Hecht-Lancaster & Buzzell Music

Hecht-Lancaster & Buzzell Music, Inc. (sometimes referred to as Hecht-Lancaster-Buzzell Music Publishing, and later known as Hecht & Buzzell Music, Inc. and Colby Music, Inc.) was an American music publishing company founded by film producer Harold Hecht, his brother-in-law Loring Buzzell, and Hecht's business partner, actor/producer Burt Lancaster.

Hecht-Lancaster & Buzzell Music was solely associated with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP). The three partners also founded the music publishing company Calyork Music, Inc. (sometimes referred to as Calyork Music Corporation or Calyork Music Publishing), which was solely associated with Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI).

Hecht, Lancaster, and Buzzell also briefly operated their own record labels, Calyork Records and Maine Records, which were active in the late 1950s. Hecht-Lancaster & Buzzell Music, Calyork Music, Calyork Records, and Maine Records were divisions of Hecht and Lancaster's film production corporation Norma Productions.

Compositions published by Hecht-Lancaster & Buzzell Music and Calyork Music have been recorded by dozens of artists and have in turn been released by such record labels as Columbia Records, Warner Bros. Records, MGM Records, ABC-Paramount Records, Capitol Records, London Records, United Artists Records, Decca Records, Mercury Records, RCA Victor Records, Jubilee Records, Coral Records, Top Rank Records, Date Records, Kapp Records, Apollo Records, Everest Records and Cabot Records; as well as their own imprints Calyork Records and Maine Records.

Following World War II, Hollywood's Golden Age started to fade. After a 1948 ruling that major studios could no longer own theater houses and thereby monopolize production, distribution, and exhibition, things changed greatly. More room was awarded to independent producers, and fewer relied on long-term deals with major studios. Talent agent Harold Hecht and actor Burt Lancaster formed Norma Productions, a film production company, in the summer of 1947. But income in the movie business box office, although far from poor, continued to dwindle, because of stiff competition from radio and television. By the mid-1950s most households owned a television, and the producers who could afford it started producing shows for that market. A similar situation was happening in the music business, as most households owned at least one phonograph. All the major studios either bought out existing record labels or started their own. The studios also began exploiting the soundtrack album, which had before then mostly been an M-G-M musical fad, but caught on with all types of films in the mid-1950s.

In January 1955, Hecht-Lancaster Productions, by then the leading independent film production unit in Hollywood, announced that it was extending its operations into music publishing, entering into a partnership with Howie Richmond's Cromwell Music, Inc. company. The contacts were made through Loring Bruce Buzzell, Hecht's brother-in-law (the brother of his first wife, Gloria Joyce Buzzell), who worked for Richmond at Cromwell Music. Loring and Gloria's father, Samuel Jesse Buzzell, had been a music patent attorney, and their uncle, Edward Buzzell, was a successful film director. Both Hecht and Buzzell had worked for Irving Mills' Mills Music, Inc. company earlier in their careers. Buzzell was also a field man for the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and in July 1954 married singer Lu Ann Simms (née Lu Ann Ciminelli), who got her big break performing on the Arthur Godfrey show and had since then released a series of successful singles through Columbia Records.

Hecht-Lancaster Productions first published the music from their film Marty in April and June 1955 through Cromwell Music. This gave way for a series of interpretations by various artists of Marty's theme song. Hecht-Lancaster Productions' next film soundtrack, The Kentuckian, composed by Bernard Herrmann, was published through Frank Loesser's publishing company, Frank Music, Inc. It is unknown what kind of deal Hecht and Lancaster worked out with Frank Loesser, or if Hermann had a publishing deal directly with Loesser.

In June 1956, it was announced that Hecht, Lancaster, and Buzzell had formed their own music publishing company, Leigh Music, Inc., which would be co-publishing music from their 1956 film Trapeze with Cromwell Music. The name of the company was based on Buzzell's daughter Cynthia Leigh Buzzell (Hecht and Lancaster frequently named their companies after their children). On July 6, 1956, the title song, Trapeze, was co-published through Cromwell Music and Leigh Music. By the second song co-published, Lola's Theme, on August 24, 1956, Leigh Music had been renamed Hecht-Lancaster & Buzzell Music, Inc. The new company was listed under the same address as Cromwell Music: 151 West 46th Street, New York City. Lola's Theme also received various interpretations and singles.