er, actually no. Not everything comes from the movies. The little rhyme has been around for quite a long time, almost 100 years. Until about 50 years ago, it has been generally assumed that the creator is anonymous.
It took the composition of a song whose lyric is based on the jingle (around 1945, performed by the Glen Miller orchestra) to bring to light its creator, a very surprised Prof. Hughes Mearns of New York University.
Dr. Mearns holds the impressive title of chairman of the department of creative education, but even now he has his lighter moments.
The professor conceived The Man Who Wasn't There'' in 1910, eight years after his graduation from Harvard. The ditty was first intoned publicly in The Psyco-ed, a play written for a group of theatrical amateurs. It so happens that both Harold Adamson. who wrote a' complete lyric with the non-existent man for the chorus, and Bernard Hanighen. who wrote the music currently popular, are also Harvard men. They originally thought the jingle was in public domain. Now they split their royalties with Dr. Meams.
Come clean, 4cer!
sorry but that is no excuse.
so.. are they gonna charge the people who abused it?
