[ Ref. Marilyn Monroe in "The Prince and the Showgirl",
 [ piano music at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOkv4jV1-Bo
 

The recent correspondence regarding the authorship of the charming
little street piano dance sequence in 'The Prince and the Showgirl'
has piqued my interest.  I have studied the cue sheet for the movie
in the database of the PRS (Performing Right Society) in the UK and
it would appear that, although this sequence does not have a separate
title, it must form part of the score specially composed for the film
by Richard Addinsell.

Every movie and TV production has a 'cue sheet' which shows the title,
duration and ownership of each separate music cue.  The information
on this cue sheet is used to determine who earns the music royalties
from screenings and broadcasts.  The PRS is one of the very few royalty
collection societies worldwide who make this information available to
their membership on-line; I don't believe that any of the US societies
currently offer this service.

For movies, the cues are divided into 'featured' and 'background'.
'featured' means either songs, or music which is theoretically audible
to the characters on the screen (and earns more than 'background').

It used to be the case that cue sheets, in addition to showing title,
duration and ownership, also gave a start and finish time for each cue,
thus ensuring that a piece of music could be identified absolutely.
The trend nowadays, however, is to omit the start and finish timings
and to roll into one all the cues with identical ownership shares.
This makes life easier for the accountants but makes it harder to
identify individual cues.

There are only 15 music cues listed for 'The Prince and the Showgirl',
10 of which are pre-existing marches (Duke of York, British Grenadiers,
Liberty Bell, Milanollo, Light of Foot, Naval March, Hornpipe, The
Minstrel Boy and Let's All Go Down the Strand), Parry's 'I Was Glad
when they Said Unto Me', and two separate cues (one featured and one
background) of Handel's 'See the Conquering Hero'.

Clearly the dance sequence is none of these and so must form part
of the three remaining cues, all of which are composed by Richard
Addinsell.  One of these cues is the song 'I Found a Dream', while the
two remaining cues are presumably all the remaining music by Addinsell
rolled together, comprising 9'27" of background music and 22'49"
of featured.

I thought it might help to have a look at the cue sheet for
'My Week with Marilyn', as the music was used there also and I felt
sure that the producers would have researched their source material
very carefully.  This movie, helpfully, has all of its cues listed
separately, over 90 of them.  Mostly they are just given the same name
as the film but I found one, cue number 54, featured, of exactly the
right length, 54 seconds; Was I about to discover the name and composer
of our elusive theme?

Depressingly, the cue is called 'Hurdy Gurdy' (!), and is described
as 'Trad.' i.e., with no known composer or author.  Unfortunately,
I am sure that this is the right music.  I wonder why it hasn't been
attributed to Addinsell?  It certainly isn't the sort of music which
one would normally refer to as 'traditional'.

Richard Addinsell was a very fine musician and a composer of memorable
music; I am certain that he wrote Marilyn's dance, just as a part of
the score which he created for this film.  The music is a perfect
pastiche of an Edwardian show tune and Addinsell just couldn't help
making it charming and memorable!

I always thought that, in the film, the piano music is supposed to
be a tune from the hit show in which Marilyn Monroe's character is
appearing, and that she starts to dance unconsciously, unable to stop
herself reprising the choreography from the show.  I agree with Robbie
that it is being played as a piano duet and not by the instrument on
screen.  In 'My week with Marilyn' the effect is spoiled somewhat by
introducing an 'invisible orchestra' in the second half, rather than
just leaving it to the 'Hurdy Gurdy'!

Rowland Lee
UK