Anton Karas

Many consider Anton Karas the classic instance of an artist remembered worldwide solely for a single composition, namely "The Third Man Theme," sometimes referred to as "The Harry Lime Theme." Yet scarcely any performer has done more to embed the distinctive timbre of one relatively unfamiliar instrument in global awareness; Karas, through this piece, achieved for the zither what George Harrison and several Beatles recordings accomplished for the sitar, though on a vastly larger scale that moved millions of copies. The recording transformed Karas into a prosperous figure following nearly three decades of modest work amid Vienna’s comparative hardship.

Born in Vienna during 1906 to an automobile factory employee, Karas first took up the zither—a stringed device loosely akin to an autoharp—at twelve. By 1921, still fifteen, he was already sustaining himself through gratuities earned by performing in the city’s taverns. He remained there across the turbulent era of mounting Nazi influence, the Anschluss, the war years, and the subsequent Allied occupation, supporting a spouse and three offspring on weekly earnings that occasionally fell to fifteen dollars. Then, in September 1948 (some accounts place the moment in spring 1949), chance intervened.

British filmmaker Carol Reed was then in Vienna directing a suspense picture titled The Third Man, drawn from a Graham Greene narrative. While the screenplay’s essentials stood complete, the soundtrack remained undecided; Reed had already ruled out any Johann Strauss waltzes yet had not settled on replacement material. One evening he passed a Heuriger, a wine tavern offering vintners’ own bottlings, and caught the sound of Karas playing within. Unfamiliar with the zither until that moment, Reed found its resonance appealing. He invited Karas to perform at his hotel, captured the music on tape, and tested the result against dialogue at the studio. Satisfied with how the instrument complemented spoken lines, Reed disregarded colleagues’ objections, engaged Karas, and transported him to London for twelve weeks.

The London stay proved uneasy for Karas, who had never ventured beyond Austria and soon longed for home. Reed, whose residence served as lodging and whose wife Penelope interpreted between German and English, assured him of an early return once scoring concluded. Karas viewed the film repeatedly, crafting cues for every sequence. The finished picture therefore carried an unusually dense musical fabric, with zither present across nearly all of its 104 minutes. The celebrated "Third Man Theme" itself, however, originated two decades earlier; Karas had not performed it for more than fifteen years. He later told Reed that a full night of tip-based playing demanded economy of effort, so simpler pieces naturally predominated to spare the fingers.

The score occupied as central a position in The Third Man as any performer. Opening titles featured extreme close-ups of zither strings, and the instrument appeared audibly in scene after scene, frequently competing in prominence with dialogue. The theme itself shifted fluidly among brittle, buoyant, melancholic, amorous, ironic, and even caustic moods—qualities that matched the narrative’s atmosphere so precisely that the melody lingered indelibly once heard.

Upon completion, Reed and London Films sought to promote the picture through its music. Record labels showed no interest in capturing Karas or issuing the theme, deeming the sound too unconventional; prior British film successes had relied on more familiar light-classical fare, such as Richard Addinsell’s Rachmaninov-inflected “Warsaw Concerto,” rather than a metallic folk-instrument melody from Central Europe.

When the film premiered in England late in 1949, however, retail demand surfaced within days. Decca in Britain (London Records in the United States) promptly released both a single and an album whose cover juxtaposed Harry Lime’s black silhouette—the Orson Welles character linked to the melody—against a red field. The single moved half a million copies in its opening month, an extraordinary figure for postwar Britain, and reached the top position in both Britain and, after the American release in 1950, the United States. At least thirteen additional versions appeared, performed on guitars, organs, and other instruments, while piano and guitar sheet-music sales likewise proved substantial. Karas, who had returned to Vienna immediately after the London premiere, remained unaware of this surge for weeks and continued performing for tips at his former haunt until inquiries arrived from the production company, music publishers, and eventually the Royal Family, which requested a command performance. Further engagements in England followed; with assistance from the Selznick Organization, distributor of the American release, Karas traveled to the United States.

He issued several sequels to “The Third Man Theme,” among them a “Karol Theme” honoring Carol Reed, yet none replicated its success. Still, the windfall allowed retirement from tavern work; by the early 1950s Karas owned his own Heuriger, “The Winehouse at the Sign of the Third Man,” and thereafter played and recorded solely for enjoyment. In concert he often reserved the famous theme for the finale, first offering Viennese folk material and standards—including “In the Mood”—before extending the hit itself through thirty minutes of variations on certain evenings.

Other zitherists struggled to duplicate the recorded timbre. The explanation lay in Karas’s use, beneath Reed’s kitchen table, of one of the earliest practical overdubbing techniques on a commercial release—matching Les Paul’s contemporaneous experiments—by layering multiple zither tracks to achieve the precise sonority.

Karas later re-recorded the theme on several occasions, and groups such as the Shadows also covered it. His success ignited broader interest in the instrument; he himself released multiple albums in the early 1950s, while international demand for zither repertoire rose sharply. American musician Ruth Welcome, for example, issued at least half a dozen LPs featuring the instrument. Even director Ed Wood, working on his 1954 low-budget crime film Jail Bait, sought a zither for the underscore, yet, unable to locate an affordable player in Hollywood, substituted classical guitar instead.

The theme later supported a radio series derived from the film’s popularity, with Orson Welles again portraying Harry Lime in a gentler incarnation, as well as a television adaptation titled The Third Man that starred Michael Rennie as the globe-trotting Harry Lime and Jonathan Harris (later of Lost in Space) as his anxious associate. Retaining Karas’s melody, the series ran two seasons in the late 1950s and remained in syndication throughout the 1960s. The piece continued to surface on albums by instrumental rock ensembles well into the 1980s, while periodic revivals of the motion picture and the consequent spread of zither playing sustained public familiarity with the instrument; a 1999 nationwide theatrical re-release of a restored print further extended that reach.