Re: Happy Birthday!

Craig A. Summerhill <craig[_at_]cni.org> wrote:
>
> Lincoln Richman <lrichman[_at_]aaas.org> wrote:
> >
> > Recently, my wife and I went to dinner at a very popular national chain
> > restaurant. As part of the restaurant's regular shtick, if a guest is
> > celebrating a birthday, all of the waiters and waitresses gather around
> > the celebrant and sing the "Happy Birthday" song ('Happy Birthday to
> > you, Happy Birthday to you,' etc.).
>
> As an interesting side bar to this recent thread...
>
> I went to see Michael Douglas' new movie, The Game, last night. There
> is a scene, early on in the movie where the staff of the restaurant at a
> club to which his character belongs sing "Happy Birthday" to him. Sad
> as it may seem, I actually sat throughout the movie in anticipation of
> the credits to see whether this would be included (although I've seen
> the song used in many movies, I don't recall it ever being credited).
> For the record, this movie does acknowledge authorship for the ditty in
> the credits, so I assume some royalty was paid.
>
> However, more apropos to this thread, I can't speak to whether the
> mythical restaurant in question has a blanket license to use the song. B^)
>
>
> For anyone who is interested, I thought the movie was pretty good. It
> has been a long time since I've been to a movie where I haven't been
> able to see through the thin veil of a plot in the first ten minutes of
> film. This one had me guessing to the end...

Warner-Chappell administers the copyright.

Richard J. Greenstone
<richard[_at_]rjg.com> Received on Thu Sep 18 1997 - 21:32:27 GMT