Way back in the days of radio famous disk jockeys like Martin Block provided trivia along with the records they played. One such bit of trivia stuck in my memory from all these years ago although searching the Internet came up empty. At the risk of adding to an urban legend this is what I remember:

Crooner/bandleader Rudy Vallée (1901 - 1986) owned the rights to the song As Time Goes By. The song was a big hit for Vallée in the early 1930s:





Rudy Vallée sold his rights for $10,000 to Warner Brothers Studio for the movie Casablanca. The studio hoped to make big profits selling sheet music, etc.

Vallée was known for hating a nickel because it was not a quarter; so when the movie, and the song, turned out to be big hits Vallée approached Jack Warner (1892 - 1978 ) and asked for a piece of the action. Warner replied “Would you have returned my money if the song was a flop?” or words to that effect. Jack be nimble, Jack be quick was nobody’s fool.

The Vallée/Jack Warner story reminded me that the Resale Royalties Act made every movie mogul dance in their graves since one of them observed that the motion picture business was the only business where you sell a product and still own it. In the Kingdom of Wacky Laws it made sense for California to have a Resale Royalties Act.

Happily, the law was shot down:

On Friday, July 6, an appellate court in California ruled that the state’s 1977 Resale Royalties Act, which grants artists an unwaivable right to five percent of the proceeds on any resale of their artwork under specified circumstances, is incompatible with federal Copyright law and deserved to be struck down.

Should Artists Get Royalties if Their Work Is Resold? Europe Says Yes, US Says No
By Daniel Grant
07/13/18 2:00pm

https://observer.com/2018/07/califor...rtists-in-u-s/