The Third Man records had been sold in Britain, with the teen-aged Princess Margaret a reported fan. Following its release in the US in 1950 (see 1950 in music), ""The Third Man" Theme" spent 11 weeks at number one on "Billboard"s US Best Sellers in Stores chart, from 29 April to 8 July. The exposure made Anton Karas an international star, and the trailer for the film stated that "the famous musical score by Anton Karas" would have the audience "in a dither with his zither". Academy Awards British Academy Film Awards Cannes Film Festival Directors Guild of America National Board of Review
Film score organization, the Society for the Preservation of Film Music, was formed to preserve the "byproducts" of creating a film score, including the music manuscripts (written music) and other documents and studio recordings generated in the process of composing and recording scores which, in some instances, have been discarded by movie studios. The written music must be kept to perform the music on concert programs and to make new recordings of it. Sometimes only after decades has an archival recording of a film score been released on CD. According to Kurt London, film music "began not as a result of any