The Music Man

During the 50s and 60s, large-scale musicals popped up every year. Almost none of them were any good (West Side Story excepted. The Music Man bored me, but I imagine it thrilled the hinterlands during 1962, and it was nominated for Best Picture.

Based on the Broadway musical by Meredith Willson, which was a huge hit (and defeated West Side Story in the 1957 Tony race), The Music Man is thoroughly Midwestern. Willson based the story on his boyhood Iowa home, and the cast is largely the stern but ultimately warm-hearted citizens of River City.

Into their mix comes Harold Hill (Robert Preston), a con man. His scam is to pose as a professor of music and sell instruments and uniforms for a band, and then leave town. I'm not sure how this works--he takes money for the instruments, but does deliver them. What is his profit margin? Also, I wonder about his sidekick, Buddy Hackett, whom he serendipitously runs into. Hackett says he's happy having gone straight and living in the town, but he has no compunction aiding his old friend in fleecing his new townspeople.

Anyway, Preston, a master salesman, is able to convince most of the citizens to buy, usually using flattery. He avoids the school board's requests for his credentials by convincing them they're a great barbershop quartet (they're played by an actual barbershop quartet). The only people who see right through him are the mayor (a funny Paul Ford) and the town's spinster librarian, Shirley Jones. But when Preston is able to bring her young brother (Ronny Howard, as he was then known) out of his shell, she falls for him and helps him hide his secret.

Though the line "corny as Kansas in August" comes from South Pacific, this film qualifies. It has absolutely not sophistication at all, with bad jokes and few good songs. Sure, there is "76 Trombones," and "Ya Got Trouble," but there's also "Till There Was You," which is the oddest song the Beatles ever covered. Let's face it, any musical with a song called "Shipoopi" has got problems.

The film looks great, almost too good. Set in 1912, the colors are candy-coated. This is the past as people want to remember it. There are no nonwhite faces, no social problems.

I was charmed by this film for the first half hour or so, but that wore off. Preston works really hard, but ultimately I just didn't care, and I hated everyone in the film. A meteor strike would have been welcome. The Simpsons episode, "Marge vs. the Monorail," is a much better example of this story.