September 1949. A small, box-like, stringed instrument had taken London by storm. A headline in Time magazine called the craze that greeted The Third Man music – composed and played by an unknown Viennese musician, Anton Karas – “Zither Dither”.
Its success was a complete surprise for the distributors of the film, British-Lion. While the film’s British producer, Alexander Korda, had backed Carol Reed’s judgement from the outset, the managing director of British-Lion, Sir Arthur Jarratt, thought it a mad idea to use such strange music on a big international film. Reed’s assistant, Guy Hamilton, recalled that before the film was released Jarratt sent Reed this cable: “Dear Carol, saw The Third Man last night. Loved it. I think you’ve got a big success there, but please take off the banjo.”
The excitement that the zither caused was so unexpected that there was no soundtrack recording that anyone could buy when the film opened in September 1949. The hurriedly pressed discs of “The Harry Lime Theme” that went on sale in October quickly sold out. By the end of November, according to Time, 300,000 records had been sold, which was an extraordinary number considering that comparatively few British households in the 1940s owned a gramophone.
The American co-producer of the film, David Selznick, was in London to witness this “zither dither” at first hand. He cabled his colleagues back in the US: “You simply cannot understand without being in England or Europe how overwhelming is the success of this music. You cannot walk down any street in Europe or England or walk into any home or hotel without hearing it.” It would be, he thought, the single most important angle for the exploitation of the film in America.
By the time the film opened at the Victoria Theatre, New York, in February 1950, there were already ten cover versions of the “Harry Lime Theme” circulating in the US. By far the most popular of these was a Decca record of Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians, a laid-back – but zitherless – big band version that featured a guitar solo by Don Rodney.
As for the original Karas version, some Madison Avenue copywriter had fun describing its qualities for the Selznick Releasing Organisation’s special exploitation manual: “It is mood music at its most glaring effectiveness. It is color music, ranging from light blue to dark blue to searing, flaming red, depending upon how Karas plays it. It touches upon every emotion reflected in the film. It is blatant and blithe; it is terrifying, ominous – soothing – and sensual. You should have no trouble in securing window displays using these records.”
The distinguished musicologist Hans Keller was much less flattering. Born in Vienna, he didn’t go to see the film because he hated the zither. He was so shocked when, none the less, he found himself whistling “The Harry Lime Theme” that he wrote a piece seeking to explain the appeal of such a primitive tune. It was, he concluded, the feel it gave of a “prolonged coitus interruptus”: it was charged with an unsublimated amount of “infantile sexual energy”. No wonder then – with rock ’n roll about to launch an avalanche of sexual energy – that the music turned out to be as popular in America as it had been in Europe.
Following the US release of the film, the original soundtrack recording of “The Harry Lime Theme” quickly leapfrogged over Guy Lombardo’s cover version, although this too continued to sell strongly. Anton Karas was brought over to the US to support the film’s release, and his version spent 11 weeks at number one on Billboard’s Best Sellers in Stores chart.
The Fourth Man
When The Third Man opened in Britain, the reviewer for the News Chronicle, Richard Winnington, described the music as a spectacular innovation that accounted for half the movie’s power. “This strumming of a sad tense little air brilliantly opens the credits and with variations counterpoints the entire film.” Karas was, he wrote, “the fourth man of Reed’s film”.
Like so much to do with The Third Man, the success of the music was a glorious accident that can be traced back to the location shooting of the film in Vienna. Carol Reed said that he had first heard Anton Karas playing in the courtyard of “a tiny beer and sausage restaurant”, while Guy Hamilton told me, when I interviewed him in October 1997, that, actually, Karas was playing the zither at a production party that the Viennese producer Karl Hartl held to welcome the British crew to Vienna.
It’s impossible to resolve the two accounts for certain, but my impression when I was researching my book on The Third Man was that Reed could often be quite cavalier about the truth when talking to journalists. So my hunch is that the account Guy gave to me, below, is probably the more accurate version of what happened:
There was a man called Karl Hartl, who was absolutely adorable, a big round sort of Gemütlichkeit-type Viennese. Umpteen years before the war he was Alexander Korda’s assistant, and life had gone on. Karl Hartl had become an enormously successful Viennese producer. He made a hugely successful Viennese picture called Der Engel mit der Posaune, which is The Angel with the Trumpet, which Korda had the mistake to bring him over to do again with Eileen Herlie, and it was a hysterically awful, funny picture to work on.
Alex [Korda] told Carol, “Whatever you want in Vienna, you just ask Karl and he will fix everything. The first day we arrive in Vienna Karl Hartl gives a party. It’s in a flat on about the second floor and it’s one of these typically French, very long flats where the dining-room goes into the living-room, which goes into the study, you know, so you can have hundreds of people marching down. And it’s so stiff it’s unbelievable. Because Carol speaks no German, there’s hardly anybody there who speaks English at all, and everybody’s sort of Guten Abend, Guten Abend, Dankeschön. It’s all ghastly.
Then suddenly a little man in a corner starts plucking on a funny little instrument. Carol’s fascinated. He said, “Guy, what is it?” And like a good assistant, I said, “Carol, come on, everybody knows what that is.” I wasn’t going to reveal my ignorance and I go off to find somebody who can enlighten me. I drift back, and Carol’s still besotted with this thing. He says, “No, no, Guy, what is it?” I said, “Carol, everybody knows it’s a zither.”
The next morning Carol announces that the zither is fabulous. We’ve got to have it in the picture. Find out the man’s name. So I ring Mrs Hartl next morning, and she’s not easy. I say, “Carol Reed wishes to thank you very much for the party and your kindness, and by the way what is the name of the zither player who was so wonderful at your party last night, and made the whole thing go?” She says, “Das ist ein zither player!” I said, “I know that that is a zither player.” “But you do not know the name of the zither player! They come with the glasses, with the catering …” “Could you give me the name of the caterer?” “Oh, that is ... One moment, bitte.” And she gives me the number … Eventually, and this goes on for about two weeks to chase up Karas, eventually Hugh [Perceval, the associate producer] says, “I’ve got the little bugger now. What do you want done with him, Carol?” So now, as we’re working day, night, sewers, and we’re into about the fifth or sixth week and the only day off we have is Sunday, Carol says, “Have him come up Sunday to the Astoria Hotel”, where we’re all staying.
We’re all sleeping our heads off. It’s ten o’clock and there’s a knock. Anton Karas turns up with a little briefcase containing his zither. Carol’s in his dressing gown and pyjamas. “Ah, come in! Play!” So he starts tootling away. Carol says, “Fantastic! Go and get the sound crew, Guy.” So I go and wake up the sound crew. They’re using the Klangfilm recorder. They get up and they come in. Tape it, tape it, tape it. There were maids marching up and down in the corridor outside. So we put pillows and things under the doors. Now Karas speaks no English at all. So he’s just tootling. He plays the “Blue Danube”. Then he does “La Vie en rose”. Carol says, “Do you know anything out of copyright, COPY-RIGHT?” “Ah!” And we got yards of the stuff… That’s where it started.
Ten, nine weeks later, we’re back at Shepperton, and the editor says, “I’ve got four hours of zither. What do you want me to do?” Carol says, “Well, you know, we’ve got long silent sequences…” There are four or five moments in the picture where there are big, silent sequences. So the editor just laid, and in particular the last shots of the picture, where there was a great uncertainty as to how the picture ended.
Now we start to watch the rough cut. Every Wednesday was rough cut night. Because we’d shot ten weeks in Vienna, which is mostly location stuff, running around and no dialogue, there were long sections where the zither had been laid on, and we used to all sit there in the dark because they were the most satisfying. It sort of went with the territory.
Carol’s thoughts began to develop. He said, “I’ll use the zither throughout the picture, but an orchestra for the chase, for the finale in the sewers. Then as every Wednesday the picture got fatter and more completed, the cutting-room laid on more and more zither music, and they found a sort of sad bit that was laid on the end. Carol said, “Eh, not the symphonic. I think it will be all the way through.” Carol made that decision, which was a very bold, daring decision, because here was, in quotes, a major expensive picture, and it wasn’t going to have the normal Dimitri Tiomkin or all the things of the period which you had, because pictures in those days were very square, they were all fairly similar, certainly musically…
London Films had a director of music, which is rather rare, called Dr Hubert Clifford… So Alex said, “Let Hubie look.” He saw the picture and he said, “Oh yes, that’s a most interesting little instrument. Yes, Carol, if you’re really interested, I can get you a really first-class player.” Now what he was saying was totally right. It was as if Carol had hopped out of the metro at Place Clichy and to the first blind beggar who was playing an accordion Carol had said, “I want him to do the music.” Anybody would say, “But Carol, he’s the most awful accordion player there’s ever been. We can get you accordion players with the London Symphony Orchestra.” Dr Hubert Clifford and Carol fell out there and then. He said, “I want Anton Karas.” Clifford came back triumphant and said, “But Anton Karas can’t read music.” Carol said, “But nor can I. I still want Anton Karas.”
Now Anton Karas couldn’t read music, but like a good minstrel in his wine cellars and things, if the mood was happy, he played happy music. When they got a bit sentimental, he played sentimental music and he mixed up “Blue Danube” with “La Vie en rose” and – I mean he just felt from the heart… So now Anton Karas is out because he can’t read or write music. Carol said, “Right. That’s absolute bollocks! I know what I’ll do. I’ll set up a Moviola in my house, 213 King’s Road, and I’ll bring the rough cut back every night, which I’ve worked on during the day, and, whilst I sleep, Anton, I’ll teach him how to work the Moviola, and how to time his music to the picture. It’s no problem.”
Well, everyone threw up their hands in despair. But that’s in effect what happened. Karas slept in the day, and at the night he plonked, and Carol used to come back and lean over him. I was working on some other picture at Shepperton when it came time to record. Carol sent for me, and I rushed over to the Westrex studio, a big recording theatre at Shepperton, state of the art in those days. There was a terrible atmosphere. There was a small table. There was Karas sitting on a chair in front of a zither, and the screen. There was Carol pacing up and down, smoking. He said, “Guy, listen to this. It’s absolute shit. There were the Oscar-winning recording team for Sound Barrier, and they were sitting behind the console sulking. They played back what Karas had just recorded. Carol said, “It’s not what we had, what we got in Vienna.”
And it’s absolutely true. The yards and yards of sound that we got in this Viennese bedroom, with the sound-proofing, which was pillows and eiderdowns under the doorway, that Klangfilm recorder, which was no way state of the art, Karas plonking away. Now what was happening was the sound that was being recorded on the Westrex was so perfect that it was clean. It had no character. What we had in Vienna was Lotte Lenya. Dirty, gritty. Now, all of a sudden, it’s perfect… The soundtrack of The Third Man always made Carol cry because he never got the original dirty, gritty sound.
It ought to be added, for the sake of fairness, that Reed received huge encouragement from the editor Oswald Hafenrichter to use the zither music throughout the picture. David Eady, who was his cutting-room assistant, told me that Hafenrichter, an Austrian who had been a medical student in Vienna during the 1920s, “played all this music with tears running down his cheek”. So although Reed had intended at first to use the zither for only a few key sequences, it was Hafenrichter who persuaded him to change his mind.
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