I don’t think this is Cafe Society material—at least, not abruptly. Excuse me if I’m wrong.
I’ve seen it in a couple of movies where the National Anthem was played before a sporting event, but with the And the rockets’ red glare bit excluded. Is this merely dramatic license, or was/is this actually done?
If the high notes were a problem they’d cut out “And the land of the free”, which has as high a note on “free” as there are on the two words “red glare”. Gotta be something else. Maybe just not wanting to play the whole national anthem for reasons of time or provoking outcry from some patriotic groups who’d lament the commercial abuse of the national anthem.
Probably just edited for brevity. Face it, “The Star-Spangled Banner” is a long, boring song. Everyone knows it. Why bother wasting movie/TV time doing the whole thing, when the entire audience knows exactly what it is already. Except for the version in “Naked Gun.”
Although, actually, “The Star-Spangled Banner” has multiple verses, so I doubt that very many people have actually heard the entire thing.
I timed my version, which has a tempo slightly slower than that used by military bands. It took 1:05.
Singers at sporting events are highlighting their singing ability (Leslie Nielsen notwithstanding), so they tend to drag it out to, oh, 1:30 or 1:45. Not THAT bloody long unless you just don’t like the song, in which case 10 seconds is too long.