20th Century-Fox Recordings Library

In 1975, Lionel Newman, then Vice President of the music department at 20th Century-Fox, donated numerous “playback discs” from the studio’s library to the Institute. From the early 1930s, 78-rpm records were produced for almost every number performed in a film and distributed to all the artists and top executives for their approval, as well as to selected journalists for publicity. These playback discs were pressed by a third-party company in Hollywood and people in possession of them were explicitly prohibited from selling them. Although the discs were not used for playback during film shoots, the recordings had to be finished and approved before filming began and were used in the final version of the film. Many of these songs were deleted by the time the movie was released or were cut away for dialogue or sound effects. Therefore, the original playback discs remain, in many cases, the only example of a song as originally recorded.

On the Avenue (1937)