My Oscar Journey!

Day 106: “The Music Man”

Based on the popular Tony Award winning musical, “The Music Man” tells the story of a con man named Harold Hill (played by Robert Preston) who comes to a town in Iowa to con the people into buying instruments and starting a boy marching band. The local librarian Marian Paroo (played by Shirley Jones) sees through him and wants to stop him, but when Harold helps her younger brother (played by Ron Howard) she beings to fall in love with him and helps him to cover his fraud. This was a great movie musical, but I felt that the second half wasn’t as good as the amazing first half. Preston is incredibly charming as Hill and Shirley Jones does a great job as always with Marian. Some of my favorite numbers were “Rock Island”, “Sincere”, “Pick a Little, Talk a Little”, “Marian the Librarian”, “Lida Rose/Will I Ever Tell You”, and of course the Broadway standards “Til There Was You”, “Seventy Six Trombones”, and “Gary Indiana”. “Marian the Librarian” had some of the best choreography I’ve seen in a movie musical, and “Lida Rose/Will I Ever Tell You” was beautifully shot and sang by Jones and the great Male Quartet, The Buffalo Bills.