The Music Man **** (1962, Robert Preston, Shirley Jones, Buddy Hackett) – Classic Movie Review 6516

Producer-director Morton DaCosta’s rousing 1962 film version of the delicious all-time-great hit musical is a stupendous showcase for the talents of the much missed Robert Preston, who always performed with the force of 76 trombones. It won the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical. Ray Heindorf won an Oscar for Best Scoring of Music.

In a tour de force, Preston revives his great Broadway role as The Music Man, Harold Hill, a conman trapped by his own tricks in a fondly observed American small town when he poses as a boys’ band leader, a professor of music from Gary, Indiana, to try to con the naive Iowa townsfolk.

Preston has tremendous support from sweet Shirley Jones (who joins Preston in the haunting evergreen showstopper song ‘Till There Was You’), Buddy Hackett as Marcellus Washburn,  Pert Kelton as Mrs Paroo, Paul Ford as Mayor George Shinn and especially Hermione Gingold, whose performance is so witty that she can turn the pronunciation of the single name ‘Balzac’ into a showstopper of its own.

The screenplay is by Marion Hargrove, adapting the songs and book by Meredith Wilson.

Also in the cast are Ron [Ronny] Howard as Winthrop Paroo, his father Rance Howard, Ewart Dunlop, Timmy Everett, Susan Luckey, Harry Hickox, Charles Lane, Mary Wickes, Monique Vermont, Ray Kellogg, William Fawcett, David Swain and Arthur Mills.

It is shot in Technicolor by Robert Burks, scored by Ray Heindorf, designed by Paul Groesse and choreographed by Onna White.

Signalling its outstanding technical qualities and merits, there were five other Oscar nominations – Best Picture, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color (Paul Groesse, George James Hopkins), Best Costume Design, Color (Dorothy Jeakins), Best Sound (George Groves) and Best Film Editing (William H. Ziegler).

Jones, and Ron and Rance Howard all reconvened for The Courtship of Eddie’s Father (1963).

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6516

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