“I always think there’s a band, kid.”
*****
Heard anyone say recently that America isn’t all she’s cracked up to be? That we’re undergoing some sort of identity crisis? That a better name for us might be the United Hates of America? That beneath our status as the world’s number one superpower lies an underbelly of rot, greed, and perfidy?
They probably think they’re saying something new.
They’re not saying anything new.
I’ve heard it all before. People need to go read some history books. Or just talk to some older Americans. We’ve been saints and hypocrites from day one. We’re the land of the free and the home of the brave. We’re the Great Satan who just overthrew the government of that obscure country you live in. We’re the land of opportunity. We’re the land that stole a bunch of land from funny-looking people who didn’t have the guns we had. We are all of this, and more.
Over the years, I’ve seen cartoonists, sculptors, and marketing departments attempt to create a personification the United States, but none of them, in my view, have quite hit the mark. The Statue of Liberty? Too stiff. Yes, it’s made of copper but that’s no excuse. Uncle Sam? Too accusatory. Watch where you’re pointing that thing. G.I. Joe? Too easy for five-year-old me to step on.
But in the 1950s, when a former piccolo player from Iowa gave it an attempt, I think he might have gotten closer to hitting the mark than anyone ever has.
Because this man dared to suggest that the ideal personification of the United States … is a con man.
*****
The Music Man? Number three?
The problem isn’t my list. The problem is all the other lists.
What if I told you there’s a movie that every culturally literate person on Earth, as far as I can tell, is not only familiar with, but can hum at least five songs from? That there’s a movie which has been parodied and referenced in every corner of popular folklore, and yet, if you scan “greatest movies” lists, is more absent than Professor Harold Hill from the latest town he’s swindled?
We’re talking about a movie so firmly entrenched in the American psyche that it served as the inspiration for an entire Simpsons episode – and not one of those forgettable episodes that came out sometime in the last 20 years (side question: is The Simpsons still on the air?), but an episode from the prime era, all right, one of the episodes written by Conan O’Brien.
We’re talking about a movie featuring a musical number so widely subjected to tribute and pastiche (“Ya Got Trouble”) that its Wikipedia page lists, among the shows paying homage to it: Ally McBeal; Family Guy; Fame; Schmigadoon!; My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic; The Book of Mormon. We’re talking about a movie featuring a song that was covered by the Beatles, for Christ’s sake.
And yet, where’s the love?
Well either you are closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge, or you are currently unaware of the caliber of disaster … indicated by the absence of The Music Man from “greatest movies” lists. And these lists have been the raspberry seed in my wisdom tooth for too long.
I don’t mean unrepentantly highbrow lists like Sight and Sound. I doubt Broadway musicals are their scene. But what about They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They?, an aggregated list of the 1,000 Greatest Films of All-Time? Die Hard, Showgirls, Moulin Rouge!, and Shaun of the Dead make the cut, but no Music Man? The site used to feature a second list supposedly containing the next 1,000 Greatest Films of All-Time, and The Music Man wasn’t on that one either. Every movie Lars von Trier has ever released makes the cut, but no Music Man? Eeee-gods. When was the last time The Simpsons made a parody/homage episode inspired by a Lars von Trier movie?
Surely Roger Ebert, child of small-town Illinois, would have recognized a kindred spirit in this paeon to early 20th century Iowa and would have included it in his “Great Movies” series? I recall the burst of excitement, followed by an immediate double-take, the day I saw a film titled The Music Room make its appearance in that series. The Music Room? Satyajit Ray? Who the fuck was Satyajit Ray? I was pretty sure he’d mis-typed The Music Man.
Not that the 1962 film version of The Music Man has received zero acclaim. Just consult any movie guide. One of my old, tattered favorites, Rating the Movies, gives it four stars out of four:
A buoyant, thoroughly enjoyable romantic musical based on Meredith Willson’s hit Broadway production. Preston is fantastic as the city-slicker salesman who cons the citizens of a small Iowa town into organizing a boys’ band so he can sell them musical instruments. Jones also stands out as Marian the librarian, Preston’s romantic interest. The film boasts colorful, turn-of-the-century detail and a strong statement about provincial narrow-mindedness. Many of the musical numbers are real showstoppers; they include “Till There Was You” and “76 Trombones.” There’s outstanding support from Hermione Gingold, Paul Ford, and Buddy Hackett.
No hemming and hawing there. And here’s another one from the Video Movie Guide, giving it 4 ½ stars out of five:
They sure don’t make musicals like this anymore, a smashing adaptation of Meredith Willson’s Broadway hit. Robert Preston reprises the role of his life as a smooth-talkin’ salesman who cajoles the parents of River City, Iowa into purchasing band instruments and uniforms for their children.
No siree, they sure don’t. I’d always been pleased to read allmovie.com’s five star review of the film; I am less pleased now that they’ve deleted every review from their site, rendering the site, in my view, totally useless. Fortunately, before the Great Vanishing took place, I copied and pasted this one into a Word document, and I’m proud to preserve it here for internet posterity. It’s the kind of review that almost writes my own essay for me – almost:
The Music Man is among the best movie musicals, transforming Meredith Willson’s Broadway hit into an energetic slice of Americana. Robert Preston’s virtuoso portrayal of con man Harold Hill transfers from the stage (despite the studios’ nervousness about casting no-name Preston), and the result is one of the most explosively vital performances in any movie musical. Until the very end, Preston never sugar-coats or softens Hill’s rapacious self-seeking, nor does Shirley Jones downplay the stubborn snobbishness of his love interest, Marian Paroo. The portrayal of the River City townfolk is memorably caustic: “You can have your fill of the all the food you bring yourself!” runs only one of the snide remarks in their introductory song, which offers, “Glad to have you with us — even though we may not ever mention it again.” The film’s embrace of small-town American life is not confined to its sentimental, sickly-sweet aspects (the movie’s hero, after all, is a con man, whom Preston’s vigorously charming performance dares us to like), and this dimensionality makes the movie as distinctive dramatically as it is musically. Preston carries the movie, but he receives memorable support from Jones, Ron Howard as her brother Winthrop, Buddy Hackett as his sidekick, and such stalwarts as Paul Ford, Hermoine Gingold, and Pert Kelton among the River City townspeople. The underrated score includes Till There Was You, later covered by The Beatles and often mistaken for one of their songs. Made at the acme (yet last gasp) of the blockbuster movie musical in the first half of the 1960s, The Music Man can hold its own among such better-known contemporaries as West Side Story (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), and The Sound of Music (1965).
And yet, those “better-known contemporaries” end up on all sorts of lists. West Side Story? Gripping, moody, but it’s always struck me as kind of … self-important. “Ooh, we’re taking on racism! And urban youth culture! And we’re re-doing Shakespeare!” My Fair Lady? “Ooh, we’re taking on class! And gender dynamics! And we’re re-doing George Bernard Shaw!” With all due respect to director George Cukor, he was getting a bit on in years by that point, wasn’t he? It’s one of those Broadway adaptations that gets the job done, but feels a bit staid and proper for my taste. The Sound of Music? Admit it, that family is way too perfect. Like I’m supposed to relate to the von Trapps? Just flee the Nazis and get out of my face already.
Mind you, I’ll watch any of those movies when they come on TV, but they’re not sniffing my top 10. They don’t have the same drive, the same gusto. And, as we shall discuss, there’s a darker, more serious side to The Music Man too, only the story’s not quite as up-front about it as these others are. And who said it has an “underrated score”? Underrated by who? Not by anyone in my family.
*****
Maybe I’m just a Music Man nut.
What kind of a Music Man nut am I? During one summer in college, I was on a cross country road trip with my brother, and we found ourselves driving from Chicago to Denver, trying to hit all the key spots. Wrigley Field? The St. Louis arch? Lincoln’s Home National Historic Site?
Pfft.
I demanded that we drive through Mason City, Iowa, because Mason City is the city that served as the inspiration for River City. You think I’d come all that way for nothing?
We showed up around 9 o’clock at night. The fact that it looked like any other Midwestern city at 9 o’clock at night was entirely beside the point. We parked near a town square, I told my brother to stand up on a nondescript concrete platform and pretend to be Harold Hill for five seconds, I took his picture, and off we drove.
That’s the kind of Music Man nut I am.
What kind of a Music Man nut am I? In L.A. a couple of years ago, I took the Warner Brothers Studio Tour in Burbank. At the very end of the tour, while everyone else was busy drooling over the room filled with props and costumes from the DC cinematic universe (Batman, Superman, etc.), I was busy geeking out, in a vacant corner, over this:
His suitcase. Harold Hill’s actual suitcase. With a trombone.
That’s the kind of Music Man nut I am.
Unlike most of my favorite films of the ‘60s, I go back quite a ways with this one. My father taped it off a TV broadcast when I was about five or six years old, and although I understood maybe 15% of the content, I watched it on repeat along with the rest of my family. One day, when I was thirteen, I took that old videocassette off the shelf, and watched the movie again, now understanding about 85% of the content. I then proceeded to watch it almost every day for a month. Maybe the other kids at school thought I was weird for walking around all day saying things like “Cash for the noggins and piggins and the firkins, cash for the hogshead cask and demijohn, cash for the sugar and the pickles and the flypaper, look, whaddaya talk, whaddaya talk, whaddaya talk,” but I didn’t care. For several years, I considered it my favorite movie. It has since been surpassed by a few, though not many.
I didn’t know my grandmother too well, but according to my father, The Music Man was also her favorite movie. So that’s cool.
Like the members of a barbershop quartet, we Music Man people understand each other. Every so often, I’ll be having a conversation with a person I hardly know, The Music Man gets mentioned, we exchange this glance, and then we’re suddenly launching into “We can be cold as a falling thermometer in December if you ask about the weather in July/And we’re so by-God stubborn we can stand touching noses, for a week at a time and never see eye-to-eye.”
Which is what makes its absence from greatest movie lists so weird. Like, when I tell people one of my favorite movies is The Music Man, they say, “Yeah. Duh.” Maybe it was a flop upon release, rendering it a sort of cult status? Unless you consider the 3rd highest grossing film of 1962 a flop, then no. Snubbed at the Oscars? Unless you consider being nominated for Best Picture, but not Best Director or Best Screenplay (somewhat rare, but I don’t get worked up about these things) a snub, then no.
Look, you don’t need a degree from the Gary Conservatory Gold Medal Class of ’05 to see what’s going on here.
Most people think of The Music Man as a Broadway show first, and a movie second.
And as a Broadway show, its reputation may be higher than the highest note on the piccolo. It won the Tony for Best Musical in 1958 (over West Side Story?), but that’s neither here nor there. Every high school theater department worth its salt in the lower 48 has staged a production of this sucker. Hell, my nine-year-old niece in San Diego is performing in a production of it next month. I don’t generally scan lists of “Greatest Broadway Musicals,” but I imagine few would leave this one off. In the world of American musical theater, it’s basically a Beatles album.
And I think when film scholars sit down and name the “greatest movies,” they would disqualify a movie like The Music Man because – how can I put this – it sort of had an artistic head start? Fine, so a movie studio was handed a smash Broadway musical to adapt to the screen, and didn’t screw it up. Does that really count?
But here’s the thing. I wasn’t alive to catch the original Broadway run of The Music Man. None of the people born after me will have been alive to catch it either. And I don’t want to watch Hugh Freaking Jackman prance around the stage as Harold Hill. To me, the film version released by Warner Brothers on June 19, 1962, is the version. It is the version featuring the cast I like the best, the set design I like the best, and the musical arrangements and recordings I like the best. I once rented the original Broadway cast recording from the library, and I was like, “What the hell is this? Barbara Cook? ‘My White Knight’?” Wasn’t doing it for me.
Besides, you can definitely screw up a film adaptation of a hit Broadway musical, if my viewing of the first 10 minutes of 1967’s Camelot (with its opening number consisting of a close-up of Richard Harris, followed by another close-up of Richard Harris from a slightly different angle, followed by a close-up of Richard Harris from the original angle) is any indication.
Therefore, I hereby proclaim 1962’s The Music Man to be a great film. I proclaim it to be a great example of the artform that consists of celluloid strips deliberately being edited together and mass-produced for public consumption. I guess if I were making a list of movies that “redefined the medium,” I’d leave it off. But if I were making a list of movies that “people might enjoy watching,” I’d put it where I’m putting it.
Which is not to say that its visual style is the main source of its appeal. It’s not the kind of film, for instance, that wears auteur theory well. Quick: name the director of The Music Man. That’s what I thought.
David Lean, Stanley Kubrick, Federico Fellini, Morton DaCosta. Which of these names doesn’t belong?
To be fair, DaCosta’s real talent was as a theater director, and I’d like to see the last Broadway play directed by Stanley Kubrick, OK? Since he’d directed The Music Man on stage, apparently they decided to give him a shot behind the camera, and you can’t hold the fact that he only directed two more movies after this one against him. That’s three more movies than I’ll ever direct.
So no, I can’t dive into trenchant analysis of the “DaCosta touch” or the “DaCosta style,” but I think he brought more inventiveness to the film adaptation than he’s been given credit for. Here are a few explicitly cinematic ideas DaCosta employs to flesh out the film’s atmosphere in ways that simply couldn’t have been attempted on stage:
1) Ever wondered what the world might look like from the point of view of a piano? Thanks to Morton DaCosta, now you know.
2) Bird’s eye shot of Mrs. Shinn’s gossip-prone clique, followed by bird’s eye shot of hens clucking. Witheringly satirical comparison made via editing, not dialogue.
3) Hypnotic, minute-long tracking shot of every citizen in River City standing on the sidewalk in feverish anticipation of the arrival of the Wells Fargo wagon. On stage, you’d see everybody all at once, which would be lame. Not to mention, the stage wouldn’t be big enough to hold everybody. (Side note: when was the last time you saw anyone get excited about anything remotely related to Wells Fargo?)
4) Overhead shot of ladies’ skirts looking like upside down umbrellas near the end of “Shipoopi,” a perspective which might work in theater … if you could get the dancers to horizontally levitate.
The man had a job to do, and he did it well, but no, he was not the auteur here.
If I had to name the individual auteur behind The Music Man, I wouldn’t name director Morton DaCosta, screenwriter Marion Hargrove, or even star Robert Preston.
If anyone was the true “auteur” of this film, it was a man who was barely involved with the film at all. It was a man whose first name sounds like it should be a woman’s first name, and whose last name bizarrely possesses one “L” too many.
*****
Meredith Willson.
Yes, Meredith Willson: the Broadway legend who, along with contemporaries Rodgers and Hammerstein and Lerner and Loewe, composed classic show after classic show, like The Music Man, and … The Unsinkable Molly Brown, I guess, and … uh …
Did I mention The Music Man?
Seriously? Didn’t this guy do anything else? He wrote “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas”? I guess that counts as something. And a couple of random film scores like The Great Dictator and The Little Foxes? That’s all we’ve got?
Forgive me please, die-hard fans of The Unsinkable Molly Brown, “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” and those two movie scores, but how could a man capable of composing a musical featuring nothing but wall-to-wall all-timers have never composed anything else on the same level?
Maybe Willson shot his wad with The Music Man. But man, what a wad.
According to Wikipedia, “It took Willson eight years and 30 revisions to complete the musical, for which he wrote more than 40 songs.” I mean, if you’re only going to create one classic musical, you might as well take your time with it. As Willson put it in But He Doesn’t Know the Territory, “I realize in reading over this account thus far, it sounds as thought I had planned to write thirty or forty drafts, each one to be an improvement until the job was done – as you make a cigar, a wrapper at a time. Nothing could have been further from my mind. I assure you that I thought every draft I finished was a whole cigar.” He wrote alternate versions of entire songs, including a version of “76 Trombones” that was a tribute to ancient instruments. You ready?
There was an Arghool reed and a Dulcian
There were quite a few Zinkens made out of wood
There were possibly three Schalmaeys
And a Cor Anglais
And a Shawm which sounded awf’ly good
I’ll spare you the rest. But this is like the Broadway version of “Is it better to burn out than fade away?” Is it better to compose fifteen A+ tunes and cram them all into one show than to compose fifteen A+ tunes that are spread out across twelve separate, forgettable shows? Maybe Willson did us all a favor? Maybe he was like the Alanis Morrisette of Broadway composers?
For a man owing his fame to one creation, he certainly took advantage of it in the publishing world, parlaying it into three memoirs (And There I Stood with My Piccolo, Eggs I Have Laid, But He Doesn’t Know the Territory), although none, I fear, may rise to the level of his liner notes for The Music Man’s soundtrack album:
My town was Mason City, Iowa.
I had to take piano lessons when I was very young … However, even before piano lessons, the chances were that you had already lost your lay status by getting involved with one of the following musical instruments: (A) a pair of bones, (b) a jew’s harp, or (c) and old-fashioned piccolo with seven holes and a couple of little, fugitive-tadpole, German-silver keys.
This abrupt change in a hitherto-carefree, slingshot world was invariably brought about when some visiting relative heard you (a) whistle, (b) sing, or (c) cough one day out in the back yard when you thought you were enjoying a little privacy, and, insisting that your harmless idiocies were signs of genius, rushed you down to the local music store, convinced that your great talent should be fostered without delay.
Reminds me of the ending of a certain Broadway musical, this.
Well, there happened to be a bones expert in our neighborhood. He was an older kid who lived two houses away. He used to grab my bones, give them one simple straight-arm push, and immediately set them to sprrrrrrrattling like a shinny stick on a picket fence. In fact, I learned everything from him about rattling bones except how to do it myself.
He just needed to use the Think System. Duh.
Laying aside this instrument in shame, I turned to the jew’s-harp. I even turn wistfully to it now and then today. It seems to me that if I could ever get the idea of where the music is supposed to originate on this instrument, or figure out just what is supposed to take place during the rendering of a piece – I mean recognize when I’m playing and when I’m not – I might have some point from which to start to try to become a jew’s-harpist. However, not only have I never been able to accomplish anything even distantly related to musical sound on this one-string lyre with the flange on top, but I have never encountered any performance whatever by any artist in the field (of whom there are an incredible number) that has in any way added to that of my own.
They all whang away with their first finger, as do I.
They all set up some sort of dismal vocal drone, as do I.
They all claim, after four or five minutes of this droning and whanging to have just rendered “The Blue Bells of Scotland,” as do I. No, when it comes to jew’s-harp playing I have long since solidified an opinion that never in the history of the music business have the attempts of so many resulted in the entertainment of so few.
Yeah, I’d hang with this guy any time. In the great lineage of droll, Midwestern chroniclers of American life, we may have found the missing link between Mark Twain and Roger Ebert. One more nugget:
A flautist is a man who plays the flute. There is no excuse for the word “flautist.” It is one of the great semantic mysteries. Obviously a flautist should be a man who plays the flaut, and there is no such thing.
And how come you park in a driveway and drive in a parkway? Who’s in charge here?
But as with Harold Hill, whenever I read Willson’s own comments on The Music Man, I always sense a bit of misdirection. To hear him describe it, you’d think it was merely an affectionate ode to his Rockwell-esque Iowa youth – clever, if frivolous, entertainment, and nothing more. Perhaps convincing the world of this might have been Meredith Willson’s greatest con of all.
*****
Have I mentioned Iowa yet? I’ve never seen a movie be so profoundly in love with the state it takes place in. Not Garden State, not My Own Private Idaho, not Mississippi Burning, nothing. Oklahoma! may feature a song titled “Oklahoma!,” but I’ll be honest, I didn’t learn half as much about Oklahoma after watching Oklahoma! as I did about Iowa after watching The Music Man.
In other words, some movies struggle with the establishment of time and place. The Music Man … is not one of those movies.
This isn’t so much a film musical as it is a priceless socio-historical document. I suspect that, within the contents of The Music Man, an entire way of life has been preserved. We’re talking dialogue so dense with period references and turns of phrase that one needs a glossary to navigate it all. Behold this handy website.
Could it be that there once was a time when I didn’t know a piggin from a firkin, Bevo from Cubebs, Dubuque from Davenport? That I couldn’t have picked out Balzac from Omar Kayyam, a cistern from a double boiler, Lida Rose Quackenbush from Captain Billy’s Whizbang? But it’s not essential that every reference be understood, merely that the cumulative effect adds to the period flavor. The Music Man is also arcane colloquialism heaven. Try some of these on for size:
“Not on your kidney plaster.”
“Not on your fireless cooker.”
“Or you’ll hear from me till who-laid-the-rails.”
“Why you boneheaded, square-toed, tank town boobs.”
“He’s a bare-faced, double-shuffle, two-bit thimblerigger.”
“I couldn’t make myself any clearer if I was a buttonhook in the well water.”
And the mother of them all:
“He’s just a bang-beat, bell-ringing, big haul, great go-neck-or-nothing, rip-roarin’, every-time-a-bull’s-eye salesman.”
But it would be easy to mistake Willson’s fondness for the environment of his youth with a rose-tinted nostalgia for the environment of his youth, and these are not quite the same thing. Does The Music Man suggest that everyday American life in 1912 was somehow “better” than what followed?
This musical, in my view, holds two separate truths in its palms, without clinging to either: 1) River City is the shining, small-town American Eden that all of us long to return to, but sadly never can; 2) There has never been a town populated by a larger collection of stubborn, suspicious, myopic, gullible, provincial, narrow-minded, gossip-inclined neanderthals than this one.
These people are idiots!
Admit it, Harold Hill only manages to get as far as he does because these people are idiots. That’s half the joke.
I’m sure some staunchly progressive academic could go after The Music Man for being just another case of white people pining for the “good old days” of their beautiful white, Midwestern childhoods, a pseudo-patriotic creampuff that exists so they can feel warm and fuzzy and say, “Aw, wasn’t life so sweet back then?”
Here’s what I say to that: not on your kidney plaster. After all, who is the main character of this “irresistible skyburst of Americana,” as the blurb on the back of my DVD puts it, this film that is supposedly pining for “the good old days”? An asshole. How nostalgic can your story be if its central protagonist … is an asshole?
No, Willson’s take on turn-of-the-century Midwestern life is too sly, knowing, and sardonic to be guilty of blind adoration. In The Music Man’s America, scheming, thievery, and baseless moral panic are just as much a fabric of the “American way” as are fireworks and county fairs. I guarantee the theatergoers of 1957 laughing at the parents of River City for being scandalized by pool halls, rebuckling one’s knickerbockers below the knee, and words like “swell” and “so’s your old man” didn’t know how silly they’d look, 50 years later, for being outraged by first wave rock and roll stars like Elvis, Little Richard, and Gene Vincent. Imagine Mrs. Shinn watching a Tarantino movie. And you thought Chaucer, Rabelais, and Balzac were shocking.
Nope, The Music Man’s America is one screwed up America. Check out the products listed on the suitcases of Harold’s colleagues on the train: “Tri-City Apothecary Co.: Foreign Leeches, etc.,” “Wister’s Balsam & Cherry,” “Fowles’ Humor Cure.” A tonic to cure all your ills. In other words, aren’t these “legitimate” salesmen selling a bunch of bullshit too? Was it George Washington who once said, “There’s a sucker born every minute”?
But the drama in The Music Man comes from these two opposing forces colliding: a man who may be a crook, but at least isn’t a sucker, and a town full of citizens who may be suckers, but at least aren’t crooks. You know why I find myself rooting for Harold Hill, even though I know he’s full of more horse dung than the troughs at a livery stable? Because he’s sharper than everyone else. I mean, if these Iowa boodlebags are stupid enough to fall for his con, then maybe they deserve what they get?
Harold’s bottomless well of agility, cunning, and bluster never fails to astonish me. No noose is tight enough for this man’s neck to wiggle out of. When the mayor catches Harold unknowingly ringing his doorbell and starts into a rant about “soliciting without a license,” Harold responds, without missing a beat, “Mr. Mayor, I collect doorbells, and this specimen has an unusual tone quality …” A man who collects … doorbells?
Later, Harold unknowingly puts his foot in his mouth on the Paroo’s front porch by asking to speak with Marian and Winthrop’s father, before being testily informed by Marian that their father is dead. But only moments later, he departs the company of Marian’s mother by stating “Good day to you, Widow Paroo.” Talk about being able to incorporate new info so quickly. He’d be a legend at Improv Night.
The phrase “laying it on too thick” doesn’t appear to have crossed Harold’s mind. He throws, into the pot, every ingredient that’s lying around the kitchen. The man knows no shame. How sure is he that River City is going to have her precious boys’ band? “As sure as the Lord made little green apples.” Little green apples? Sensing the need to seal the rhetorical deal at the conclusion of “Ya Got Trouble,” he punctuates his clarion call with “Remember the Maine, Plymouth Rock, and the Golden Rule!” Golden Rule? If it sounds good, he’ll say it. I’m reminded of John Belushi’s inspirational speech in Animal House. Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Forget it, he’s rolling.
But there’s a twist in The Music Man – a very part-time Buddhist twist, at that. The twist is that, while Harold Hill wants the world to think he’s an asshole, how much of an asshole is he … really? Until that fateful summer in River City, he’s never given it much thought.
Sure, he puts on a mighty fine act. In the opening scene, a fellow train passenger asks, “Where are you goin’, friend?”
“Wherever the people are as green as the money – friend.” In other words: “I’m an asshole, and don’t call me ‘friend’ – asshole.”
Nor does he appear shy about his being a heartless charlatan, bragging to pal Marcellus in his hotel room, “Oh this is a refined operation, son. And I’ve got it timed down to the wave of the brakeman’s hand on the last train out of town.”
And don’t mistake him for the type who would settle down with a virginal librarian: “I flinch, I shy, when the lass with the delicate air goes by/I smile, I grin, when the gal with the touch of sin walks in/I hope and I pray, for Hester to win just one more ‘A’.” (For the record, musicals with Scarlet Letter jokes always get an A in my book.)
Ah, but there’s one element of the con which Harold Hill hasn’t accounted for. It’s that he’s been conning himself.
*****
Before I continue, a few words about Robert Preston.
One of these days, I’ll get around to writing an essay about the film career of Robert Preston. That day will not be today, given that A) this essay is laughably long already, and B) I’ve only seen three movies he’s been in. But talk about a loopy career. Let’s do a Robert Preston movie marathon sometime, shall we? The only problem … might be finding the movies.
Hard to believe, but his film credits stretch back to 1938. We’re talking the days of A-list stars and B-list stars. And guess who was on the B-list? Check out these titles: Moon Over Burma, The Lady From Cheyenne, Pacific Blackout, Reap the Wild Wind, Night Plane from Chungking, Blood on the Moon, Whispering Smith, The Lady Gambles, My Outlaw Brother … if you’d told me these were made up, I’d believe you. Not the kind of “classics” one sees streaming on the Criterion Channel. There are Wikipedia entries for all of them, so they can’t be too obscure. But he’s so burnt into my brain as Harold Hill that seeing him in some black and white genre picture would be … weird.
After getting fed up with playing, as he put it, “the lead in all the B-pictures and the villain in all the epics,” he explored his range on Broadway – but not, it must be noted, Broadway musicals. That guy – in a musical? Casting Robert Preston in a musical would’ve been like casting Roy Scheider in a musical (like that could ever work).
Which is why it’s particularly hilarious that Warner Brothers felt uneasiness with casting “unknown” Preston in the film version … since he’d already starred in a thousand movies. This wasn’t like casting Julie Andrews instead of Audrey Hepburn. As he explained in an interview he gave in the ‘80s, shortly before his death, “Oh, it was great fun to watch the critics switch back and forth. In my first couple of Broadway shows, I was referred to as Hollywood’s Robert Preston. Then I went back out to Hollywood to make a movie, and Bosley Crowther, in his movie review, referred to me as Broadway’s Robert Preston.” The studio was considering everyone from Burt Lancaster to Bing Crosby to Frank Sinatra, but according to Preston, “Cary Grant’s the reason I got that role. He’d seen the show 12 times and loved it. When Jack Warner asked him to play Harold Hill, he said, ‘Not only will I not play it, but if Preston doesn’t, I won’t even go see the movie.’ ”
Can’t argue with that. Cary Grant’s too debonair anyway, too country club. Preston gives off the vibe of a bottom feeder, a man who’s seen a few things, has had his ups and downs. The actor playing Harold Hill needs to come off like someone who’s been around the block.
Unlike Marian the librarian.
*****
Most movie musical romances make me want to throw up, but I can take Harold Hill and Marian the librarian. Why? For starters, when they first meet, Marian hates his guts.
And she should!
Her mother nags her for refusing to consider a stranger with a suitcase first-rate marriage material? Her mother is a nincompoop!
(Two side notes: 1) “Marian the Librarian” has to be, hands down, the best song ever written about a librarian; 2) pretty convenient that her first name is Marian, since it rhymes so well with “librarian.”)
Harold, of course, has a chip in his brain that translates “I’m not interested” as “Yes, please continue.” Mainly, given that she’s the only one in town who knows anything about music, he needs to get her on his side so that she doesn’t spoil the con. And the initial odds don’t look promising. After Marian haughtily refers to him as “Mr. Hill,” he refuses to allow the slightest break in character:
“Oh please, please! Professor Hill!”
“Professor? Of what? At what college to they give a degree for accosting women like a Saturday night rowdy at a public dance hall?”
Well, any college in the SEC, for starters, but never mind.
Later, in a scene I discussed moments ago, when he commits the faux pas of assuming that Mr. Paroo is still alive, Harold finds Marian slamming the door in his face with these cordial words: “And as for your musical tricks, why don’t you go into business with some nice carnival man who sells gold painted watches and glass diamond rings!”
After the tiniest of pauses, he pivots to Mrs. Paroo.
“You know I have the feeling she likes the idea? Oh, a little cautious, perhaps, but I admire that in a woman.”
Incorrigible. Simply incorrigible.
It’s almost as if the movie wants me to chastise Marian for refusing his advances. But you know what? She’s right to refuse his advances. Harold’s interest in her is disingenuous. He should go into business with some carnival barker.
Confession time: I know The Music Man encourages me to root for Harold and Marian to “fall in love” and realize they were meant for each other and that they’re each other’s “someone” but … I don’t really care about all that crap. If anything, such ideas are anathema to part-time Buddhism. “Being in Love” and “Till There Was You”? My two least favorite songs in the musical (Beatles cover of the latter be damned – though George nails that solo).
(Side note, per Wikipedia: According to Willson’s widow, “her husband’s estate eventually received more income from the royalties of the Beatles recordings of ‘Till There Was You’ than it originally received from the actual play.” Well, that’s what being included on Meet the Beatles will do for you. Let’s call it the Nick Lowe/Bodyguard soundtrack effect.)
I believe in having relationships (obviously), but I don’t know how healthy it is to believe that A) we all have a special “someone” who we are destined to meet (and thus should say goodnight to on the evening star), or that B) one cannot appreciate bells on a hill ringing or birds in the sky singing until coming across this mythical “someone.” Go ahead, get hitched, start a family, whatever (all my married friends are rolling their eyes at me right now), but don’t turn it into the organizing principle of your existence, you know? “And so I’ll keep being in love with someone/But tell me, why couldn’t there be, just once/Somebody being in love with me?” Yeesh. A man isn’t going to solve all your problems, Marian.
But I don’t hold this aspect of the plot against Willson very much. It’s standard fairy tale/movie musical stuff. It’s what the people want. See every Shakespeare comedy and Jane Austen novel. So I let The Music Man slide. I let it slide because I can buy Harold and Marian’s relationship more than I can buy the relationships in most movie musicals – because it’s one weird, nuanced, and convoluted relationship.
Compare their romance to the romance in, say, Singin’ in the Rain, the kind of movie musical that routinely appears on those previously discussed “greatest movie” lists. I have no particular quarrel with Singin’ in the Rain, but musicals like that one take for granted that the two leads, Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds, will end up together, and we’re supposed to be pleased by this outcome, and anything less would hit the wrong “note.” Do their characters struggle with internal demons, wrestle with their place in society? Does anyone even remember the names of Gene Kelly’s and Debbie Reynolds’ characters? Aren’t they just “Gene Kelly” and “Debbie Reynolds”? Their romantic relationship exists because the conventions of the genre demand that it exists. By comparison, I dare anyone to watch The Music Man and forget the names “Professor Harold Hill” and “Marian the librarian.” For no Diana do I play faun, I can tell you that right now.
I understand why Singin’ in the Rain ends up on all those lists: inventive choreography, memorable score, frothy script that also functions as a winking satire of the historical transition from silent film to talkies, charismatic lead performances … it checks off all the critics’ boxes. I just have a different set of boxes.
What I find more honest about Harold and Marian’s romance is how, although they both find their “someone” in the end, it’s definitely not the “someone” they’d been expecting to find. They had to revise their plans on the battlefield. There’s a lesson there. But to me, it’s the ancillary lesson. I can stomach Harold’s romance with Marian because she serves as the chief instrument, and instigator, of Harold’s psychological crisis, and his path toward redemption.
That’s right. What we have here is the character arc that part-time Buddhists refer to as the “Casablanca” (also known, in its slight variation, as the “Return of the Jedi”). I’m a sucker for it every time. Harold may claim he “sticks his neck out for nobody,” but deep down, one suspects that, under that cynical shell, he’s at heart a sentimentalist. In fact, swap out that tuba for a machine gun, and we’ve basically got The Wild Bunch here.
What Marian realizes, before anyone else does – even Harold himself – is that while Harold is a total fraud as a creator of boys’ bands, he’s a surprise success as a creator of boys’ joy.
*****
The great irony of The Music Man is that, while Harold has no intention whatsoever of bringing River City a marching band, River City doesn’t even want a marching band. What River City wants is the permission to aspire to having a marching band.
For this town, pretending is enough. Some carnival barker in a cheap red conductor’s cap with a feather sticking out of it takes over the high school gym and starts pattering on about a bunch of implausible nonsense? (Seriously, 110 cornets? Isn’t that a few too many?) And yet they can’t wait to run with it, dangling from the ceiling of the gym like trapeze artists and holding an impromptu “air flute” contest, before marching down Main Street, kicking their legs to the sky and performing somersaults, all to the sound of the imaginary brass in their heads.
One shot, for me, says it all. As the “parade” recedes in the distance, and as “76 Trombones” fades from the soundtrack, we see the four members of the school board and the mayor, huddled together around a bench, and by the look on their faces, they have achieved nirvana. Whatever they’ve been smoking, I want some.
“There ain’t nothin’ like a brass band to stir a fella up. When I hear them trombones …”
“Ehhh it’s them peck horns that really does it.”
“Bet you Estherville ain’t got anything like it.”
“Or even Des Moines.”
Hell, the mayor has already decided that this is his administration’s most impressive achievement: “I’ll stake my River City band against any town west of Chicago.”
An off-screen voice promptly takes a dump all over their collective fantasy.
“What band?”
It’s Marian.
“Honestly! A bunch of grown men! Along comes this fly-by-night salesman and you’re all taken in!”
But after she storms off in a huff, the mayor, while conceding her point, could hardly care less. “She’s right! The man’s a by God spellbinder!”
What the future matriarch of the Partridge Family hasn’t grasped yet (but soon will) is that this “bunch of grown men,” along with the rest of the town, has been a tinderbox of dreams waiting to ignite, and this sham salesman has lit the fuse. Who cares about an actual band? I’m reminded of the great Orville Wright quote: “I got more thrill out of flying before I had ever been in the air at all – while lying in bed thinking about how exciting it would be to fly.”
A boys’ band. Right here in River City. Oh man.
Just as Marian is about to expose Harold’s con to the mayor once and for all, the Wells Fargo wagon arrives and, I mean, how could you expect the mayor to care about anything else?
“But if you just take the time to read a little about the Conservatory, you wouldn’t have to look any further. It’s on page –”
“Papa, the Wells Fargo wagon is coming this way!”
“Wells Fargo wagon?”
“It could be the band instruments!”
“The band instruments?!”
If I could find a way to be as ecstatic about something, at least once a day, as the mayor is about the arrival of the band instruments via the Wells Fargo wagon, I might out-Buddha the Buddha.
And then Marian’s catatonic little brother Winthrop pops out of his shell, demonstrates that he doesn’t give a flying flugelhorn about his lisp (while holding the cornet he has no chance in hell of learning how to play), an angelic choir sounds, and Marian has, shall we say, a Paroo switcheroo.
Do I buy this? In attempting to swindle her family, Harold accidentally cheers up her morose little brother, and now this smooth-talking creep is her white knight?
As motivation for romantic attraction, possibly not. But as allegory of revising preconceived notions of what constitutes happiness and fulfillment, I do.
For Marian suddenly sees the part-time Buddhist in Harold that even Harold doesn’t see – or is too afraid to see. Although the whole town is responding to his unintended summoning of its inner child, Marian has the ability to describe it and articulate it back to him. And when a woman knows things about a man that he doesn’t yet know himself, ooh boy. Watch that balance of power shift.
I love the subtle glee she takes in letting him perpetuate the charade as they chat outside her house before the ice cream social.
“One hears rumors about traveling salesmen.”
“Oh, now, Miss Marian, you mustn’t believe everything you hear. Why after all, one even hears rumors about librarians.”
Fair point – except that the rumors about her happen to be false, while the rumors about him happen to be true, but why split hairs?
“What have you heard?”
“Oh, nothing about you personally, it’s just … you know, generally.”
“What have you heard … generally?”
The thing is, just as the final pieces of his plan are falling into place – the uniforms are arriving, Tommy’s collecting the money – Harold realizes that he’s having a problem. He’s been having this problem for a while now. The problem is that he’s been ignoring the real Harold.
Every so often, we’ve seen the real Harold peeking through the cracks. After his big Fourth of July sales pitch at the gym, while he slyly paints “Prof. Harold Hill’s Band” over a poster advertising an “Elastic Headache Band,” Marcellus gushes like a fanboy:
“You sure cut a swath down at the high school yesterday. When you were talking about all them trombones, you looked just like you used to back in Joplin … when you used to imitate that Italian bandleader in the park.”
“Aww yeah.”
Harold can’t resist raising his arms and waving them around as if he were Iowa’s answer to Leonard Bernstein, humming a snippet of “76 Trombones,” before the cynical, guarded side of him quickly reasserts control.
“Aw, that’s kid’s stuff.”
Is it though, Harold? Is it?
*****
I have friends who claim to dislike musicals. They also claim to dislike warm autumn afternoons, freshly-baked apple pies, and children’s laughter, but whatever. “So these characters are going about their business,” they say, “and then all of a sudden they burst into song? It’s so phony.”
With most musicals, probably. Like I’m supposed to believe a gang of hard-nosed New York City street kids would prance around the Upper West Side a la Gregory Hines and Mikhail Baryshnikov? My guess is that if any kid tried that around a real New York City street gang, he’d get his ass kicked.
But in The Music Man? This may be the rare musical in which the characters randomly breaking into song kind of makes sense. Why wouldn’t salesmen stuck in a railcar chant to each other in parallel with a train’s rhythms? Why wouldn’t a piano lesson morph into a sung argument? Why wouldn’t a lisping kid and his fraud salesmen buddy burst into an ode to Gary, Indiana in the kid’s back yard? This I can believe. (Great preamble to that one: “Gary, Indiana.” “What a wonderful name!” “Named for Elbert Gary, of judiciary fame.”)
I’ve never seen a musical integrate its music and story so seamlessly as this one. “Piano Lesson” arises so effortlessly out of Marian and her mother’s bickering that I barely notice the piano fading out and the orchestra kicking in until it’s too late. Favorite part: Mrs. Paroo finishing things off by shoehorning in far too many words for the meter, like she’s going to have her say whether the music will allow it or not:
“I know all about your standards and if you don’t mind my saying so there’s not a man alive/Who could hope to measure up to that blend of Paul Bunyan, St. Pat and Noah Webster you concocted for yourself/Out of your Irish imagination, your Iowa stubbornness and your library full of books.”
“Well if that isn’t the best I ever heard,” says Marian. By other musicals’ standards, yes. But in The Music Man, this might only make the B-tier.
And naturally the catty back-and-forth of high society ladies would evolve into some kind of mutant sing-song bird call (the implication being that Mrs. Shinn and her friends’ chatter sports as much validity as that of chirping birds’?). They’re so convinced of the power of each scandalous author’s name they’re uttering that they assume the name enough is alone. “Chaucer.” Oh, that guy. “Rabelais.” Gasp! “Baaaal-zac.” Say no more. If only I’d realized, as a thirteen-year-old viewer chuckling at the name “Balzac,” that I would eventually read three of his novels. You know why I, and everyone else, finds each instance of Mrs. Shinn’s elongated pronunciation of “Baaaaaaal-zac” funny? Because his name sounds like “ball sack.” I don’t know if Willson’s sense of humor was quite as juvenile as mine, and I don’t know if I care.
But in a way that every musical should and rarely does, the music in The Music Man weaves a spell – and not only through the major numbers. Willson, DaCosta, and arranger Ray Heindorf’s skill at weaving little snippets and excerpts of the songs throughout the film turns the symbolic awakening that Marian sees Harold bringing to River City into a sonic reality. It makes me feel like I’m being warmed by one big, never-ending auditory quilt of melody. The songs don’t exist in isolation, but dance with each other, flirt with each other, say good night to each other.
Half the credit for this might go to the barbershop quartet. First of all, anyone who watches The Music Man and says it doesn’t make them want to join a barbershop quartet is lying. Willson may have been more worked up by false depictions of barbershop quartets in prior media than anything else on Earth. From But He Doesn’t Know the Territory:
There has never been a barbershop quartette in any Broadway show or in any motion picture. Ever. At no time. Except The Music Man. No sir. Those familiar handlebar-mustache beer-barrel guys in the sleeve garters singing “A Bird in a Gilded Cage” with a tin-pan piano accompaniment like you saw in Strawberry Blonde, and Meet Me in St. Louis, and all the old tin-pan alley movies – those guys bear no relationship whatsoever to any barbershop quartette. First of all, “Bird in a Gilded Cage” and “St. Louis” and all such ballads and one-in-a-bar waltz clogs like “Bicycle Built for Two” are not, and never have been, and never will be any good for barbershop quartette singing. The harmony on the one hand presents insufficient challenge, and the tempo on the other is too unyielding for barbershop. And as far as tin-pan piano accompaniment goes, no barbershopper would be found dead with accompaniment. Barbershop quartette singing, by the way, is the only art of its kind: where the pleasure is primarily for the singers – where performance for an audience is only secondary. Barbershoppers sing for THEMSELVES and for the pleasure they get out of an evening of “practicing,” hunting for luscious chords and modulations – experimenting with this harmony and that … You have to be BORN a barbershopper. The requirements include a peculiar, particular kind of ear and soul for faking harmony. Symphony musicians can’t necessarily do it, most opera stars can’t do it. You mustn’t be an individual when you sing – your voice has to be a straight-tone blending voice, not a soloistic, emotional, or trained voice of any kind. The lousiest barbershop quartette in the world, for example, would be Lauritz Melchoir, Mario Lanza, Robert Merrill and Baccaloni.
And who am I to argue? It’s amazing how the barbershop quartet manages to serendipitously appear at just the right moments, precisely in time to provide their harmonic counterpoint to whoever might be around. “Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little” would be nice enough on its own, but how about with a dash of “Goodnight Ladies”?
“Lida Rose” is perfectly pleasant, and Marian following it with “Will I Ever Tell You?” is perfectly pleasant too. But having the two songs join forces at the end? UNSTOPPABLE.
Too many musicals feel like, “Here’s a song, and here’s a song, and here’s another song,” as if they’re checking boxes. But this one does a good job of combining stuff.
Although it’s one of their briefest, my vote for the barbershop quartet’s most charming appearance comes a couple of scenes later, as they’re strolling through the neighborhoods of River City on a warm summer’s evening, for no discernable reason, singing “Lida Rose” to an audience of themselves and no one else. Upon walking past a confused Marian, who, unbeknownst to them, is sitting on her porch mulling over the words of warning she’s just heard from Charlie Cowell the anvil salesman, they doff their caps, croon “Good evening Miss Marian … nnnn ….nnnn,” reapply their headgear, and promptly resume singing “Lida Rose.” Trouble in River City? Not for these guys.
(Side note: The anvil salesman is the perfect rival for Harold, because while he’s entirely justified in his desire to upload the law, he’s completely devoid of any joy or charm. He’s the Victor Laszlo to Harold’s Rick Blaine. He may be “right,” but you want to punch him in the face anyway.)
Hell, some of my favorite musical bits in the film are wordless, such as when Harold whistles the bridge of “Gary, Indiana” to himself as he walks back to his hotel (because why wouldn’t he be?), or ambient interludes like the calliope playing its oddly mournful waltz in the park as the children giggle and the teenagers sneak away to the notorious “footbridge” (hopefully before Mr. Kite, Pablo Fanques, and Henry the Horse show up with the acid).
This movie’s got music bleeding out of its eyeballs. Sure, the word “music” is in the title, but that’s no guarantee of anything. Where are the grapes in The Grapes of Wrath, the graffiti in American Graffiti, the nest in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? Say what you want about it, but if nothing else, The Music Man delivers on its title. Music is in the air. Every man, woman, and child in River City is dreaming night and day of treble clefs and bass clefs. What else are they supposed to do? Knit?
*****
And then, the footbridge.
It all comes down to that shifting realm of adolescent desire: the footbridge. After “Shipoopi,” that is. (Question: what is a shipoopi? Does anyone know? Is it a type of poodle? A product related to shampoo?)
By the time Harold steps onto that footbridge, elements have been stirred up within him (by Marian, Winthrop, and the rest of these clowns who actually like him, warts and all), elements that he’d been hoping to suppress, but to his irritation, these pesky “feelings” are starting to gnaw at his insides.
As far as the characters are concerned, River City’s infamous footbridge is where boys and girls become “men and women,” and as Harold puts it, Marian is “late – 26 years late.” Well, the footbridge may be a place of reckoning, all right, but on this night, not for Marian and her maiden ways. Tonight, it’s a place of reckoning for Harold.
Once “Shipoopi” concludes in its most shipoopi of ways, Harold makes his way through the heavily foliated park. Amorous boys and coquettish girls giggle and prance through the trees. The mood is giddy, playful, sexually potent – but there’s one occupant of the park who’s not exactly in the “footbridge” mood. No, he’s got a different sort of desire on his mind tonight.
When the cherubs and nymphs scurry away, Harold grabs a stick and gazes down at the creek, which somehow morphs from a harmless body of water into Harry Potter’s Mirror of Erised (i.e. the mirror that reflects one’s deepest wishes).
What does he see? Marian the librarian? Stacks of dollar bills? The anvil salesman’s head on a stake?
No. He sees the image of a brass band.
He raps his stick against the wood, and begins to conduct. Given that it is a full and proper brass band staring back at him in the water, one might expect the imaginary band to play a toe-tapping rendition of “76 Trombones” back at him. But that’s not what it plays.
Oh no.
Instead, a solitary French horn begins playing “Goodnight, My Someone.” Scratch that – it’s playing the most poignant, heartbreaking version of “Goodnight, My Someone” that any human, alive or dead, could possibly play. Is this the sound of the “real” Harold Hill – the vulnerable, yearning spirit, the frightened child who only peeks through the curtains when no one else is looking?
Aw, come on. Who are you kidding, Harold? You’re a fake, a fraud, a clown, a huckster. You’re worthless. You’re pathetic.
He snaps the stick in two and tosses it ruefully into the stream.
It’s not the most famous scene in the movie. It’s not even the tenth most famous. But to me, this is the key scene in the movie. And my favorite.
And here is where, at the risk of sounding like an English professor who reads symbolism into a thousand places where it likely isn’t, I get to indulge in my questionable “Harold Hill as America” metaphor. Because can’t Harold, like America, be seen as a promise unfulfilled? Are we not a nation that, upon its founding, advertised itself as a kind of place that it initially wasn’t? “All men are created equal … except, you know, slaves, women, etc.”?
Am I nuts? Willson uttered plenty of words about The Music Man, but to my knowledge, he never once claimed that his story carried any whiff of a grander message or larger profundity. But perhaps, like Harold, he touched upon it without even knowing he was doing it.
And I suspect The Music Man resonates not merely because of its superficially “American” paraphernalia like trains, fireworks, parades, and marching bands, but its underlying theme about lofty promises emerging out of shady origins. Once Jefferson jotted down those words in the Declaration of Independence, we liked to think we were embodying all that stuff. And the moments of cognitive dissonance, the repeated piercings of the illusion, have always hurt.
It would be so much easier for Harold if he didn’t care about being the thing he’s claiming to be and certifiably isn’t. And to anyone who’s observing him, he doesn’t care – LOUDLY. But in a moment of solitude, when no one else is looking … that beautiful snippet of “Goodnight, My Someone,” the dejected snapping of the twig, the wanting to be a version of himself that he knows he’ll never be …
I just … I just …
Then comes “Till There Was You,” they love each other, blah blah blah. Frankly, I’m still recovering from the sound of that French horn floating out of the rippling mirage. Still, toward the end of the song, Marian drops the bombshell that fries Harold’s brain and renders him unable to inhabit his former persona any longer:
“Harold … there wasn’t any Gary Conservatory in ’05.”
“Well there most certainly -”
“Because the town wasn’t even built until ’06!”
“But if you knew …”
He’s planned for every contingency in the book, but he’s finally encountered one he hadn’t planned on: someone knowing he’s a fraud, and yet still liking him anyway.
Wasn’t the whole point of being a con man so that he could get the stuff he wanted (money, causing mischief, outwitting all the easy marks)? But if that wasn’t what he really wanted after all, and if he can get the stuff he really wants without being a con man, then what’s the point of being a con man?
Marian has managed to kill the Hill.
You know how I said Willson was good at combining stuff? Turns out those previous mergings of “Pick-a-Little, Talk-a-Little”/“Goodnight Ladies” and “Lida Rose”/”Will I Ever Tell You” were just a warm-up.
Because back at Marian’s house, pondering the shifting sands of his fractured persona, Harold waits outside, viewing Marian’s silhouette through her upstairs window as she changes outfits. Since he’s feeling like a new man, he might as well invent a new verse of “76 Trombones” on the spot, right? Harold begins a cappella, almost as a lark, but as the new words kick in, so does the orchestration, presumably from within his head:
“Seventy-six trombones led the big parade/While a hundred and ten cornets played the air/Then I modestly took my place/As the one and only bass/And I oompahed up and down the square.”
Not bad for an improvised verse, buddy. A plaintive violin shifts the mood, before Marian’s silhouette counters Harold’s bombast with the opening lines of “Goodnight, My Someone.” Nice. A quick medley, it seems, if not a particularly illuminating one. (I know I’ve thrown shade at “Being in Love” and “Till There Was You,” but will gladly spare “Goodnight, My Someone” from my wrath; it’s the kind of melody that, unlike much of the American-rooted music littering the score, has the pull of an old European lullaby.)
But then … things get weird? Harold counters with another line from “76 Trombones,” and Marian responds with a corresponding line from “Goodnight, My Someone,” and … dear God. It’s impossible.
That shifty little trickster. That two-bit thimblerigger!
In a sleight-of-hand worthy of Harold Hill himself, Willson has pulled off a musical swindle for the ages. For you see, “76 Trombones” and “Goodnight, My Someone” … have the same chord progression. It was right under our noses the entire time, and we didn’t even notice. Harold Hill was Kaiser Soze the entire time!
Harold and Marian aren’t just spiritually compatible; they’re musically compatible.
Perhaps marveling at the unanticipated role reversal he’s found himself in, Harold gently croons the third verse of “Goodnight, My Someone.” But just when I’m ready for a hankie, Marian incongruously belts out a line of “76 Trombones,” and … get Doc Brown on the phone, someone’s altered the space-time continuum here. Indeed, having taken charge of things, it’s as if Marian has become the “man” in the relationship, while Harold’s newly visible vulnerability has “feminized” him. They’ve switched places. Or rather, they’re meeting each other in the middle – like any good couple should? Harold can’t even bring himself to sing the final “goodnight,” but merely speaks it softly, as if he’s digesting both his appreciation for how Marian has transformed him and fear of what this strange, unknown future will bring.
Of course, a change in values is great for Harold’s personal development and all, but he’s done some damage along the way, and not everyone’s going to be in a forgiving mood – especially Winthrop. I love how, spurred on by the anvil salesman, the whole town runs around like chickens with their heads cut off, while Harold stands outside the Paroo’s house, not even bothering to escape. Does the barbershop quartet really need to scamper through the streets while brandishing torches?
Does the town really need to employ the horse-drawn fire carriage with the steaming cauldron? Like, are they planning to boil Harold alive? Are they giving him the witch treatment?
But Harold doesn’t run, because he doesn’t know who, precisely, would be doing the running. His identity’s in shambles. Marian’s naked appreciation of the “inner” Harold has sapped the juice out of his former persona. He’s a tabula rasa, a Star Child gazing at the mysterious sphere below.
And this tabula rasa is bound to react in unexpected ways. He might have expected his toughest adversary to be more imposing than an eight-year-old kid, but Winthrop proves him wrong. I almost gasp at Harold’s bluntness, watching this master of spin and deceit answer all of Winthrop’s questions in the most truthful manner possible, no matter how much the answers hurt both him and the kid.
“Can you lead a band?”
“No.”
“Are you a big liar?”
“Yes.”
“Are you a dirty, rotten crook?”
“Yes!”
Talk about ripping off the band-aid. And yet I don’t find this gusher of honesty to be out of character. Harold lives for bold moments. I’m reminded of Nixon during his 1974 farewell address, telling the nation on live TV, “Always remember: others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.” Geez. Kind of feel bad for the guy after that. Even the crook – perhaps the crook most of all – understands that nothing makes for better theater than sucking the audience into his spiral of self-loathing flagellation.
The future director of Cocoon, Parenthood, and Backdraft squirms under Harold’s grip.
“Then let me go you big liar!”
Ah, but before the mob whisks him off to jail, he might as well try to salvage one piece of the wreckage.
“There are two things you’re entitled to know. One, you’re a wonderful kid. I thought so from the first. That’s why I wanted you in the band, so you’d stop moping around and feeling sorry for yourself.”
“What band?”
Damn.
Not only does Winthrop know how to use a pocketknife; he knows how to twist it in. Seriously, let’s hear it for Winthrop. He’s got more “fuck you” in him than the rest of the town combined.
But the defanged, dishonored, and newly mortal Harold doesn’t fight fire with fire. Instead, he looks down sheepishly at the ground and gives an unexpectedly revealing reply:
“Well I always think there’s a band, kid.”
Always thinks there’s a band? Always thinks there’s a band?
What kind of delusional mind games and internal psychological acrobatics are we dealing with here? What kind of alternate universe has this fully grown man concocted for himself?
And yet, in a counterintuitive way, this might be the one part of Harold’s life that hasn’t been a lie. Because he hasn’t been able, in his heart of hearts, to deny himself that inner wish. “I always think there’s a band”? It’s equal parts pathetic, hopeful, funny, cringe-inducing, and touching. There’s something distinctly American about it, because even in our most cynical moods, we can’t quite negate ourselves all the way.
A couple of months ago, I came across a quote from a book called American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony, by political scientist Samuel Huntington, which I don’t plan to read, but considering the insight of the quote, perhaps I should? The quote is this: “Critics say that America is a lie because its reality falls so short of its ideals. They are wrong. America is not a lie. It is a disappointment. But it can only be a disappointment because it is also a hope.”
Perhaps that’s Harold: not a lie, but a disappointment. Yet thanks to Marian, Harold realizes that he still has the chance to pivot – if he wants to. Or if he’s ready to.
“I wish you’d never come to River City.”
Marian doesn’t buy it. “No you don’t, Winthrop.”
Winthrop turns to Marian.
“Sister, you believe him?”
“I believe everything he ever said.”
“But he promised us.”
“I know what he promised us, and it all happened just like he said: the lights, the colors, the cymbals and the flags …”
“Where was all that?”
“In the way every kid in this town walked around all summer, and looked and acted, especially you. And the parents too.”
Still hurting like hell, but more or less persuaded, Winthrop knows the clock is ticking. “Go on, Professor. Hurry up.”
“I can’t go Winthrop.”
“Why not?”
Harold can’t resist one last salesman’s quip: “Well, for the first time in my life, I got my foot caught in the door.”
Fortunately for him, in an ironic twist that’s probably too good to be true but I’ll take it, it isn’t River City’s bigheartedness or generosity that saves his hide, but its low entertainment standards.
The band gathers at the high school. The children holding their instruments have never crossed the Rubicon that more seasoned musicians call “playing your instruments.” Harold stands in front, makeshift baton in hand, cuffs around his wrists. He knows it’s not going to be pretty. “Now think men … think.”
The band plays. And the band sounds … terrible. Atrocious. They sound like sixteen asthmatic alley cats being skinned alive. I suspect that the version of Beethoven’s “Minuet In G” that emanates from their brass instruments in the film is an optimistically palatable one, i.e. if you performed a similar experiment in real life, it would likely turn the piece into unrecognizable cacophony. I’m reminded of the Portsmouth Sinfonia, an experimental orchestra Brian Eno famously joined in the ‘70s, in which the only rule for membership was that each musician had to play an instrument they’d never played before. Their recordings are like comedy records.
But here’s what Willson understood all too well: the parents don’t care! To them, it sounds like the London Philharmonic. They don’t demand perfection. They’re not concerned with glaring tempo shifts and unintended dissonance. Their kids are playing; therefore, it’s amazing. Do these parents have life figured out, with the rest of us too jaded to notice? Special props to the tall, lanky guy who shouts “Davey! That’s my Davey!”
Then Davey’s and Barney’s third-rate uniforms magically transform into the finest threads John Philip Sousa ever sported, the population of both the band and River City curiously quadruples in size, and as the credits roll, Charlie Cowell drops an anvil on his foot, the marching stretches on to infinity, and everybody lives happily ever after. I particularly love the chubby-looking fellow in a boater hat with a grin on his face, desperately jogging through the street in an attempt to find the best seat.
Listen, I hate parades – all that horse dung, baking in the hot sun, no room to move, the deafening noise – but the ending of The Music Man makes me want to catch the nearest parade around. I don’t even want to hear the vocal chorus come in over the credits. There’s something special about the sound of the horns by themselves, playing that chorus in an infinite loop, with all their cutting bite, paired with shots of the mother of all parades, that “stirs a fella up.”
Too neat and tidy an ending? Too good to be true? In real life, wouldn’t the last shot have been of Harold covered in tar and feathers, squirming around on a patch of dirty ground outside a railroad depot?
Probably. And yet I’ve always felt like the movie has earned it, and I’m the biggest cynic around. Because I see it not as the town’s literal parade, but as a celebration of Harold’s personal reckoning and reinvention. The parade may not be real, but the triumph of his conscience is. It’s his inner parade, man.
Besides, this town clearly can’t hold a grudge for long. To them, the effort to go legit would be enough. In the end, The Music Man is about a town that was dead inside and didn’t know it, and about a man who wasn’t dead inside and didn’t know that he wasn’t. Now that they’ve learned how thoroughly they’re alive, why not have a parade?
Remember how I said that the ideal personification of America might be a con man? But what if it’s closer to the truth, or at least more flattering, to say that the ideal personification of America is a con man who, one day, tries to go legit?
Maybe it’s not such a sin to make lofty promises to a community which you are not prepared to deliver on. Just ask Jefferson. For in doing such a fine job of pretending, perhaps you can’t help but lurch, haltingly, begrudgingly, into becoming closer and closer to the thing you had merely been pretending to be.
Yes, I suppose I could thumb through the pages of American history, channel my inner Winthrop, and conclude, “What band?” But I’d rather lean in Harold’s direction on this one, despite having plenty of reasons not to. I always think there’s a band, kid.
Or, as Kurt Vonnegut put it in Mother Night, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”