The Music Man (Special Edition)
by Morton DaCosta, Scott Benson
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Buddy Hackett, Onna White, Robert Preston, Shirley Jones, Susan LuckeyDirector: Morton DaCosta, Scott Benson
Brand: Warner Brothers
Producer: Morton DaCosta
Producer: Joel Freeman
Writer: Franklin Lacey
Writer: Marion Hargrove
Writer: Meredith Willson
Writer: Tom Edwards
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Special Edition, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.20:1
Running Time: 181 minutes
DVD Release Date: 1999-02-23
Audience Rating: G (General Audience)
Studio: Warner Home Video
Movie Reviews of The Music Man (Special Edition)
Movie Review: Not my favorite musical
Summary: 3 Stars
It's possible I'm operating from a subconscious prejudice with regard to this movie (my parents went to see the original Broadway version and walked out before the end of the first act), but I really couldn't bring myself to enjoy it as much as I probably should have. Playwright/composer Meredith Willson (who grew up in Mason City, IA, in the first two decades of the 20th Century, and played with John Philip Sousa's band) was clearly writing what he knew, and with more than 40 songs--twice or more what most musicals boast--plus several lively dance numbers, it may be the finest of the late MGM examples. In the year 1912, a man (Robert Preston) who calls himself Prof. Harold Hill ("bandleaders are always called 'Professor'") comes to River City, IA, and soon persuades the citizens that the presence of a new pool table in their town (quite different, he insists, from a billiard table) is the first step on a slippery slope that will ruin their "innocent" sons and daughters, leading to "horse race gambling" and dancing to "shameless" ragtime music. His solution? "River City needs a boys' band"--for which he is conveniently prepared to order instruments, uniforms, and manuals. What the audience knows and the Iowans don't is that Hill (not his real name) is a con artist who can't read a note (although, to be fair, the instruments and uniforms do arrive as advertised). His chief opposition is town librarian Marian Paroo (Shirley Jones), who thinks he's a "masher" or worse, so of course he has to try to romance and distract her. But as he waits for the band equipment to arrive, he finds himself growing genuinely attached to her, her little brother Winthrop (Ronny Howard), and the town itself. He even does his bit to improve the place: by persuading the members of the School Board (the Buffalo Bills), who've been feuding for 20 years, to sing together in barbershop-quartet fashion, he defuses their rivalries; he engineers what may be the reformation of the local "wild kid," Tommy Djilas (Timmy Everett), and furthers his courtship of Zaneeta Shinn (Susan Luckey), daughter of the mayor (Paul Ford), who happens to own the pool table and so distrusts Hill, and his wife (Hermione Gingold), whom Hill recruits to the band's "dance committee."
Of course the high point of the film is Preston recreating his original stage role; at 44 he still had a lot of zip, and his flamboyant style perfectly suits the con-artist character he plays. Jones's soaring soprano is another plus, and it's intriguing to see how, even with Queen Victoria 11 years in her grave, the small towns of America still lived heavily by Victorian codes, with an almost paranoid concentration on appearances and respectability. The costumes are wonderful and the library set particularly is charming. And yet somehow I just don't seem to like this movie as much as I do Seven Brides for Seven Brothers or Meet Me In St. Louis (Two-Disc Special Edition). Maybe it just seems to be trying too hard (having been made well after either of them, in a day when, as Jones points out in her introduction, the studios just "weren't making the big flashy musicals any more" and perhaps had forgotten how to do it right).
Summary of The Music Man (Special Edition)
Let 76 trombones lead the big parade from the Great White Way into your home. It's the Music Man, the screen version of one of Broadway's all-time blockbusters, a skyburst of Americana as irresistible as 4th of July fireworks. Robert Preston and Shirley J Year: 1962The Music Man was one of the last great movie musicals from any studio, and it proved to be that rarest of events: a Broadway show that was measurably improved by its transition to the screen. Robert Preston made his musical debut--both live and on film--as "Professor" Harold Hill, the upbeat charlatan who promises to teach a small-town boys band by the "think system." But it's the part Preston was born to play and the one for which he will always be best remembered. Composer Meredith Willson based The Music Man on his own small-town Midwestern boyhood, circa 1912, a quasi-mythical place where the old-maid librarian looks and sings like Shirley Jones. The boy himself is an adorable Ron Howard, lisp-singing "Gary, Indiana." Willson's entire score, featuring a combination of what are now standards, such as "Goodnight My Someone" and "Till There Was You" and show-specific numbers ("Trouble," "76 Trombones"), is never less than infectious. This dazzling special edition is also as bright and sunny as any 4th of July in Iowa could ever hope to be. --Robert Windeler
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