The musical scoring process was contentious. Hellinger allowed Dassin to assign a former M-G-M colleague, the arranger George Bassman, to compose the music. Hellinger found this so unsatisfactory that, on the night before he died, he begged his own first choice, Miklós Rózsa, to step in. Rózsa concentrated on the climactic chase and epilogue, while Frank Skinner (composer) scored the early scenes. Rózsa later compiled a "Mark Hellinger Suite" of music from his three Hellinger pictures (including The Killers and Brute Force). The "Naked City" epilogue, "Song of a Great City," was Rózsa's tribute to the producer. The process is detailed in Rózsa's "Double Life" (1982, 1989) and Gergely Hubai, "Torn Music: Rejected Film Scores" (2012).