Upon release the theme proved popular, spending eleven weeks at number one on Billboard's United States Best Sellers in Stores chart.
Multiple versions have been performed and recorded, selling tens of millions of copies, and its success influenced the release strategy of later film singles.
[1] One night after a long day of filming The Third Man on location in Vienna, Reed and cast members Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli and Orson Welles had dinner and retired to a wine cellar.
Karas wrote and recorded the 40 minutes of music heard in The Third Man over a six-week period, after the entire film was translated for him at Shepperton Studios.
"[3] According to writer and critic Rudi Blesh, the tune is identical to the main theme of "Rags to Burn", a ragtime piano piece credited to Frank X. McFadden and published in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1899.
[5] So prominent is "The Third Man Theme" that the image of its performance on the vibrating strings of the zither provides the background for the film's main title sequence.
[9]: 409 [10] "Whenever he entered a restaurant in those years, the band would strike up Anton Karas's "Third Man Theme", wrote Welles biographer Joseph McBride.
Alternate lyrics to the song, published under the name "The Third Man Theme", were written by American author and historian Walter Lord (A Night to Remember, Incredible Victory, etc.)