Our inquiry into Edward W. Roman's authorship of "Blue Moon" eventually begged the question of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp.'s copyright on the 1934 song, which was published in December of that year. In fact, not only was this copyright registered, but also, in the year and a half prior, three others on earlier iterations, each with a different title and set of lyrics. Credited on all were songwriters Richard Rodger and Lorenz Hart, who had been under contract to MGM throughout 1933 and into March 1934.
This research took us to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., where we sought out and asked to review the material that is called the "deposit." This is what is actually copyrighted by the U.S. Copyright Office of the Library of Congress. Specifically, we requested the deposits for the versions of the song registered for copyright as unpublished works on July 10, 1933, March 30, 1934, and May 9, 1934, and for the version registered for copyright as a published work on December 5, 1934.
A discussion of the song's unusual history can be found in the first and last sections of the Memoir, as well as below, in conjunction with the deposits. To our chagrin—because the music, if not the lyrics, might have been closest to what Roman wrote—the earliest deposit was missing, and nowhere to be found.
Blue moon, you saw me standing alone,
Without a dream in my heart,
Without a love of my own.
Blue moon, you knew just what I was there for,
You heard me saying a prayer for
Someone I really could care for.
And then there suddenly appeared before me,
The only one my arms will ever hold.
I heard somebody whisper, “Please adore me.”
And when I looked, the moon had turned to gold!
Blue moon,
Now I’m no longer alone,
Without a dream in my heart,
Without a love of my own.