Right Here in River City: The Making of Meredith Willson's 'The Music Man'

Shirley Jones hosts this 1998 look back at the 1962 movie, "The Music Man." This 30-minute short documentary focuses mostly on the creator of the show and his birthplace, Mason City, Iowa. Meredith Wilson wrote the music and lyrics for the Broadway play, and the book for the movie based on the play. Many of the names and some of the characters are taken from real people he knew growing up in early 20th century Mason City.

It's a story about small town America at the turn of the 20th century. The story takes place in 2012, and interestingly enough, I don't think there's a single automobile in the movie. Harold Hill and all the salesmen traveled by train in those days.

The Broadway play was produced by Kermit Bloomgarden and directed by Morton DaCosta. It opened in 1957 and had a long run of 1,375 performances. It won five Tony awards its first year and eight overall. Many people who worked on the Broadway play moved over to do the film. DaCosta directed, and choreographer Onna White staged the fantastic dance numbers. Two of the lead roles repeated from stage to screen – Robert Preston played Professor Harold Hill and Pert Kelton played Mrs. Paroo. Others of the stage cast carried over to the film, including The Buffalo Bills barbershop quartet.

This documentary includes interviews with Onna White, Buddy Hackett who played Marcellus Washburn, and Susan Luckey who played Zaneeta Shinn. It has some of the usual film clips. White said that for Preston's first musical, she worked with him three weeks before they started rehearsal. He learned all the dance steps and moves for the complicated and long Library routine and when rehearsals began, he showed them to the rest of the dancers. Hackett had praise for Preston and DaCosta as director.

This short has some interesting tidbits that weren't known widely at the time. The whole film took about nine months to shoot, and at three months into shooting, Shirley Jones became pregnant. DeCosta told her not to worry about it and using corsets and extra fringes and things on her costumes they were able to conceal her pregnancy. Her son, Patrick Cassidy, was born Jan. 4, 1962, a few weeks after shooting of the film ended. He was nearly six months old when the film hit theaters.

Shirley Jones says that Warner Brothers wanted Frank Sinatra to star as Harold Hill. But, when Meredith Wilson learned of that, he stepped in and said if Robert Preston didn't get the role, there would be no film. This is one of those films that has become so identified with a specific performer that it's difficult to imagine anyone else in the role who could play the role as well. Preston won the 1958 Tony as best leading actor in a musical. He didn't receive an Oscar nomination in 1962, which was one of the most competitive years with many tremendous films and performances.

The movie premiered in Mason City, Iowa, on June 19, 1962, and the town celebrated for a week with parades, picnics and pageantry. This is a good look back on a fine musical and its background, and the documentary is somewhat entertaining in itself.

This half-hour documentary on the making of THE MUSIC MAN (1962) – which is included on Warners' DVD edition of that film – takes in the whole history of the phenomenon of Meredith Willson's Broadway musical show. Given its brevity, however, there is not a whole lot of depth in the commentary being imparted by host Shirley Jones and, frankly, one does not really walk away from it any more enlightened than he came in. Nevertheless, it was nice to see and hear some of the key participants in the film – Jones herself and comedian Buddy Hackett – and of both film and the original Broadway production – Susan Luckey (who played the Mayor's daughter and said "Egads" a lot) and choreographer Onna White – reminiscing about their long gone colleagues. We are told that, in spite of being a veteran of many movies, Robert Preston was a newcomer to the "song-and-dance man' act and that, in spite of his success on stage, he was not Warners' original casting choice for the role of Professor Harold Hill (it was Frank Sinatra!) but, in this age of unlimited sources of information available on the Internet, this featurette comes off a little dry.