Hollywood-hit Wizard of Oz caught in plagiarism row | Music | Entertainment | EUROtoday

It went on to win the Oscar for Best Song and canopy variations by Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Doris Day and Tony Bennett enchanted audiences worldwide.

Pop star Ariana Grande even recorded it as a single in 2017 to learn survivors of the Manchester Arena terror assault that killed 22 folks.

But Tinseltown is now in turmoil over claims the poignant ballad – composed in 1938 by Harold Arlen and lyricist Yip Harburg – might have been plagiarised from a long-forgotten piece of classical music written 28 years earlier in 1910.

The composition, Concert Étude, Opus 38, bears “striking similarities” to Over the Rainbow, in accordance with Norwegian live performance pianist Rune Alver.

He found it in a music archive in Bergen and mentioned: “There is no debate about it – of course it is plagiarism.”

Opus 38 was written by Scandinavian composer Signe Lund, who copyrighted it in Chicago throughout one in all her many visits to the US, a number of of which coincided with Mr Arlen’s early years as a music pupil.

Ms Lund’s work later fell into obscurity after she was ostracised for being a Nazi sympathiser in the course of the Second World War, and he or she died aged 81 in 1950.

The rediscovery of her work has triggered a debate in Hollywood over the legitimacy of Over the Rainbow’s Oscar win, with even Mr Arlen’s son Sam, who runs his property, admitting “there’s no question” in regards to the similarities between each items of music.

He added: “You hear it, certainly. Whether it was intentional, no one knows. It’s all conjecture.”

Theatrical composer Stephen Schwartz, whose Broadway hits embrace the rating of Wicked, the Wizard of Oz prequel, mentioned: “Of course I can hear the similarity.

“I’d say it’s a coincidence, or maybe something Arlen heard or played when he was young and it just became part of the palette from which he drew.”