THE MUSIC MAN

WARNER BROS., 1962 | COLOR (TECHNICOLOR)/TECHNIRAMA, 151 MINUTES

DIRECTOR AND PRODUCER: MORTON DACOSTA SCREENPLAY: MARION HARGROVE, BASED ON THE MUSICAL PLAY BY MEREDITH WILLSON AND FRANKLIN LACEY SONGS: MEREDITH WILLSON CHOREOGRAPHER: ONNA WHITE STARRING: ROBERT PRESTON (HAROLD HILL), SHIRLEY JONES (MARIAN PAROO), BUDDY HACKETT (MARCELLUS WASHBURN), HERMIONE GINGOLD (EULALIE MACKECHNIE SHINN), PAUL FORD (MAYOR GEORGE SHINN), PERT KELTON (MRS. PAROO), THE BUFFALO BILLS (SCHOOL BOARD), TIMMY EVERETT (TOMMY DJILAS), SUSAN LUCKEY (ZANEETA SHINN), RONNY [RON] HOWARD (WINTHROP PAROO)

In the early 1900s, a phony “professor of music” sets out to swindle the citizens of a small Iowa town.

The Music Man could have gone wrong in any number of ways, and happily it didn’t. The high-energy Broadway hit comes through just fine on film, including and especially its explosive, magnetic star, Robert Preston.

In the Broadway of 1957, Meredith Willson’s tale of a charismatic conman and his musical reformation seemed to come out of virtually nowhere. Based in part on Willson’s early-life experience in Mason City, Iowa, the show’s predictable corniness was far overshadowed by its exuberance, heart, and musicality. (That talk-in-train-rhythm opening scene is still a knockout.) There was also inventive choreography by Onna White and, most especially, the boundlessly energetic and altogether irresistible Preston, as “Professor” Harold Hill. For two decades a reliable second-rank actor in film and sometimes theater, Preston was as unexpected as the show itself, winning a Tony Award and owning the role as much as Yul Brynner held the copyright on the King of Siam. With all this, Preston wasn’t a sure thing for the movie. Jack L. Warner was seldom averse to the notion of replacing a stage player with a movie name, and he considered bypassing Preston in favor of Frank Sinatra or Cary Grant. Grant allegedly responded by saying that he not only refused to be in the film, but if Preston didn’t play Hill, he would not see it, either. The barbershop quartet known as the Buffalo Bills also made the transfer, as did Onna White and the original director, Morton DaCosta. DaCosta’s first film, Auntie Mame, was a huge hit that frequently betrayed its stage origins. He would work in a much more cinematic mode on The Music Man, whose two and a half hours go by very fast.

“Marian the Librarian”: Shirley Jones

Preston is as much a marvel here as he had been on Broadway, and one of the happiest aspects of his performance is that it’s exactly the right size. Too many theater performers overshoot the scale when they’re called on to play to a camera, or else someone does a role hundreds of times onstage and, by the time of the movie, is either stale or bored. Preston’s long film experience ensures that none of those things happen. Dynamic patter and theatrical gestures are all part of Hill’s scam, and when real feeling is needed and the camera comes closer, Preston can scale down. While all the players are good, the one who perhaps best equals him is the remarkable eight-year-old Ronny Howard. He’d already been playing Opie Taylor for two seasons on The Andy Griffith Show, and his Winthrop is sweet, genuine, and, in “Gary, Indiana,” joyously alive. There are also such delights as Pert Kelton, repeating her Broadway role, and the formidable Hermione Gingold, as Mayor Shinn’s aggressively affected wife. As usual, she is magnificently baroque, and who would have it any other way?