That’s a great story, thanks for sharing it with us.

“The Sadder But Wiser Girl For Me” is another great one. “No wide-eyed, eager, Sunday-school teacher for me! That kind of girl spins webs no spider ever! Now listen here, boy. A girl who trades on all that purity… merely wants to trade my independence for her security.”

Great stuff.

There are plenty of more tuneful songs in the score, as well. I always really liked “Marian the Librarian,” and that’s more of a song. And of course “Till There Was You,” and “Seventy-six Trombones.” I’m not sure what you mean by “the rhythm of a braggart.” Hill IS a braggart, so what should he be singing? Humble songs?

You might enjoy reading this, by the way.

Also this piece—very interesting. An excerpt:

DeCosta and Bloomgarden began to audition actors not necessarily associated with musicals to play Harold Hill. They thought they had finally found their leading man when Robert Preston, who had never been in a musical, read the part. Willson, who was in Los Angeles trying to interest Danny Kaye, Gene Kelly, and band leader Phil Harris in the role, was skeptical about Preston, thinking of him more in terms of his movie roles as a cowboy or soldier or Mountie. “I’ve got five words for you, Buster,” DeCosta told Willson over the phone. “Wait–till–you–hear–him.”

Two days later, Robert Preston walked into Willson’s home in California, accompanied by producer Bloomgarden. He walked over to Willson’s piano to sing “Ya Got Trouble,” a tricky speak-song that became one of The Music Man’s most popular tunes. “If you can sing ‘Trouble,’” Willson had said, “you can sing anything in the show.” Preston had worked on the song for a week, and after Willson played an upper octave E-flat, “Preston disappeared into Harold Hill,” performing “Trouble” without breaking a sweat. His ownership of the role was complete.

Willson wrote a lot more songs for the musical than ended up in it—he cut and cut and cut. My guess is that, because Preston couldn’t actually sing, there was a bias to keep the songs that were more “talky.” And yet quite a few of Preston’s songs are both talky AND tuneful (the aforementioned “Marian” as well as “The Sadder But Wiser Girl”—another of my early favorites).

And I think it’s interesting that the ballad “Goodnight My Someone” is actually the same tune as “Seventy-six Trombones” only sung more slowly.

Did you place that in the wrong thread?

“We respect people’s First Amendment rights but frankly didn’t see the point. I mean, you have a day after he’s uplifting and unifying. And you have folks here being on a diatribe where I think they could have requested a dialogue. Nobody called me and said, hey, can we have a dialogue?

“And you have celebrities from the podium using profanity-laced insults. You have a very prominent singer who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars not going over to women shelter here in D.C. to write a check, but instead saying that she thought of, quote, burning down the White House.

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Twenty-nine to 30 million women voted for Donald Trump. Their voices are heard as well. They should be respected.

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“I just thought they missed an opportunity to be about solutions and to really fight for those millions of women whose kids are trapped in failing school, who don’t have access to health care, who don’t have access to an economic, affordable life. And those are the — those are the people that we’re here for, the forgotten men, the forgotten women and their children.

“The whole celebrity thing didn’t work for Hillary Clinton. She tried that in her campaign and it failed,” Conway added.

Someone made me a rehearsal tape which I almost wore out on my daily commute. Fortunately the character did little else but sing, and I was able to catch enough rehearsals and earlier performances to be where and do what I was supposed to do, and didn’t embarrass myself. Still one of my fondest memories.

One of my favorite musicals of all time. Thanks.

I looked into it and you’re mostly right. That’s how the play is apparently written, and that’s how the 2003 film ends (I didn’t even know that version about until now!)

The Robert Preston version has a very elaborate last scene in which a huge band successfully plays 76 Trombones. They parade down the street and all the citizens come out to hear them and eventually the credits roll.

The last time I saw the movie this final scene seemed like it was supposed to be real. But just now when I watched the scene on YouTube, there’s a scene at the very beginning where a dreamy young woman appears to be waiting for the band, and if you watch carefully you see a moment where her clothes change miraculously into a band uniform. I must have missed that last time — I guess that is meant to suggest that the final scene isn’t really real, it’s either magic or in everyone’s imagination.

So, thanks, I feel better about it now!

Reading through the above posts is a wonderful sharing of happy memories. Thanks to all for sharing!