young composer for the rest of his career. Decades later, lyricist Yip Harburg reflected to Arlen’s biographer Edward Jablonski that his famous collaborator “was frightened of everything [he wrote] sounding like something else.”
It is entirely possible that Arlen was exposed to Lund’s work in his youth. In September 1917, while the 12-year-old Arlen was deeply immersed in studying classical music, Lund was touring upstate New York and made a weeklong stop in Buffalo. She performed a concert for the Spencer Kellogg family at their home, with several invited guests, according to her autobiography. The Kellogg family was one of Buffalo’s wealthiest and a major donor to the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, where Arlen’s teacher Cornelissen was the primary conductor. It is conceivable that Cornelissen introduced his young protégé to the music of the international composer visiting at the time. In addition, in 1920, Arlen was employed as a “song plugger” at Murray Whiteman’s Music Shop in Buffalo; his job was to introduce tunes on the piano and help promote the sale of sheet music. One can only imagine how many arrangements must have passed through Arlen’s skilled fingers.
The View From Oz
Listening attentively to Lund’s “Opus 38” for the first time, theater composer Stephen Schwartz seems more surprised to hear that it originated from a female European composer than by the possibility that it might have inspired “Over the Rainbow.”
“Oh, I like that,” he shoots back.
Schwartz, like Arlen before him, has composed numerous Broadway hits, including such enduring sensations as Pippin, Godspell, and the Wizard of Oz prequel Wicked. “Oh, of course I can hear the similarity,” he offers. “I would strongly challenge whoever said that this is plagiarism. If the question is ‘Did Arlen deliberately take this?,’ I’d lay very, very long odds that he did not. … I think it’s, of course, a curiosity,” he says. “It is interesting. What I would suspect happened is one of two things: I’d say it’s a coincidence, or maybe possibly something that Arlen heard or played when he was young, and it just became part of the palette from which he drew.
As an unabashed fan of Arlen and Oz, Schwartz concedes there are undeniable commonalities between Lund’s and Arlen’s compositions, but adds, “If this was a different composer or in different circumstances, I might be a little more suspicious of something untoward having occurred here, but I think it’s extremely unlikely.”
Schwartz is not the only one whose ears pricked up when they first heard the Cantando to Lund’s “Opus 38.” Michael Feinstein, the polished pianist and recording artist who founded music-preservation nonprofit The Great American Songbook Foundation, recognizes the likeness as well. “Well, it’s very similar, of course, to ‘Over the Rainbow.’ But there are only 12 notes on the piano,” he explains. “My take on it is that Harold never would have knowingly stolen anything. It’s not hard to prove any theory when it comes to music. There is a famous saying that ‘plagiarism is copying without inspiration, and inspiration is plagiarism without getting caught.’”
Notes Schwartz, “These things happen all the time. More often than not, they’re inadvertent. There’s a little two-bar thing in one of my songs from Pippin, which years later I discovered, to my horror, was very similar to something in [the Puccini opera] La Bohème and was totally not deliberate. But, of course, these things are in your ears. Many, many people have had the enjoyable experience of going through Andrew Lloyd Webber and pointing out the Puccini references in his work, Stephen Sondheim and pointing out all the Ravel, and many people have gone through Leonard Bernstein and pointed out Aaron Copland. I think this sort of falls in that category.”
Schwartz is quick to differentiate between deliberately lifting or borrowing melodies and the inclusion of existing works, such as the intentional nostalgic Easter eggs he hid within the greenery of Wicked. Listen carefully, and you might hear Schwartz pay tribute to “Over the Rainbow” in the musical’s “Unlimited” theme for Elphaba.
Entertainment attorney Jane Davidson of Los Angeles firm Munck Wilson Mandala is less equivocal: “Yes, you have a sound-alike.” With experience as a practicing lawyer and adjunct professor at the USC Thornton School of Music, Davidson brings valuable insights into plagiarism cases within the music industry. She acknowledges that if this matter occurred and were litigated today, she would “probably” take this case. According to Davidson, for a viable suit, “De minimis [the minimum] would require three notes, so this definitely sounds like more than that.”
Davidson emphasizes that one of the keys to forensically proving plagiarism is demonstrating “access.” She says, “You don’t have to show that this person sat down at their piano with the sheet music for this song and they played it. But was there somebody performing this song at a concert venue in their area, and is there a good chance that this person potentially went to see it? That would be something that could give rise to ‘innocent infringement,’ which is usually the term people use.”
Even Sam Arlen, who oversees his father’s estate, bows to the recent finding. “There’s no question. You hear it, certainly,” admits Arlen. “Whether it was intentional, no one knows. Sure, anything is possible. With the difficulty he was having with the song initially, and enough people around to listen to it, surely somebody could have said, ‘You know, this is very similar to this piece.’ It’s all conjecture.” His father, he says, had an antidote to such unintentional filching. “Harold would not listen to other music when he was working on projects. He blocked out everything around him just to be in his zone with what he was working on.”
++++++++++++
My take: I think many of us who love music (and movies), have during our lives, listened to many songs and heard similarities...maybe a short rift, a common melody, etc. simply because there are finite notes and it would be impossible to not have (and hear) any duplications. IMO, Arlen did not purposely plagiarize music from Signe Lund. I could be wrong.
From my personal experience of listening to
hundreds of songs during my 72 years, I can cite 1 in which I think is almost identical.
Surfin' USA written by Brian Wilson and recorded by The Beach Boys, and Sweet Little 16 written by Chuck Berry. Berry was so convinced that his song was stolen by Wilson, that he filed a law suit for writing credit. Berry won. If any of you have the Capital records 45 w/swirl label, beneath the title you will see: (Berry/Wilson). I have a number of Beach Boy LP's that have the song, and need to check them for the writing credit.
The 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein has an interesting music piece. Composer Franz Waxman wrote the score, and if you listen to the music track during the Creation Scene, there is a repetitive 3 note identity, attributed to the Bride, heard throughout. Fast forward to '49 and the Rodgers and Hammerstein South Pacific, and the song Bali Ha'i. You will hear the same 3 notes. Coincidence? Most certainly, IMO.
There are a number of websites to visit concerning songs that sound familiar, and also those that brought litigation. The numerous lawsuits against Jimmy Paige/Led Zeppelin immediately to mind.
The Academy Award-winning ballad from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ is perhaps the most enduring melody ever to come out of Hollywood. But its uncanny similarity to a long-forgotten piece by a Nazi-era composer has some questioning its authorship.
BY ANTHONY TRINGALI, STEPHEN COX
MARCH 6, 2024/Hollywood Review
EDITED FOR CONTENT...read the entire piece
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/the-wizard-of-oz-over-the-rainbow-plagiarized
Norwegian pianist Rune Alver carefully unfolded the brittle sheet music and began caressing the keys of the baby grand. He had found the classical piece buried in an archive and believed it hadn’t been heard in maybe a century. But as he delved into the second section, Cantando, he felt a shiver run down his spine. The melody wasn’t just reminiscent of something he’d heard before — it was iconic. He instantly recognized the unforgettable, yearning opening notes of “Over the Rainbow,” the Academy Award-winning anthem Judy Garland performed in The Wizard of Oz, perhaps the most famous song to come out of Hollywood. How could this be? The sheet music was dated 1910, and The Wizard of Oz premiered nearly 30 years later. But the melody hung there (“Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high …”). It was hauntingly similar. Too similar, he thought.
About 10 years ago, Alver, now 67, was researching the works of a Scandinavian composer named Signe Lund when he made this disturbing discovery. In the late 19th century, Lund had been the toast of Oslo and went on to a successful career in the United States, before her Nazi sympathies late in life turned her into a pariah. She was now long forgotten. It was at an archive in Bergen, Norway, that Alver unearthed the pages of her composition titled “Concert Étude, Opus 38,” which she had written in the United States and copyrighted in Chicago in 1910 during one of her visits to America. Lund had performed the piece in many American cities. It was “the most popular of her pieces” in her lifetime, Alver says.
The similarities between Lund’s “Opus 38” and composer Harold Arlen and lyricist E.Y. “Yip” Harburg’s “Over the Rainbow” cannot be dismissed. Though there are notable variations (the former is in a minor key, for example, and follows a different time signature), the melodies of the main themes are nearly identical. Decades after the deaths of Arlen and Harburg, it is impossible to unequivocally determine whether the similarities are unintended or deliberate — a notoriously difficult thing to prove even when all participants are living. But to Alver, who included “Opus 38” on his 2020 CD Étude Poétiques: Works by Signe Lund, there is no debate about it. “Of course it is plagiarism,” he says today. Given the sacred aura that surrounds “Over the Rainbow,” the accusation borders on the blasphemous, akin to smudging the Mona Lisa. Yet Alver has no doubt that Lund’s DNA can be found in Harold Arlen’s melody.
Behind the Curtain
Arlen began composing his own music in his early 20s. His massive catalog would come to include such standards as “Stormy Weather,” “That Old Black Magic,” “It’s Only a Paper Moon,” “I’ve Got the World on a String,” “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “Accentuate the Positive” and his debut hit, “Get Happy.”
It’s fair to wonder why such a prolific composer would bother pilfering melodies from others when so many great musical ideas came naturally to him. However, in a 1932 article in the Buffalo Evening News, one reporter observed that the first song the 26-year-old Arlen tried to sell “was the sort that could have gotten him into several plagiarism suits.” That early accusation may have haunted the young composer for the rest of his career. Decades later, lyricist Yip Harburg reflected to Arlen’s biographer Edward Jablonski that his famous collaborator “was frightened of everything [he wrote] sounding like something else.”
It is entirely possible that Arlen was exposed to Lund’s work in his youth. In September 1917, while the 12-year-old Arlen was deeply immersed in studying classical music, Lund was touring upstate New York and made a weeklong stop in Buffalo. She performed a concert for the Spencer Kellogg family at their home, with several invited guests, according to her autobiography. The Kellogg family was one of Buffalo’s wealthiest and a major donor to the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, where Arlen’s teacher Cornelissen was the primary conductor. It is conceivable that Cornelissen introduced his young protégé to the music of the international composer visiting at the time. In addition, in 1920, Arlen was employed as a “song plugger” at Murray Whiteman’s Music Shop in Buffalo; his job was to introduce tunes on the piano and help promote the sale of sheet music. One can only imagine how many arrangements must have passed through Arlen’s skilled fingers.
The View From Oz
Listening attentively to Lund’s “Opus 38” for the first time, theater composer Stephen Schwartz seems more surprised to hear that it originated from a female European composer than by the possibility that it might have inspired “Over the Rainbow.”
“Oh, I like that,” he shoots back.
Schwartz, like Arlen before him, has composed numerous Broadway hits, including such enduring sensations as Pippin, Godspell, and the Wizard of Oz prequel Wicked. “Oh, of course I can hear the similarity,” he offers. “I would strongly challenge whoever said that this is plagiarism. If the question is ‘Did Arlen deliberately take this?,’ I’d lay very, very long odds that he did not. … I think it’s, of course, a curiosity,” he says. “It is interesting. What I would suspect happened is one of two things: I’d say it’s a coincidence, or maybe possibly something that Arlen heard or played when he was young, and it just became part of the palette from which he drew.
As an unabashed fan of Arlen and Oz, Schwartz concedes there are undeniable commonalities between Lund’s and Arlen’s compositions, but adds, “If this was a different composer or in different circumstances, I might be a little more suspicious of something untoward having occurred here, but I think it’s extremely unlikely.”
Schwartz is not the only one whose ears pricked up when they first heard the Cantando to Lund’s “Opus 38.” Michael Feinstein, the polished pianist and recording artist who founded music-preservation nonprofit The Great American Songbook Foundation, recognizes the likeness as well. “Well, it’s very similar, of course, to ‘Over the Rainbow.’ But there are only 12 notes on the piano,” he explains. “My take on it is that Harold never would have knowingly stolen anything. It’s not hard to prove any theory when it comes to music. There is a famous saying that ‘plagiarism is copying without inspiration, and inspiration is plagiarism without getting caught.’”
Notes Schwartz, “These things happen all the time. More often than not, they’re inadvertent. There’s a little two-bar thing in one of my songs from Pippin, which years later I discovered, to my horror, was very similar to something in [the Puccini opera] La Bohème and was totally not deliberate. But, of course, these things are in your ears. Many, many people have had the enjoyable experience of going through Andrew Lloyd Webber and pointing out the Puccini references in his work, Stephen Sondheim and pointing out all the Ravel, and many people have gone through Leonard Bernstein and pointed out Aaron Copland. I think this sort of falls in that category.”
Schwartz is quick to differentiate between deliberately lifting or borrowing melodies and the inclusion of existing works, such as the intentional nostalgic Easter eggs he hid within the greenery of Wicked. Listen carefully, and you might hear Schwartz pay tribute to “Over the Rainbow” in the musical’s “Unlimited” theme for Elphaba.
Entertainment attorney Jane Davidson of Los Angeles firm Munck Wilson Mandala is less equivocal: “Yes, you have a sound-alike.” With experience as a practicing lawyer and adjunct professor at the USC Thornton School of Music, Davidson brings valuable insights into plagiarism cases within the music industry. She acknowledges that if this matter occurred and were litigated today, she would “probably” take this case. According to Davidson, for a viable suit, “De minimis [the minimum] would require three notes, so this definitely sounds like more than that.”
Davidson emphasizes that one of the keys to forensically proving plagiarism is demonstrating “access.” She says, “You don’t have to show that this person sat down at their piano with the sheet music for this song and they played it. But was there somebody performing this song at a concert venue in their area, and is there a good chance that this person potentially went to see it? That would be something that could give rise to ‘innocent infringement,’ which is usually the term people use.”
Even Sam Arlen, who oversees his father’s estate, bows to the recent finding. “There’s no question. You hear it, certainly,” admits Arlen. “Whether it was intentional, no one knows. Sure, anything is possible. With the difficulty he was having with the song initially, and enough people around to listen to it, surely somebody could have said, ‘You know, this is very similar to this piece.’ It’s all conjecture.” His father, he says, had an antidote to such unintentional filching. “Harold would not listen to other music when he was working on projects. He blocked out everything around him just to be in his zone with what he was working on.”
++++++++++++
My take: I think many of us who love music (and movies), have during our lives, listened to many songs and heard similarities...maybe a short rift, a common melody, etc. simply because there are finite notes and it would be impossible to not have (and hear) any duplications. IMO, Arlen did not purposely plagiarize music from Signe Lund. I could be wrong.
From my personal experience of listening to
hundreds of songs during my 72 years, I can cite 1 in which I think is almost identical.
Surfin' USA written by Brian Wilson and recorded by The Beach Boys, and Sweet Little 16 written by Chuck Berry. Berry was so convinced that his song was stolen by Wilson, that he filed a law suit for writing credit. Berry won. If any of you have the Capital records 45 w/swirl label, beneath the title you will see: (Berry/Wilson). I have a number of Beach Boy LP's that have the song, and need to check them for the writing credit.
The 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein has an interesting music piece. Composer Franz Waxman wrote the score, and if you listen to the music track during the Creation Scene, there is a repetitive 3 note identity, attributed to the Bride, heard throughout. Fast forward to '49 and the Rodgers and Hammerstein South Pacific, and the song Bali Ha'i. You will hear the same 3 notes. Coincidence? Most certainly, IMO.
There are a number of websites to visit concerning songs that sound familiar, and also those that brought litigation. The numerous lawsuits against Jimmy Paige/Led Zeppelin immediately to mind.
