Film Forum

U.S., 1962
Directed by Morton DaCosta
Based on The Music Man by Meredith Willson, Franklin Lacey
With Robert Preston, Shirley Jones, Buddy Hackett
Music by Meredith Willson, Ray Heindorf
Approx. 151 min. 35mm.

Fast-talking con man "Professor" Harold Hill convinces the townsfolk of River City, Iowa to pay him to create a boys' marching band, intending to hop on the next train and skip town — but a budding romance with Marian the Librarian just might change the Professor's plans. Adapted from the Broadway hit by Meredith Willson, and featuring legendary songs such as "Seventy-Six Trombones," "Gary, Indiana," and "Till There Was You."

Reviews

“The characters (right out of vaudeville), the sentiments as rich as field-grown corn, the jokes as dependable as Joe Miller's, and Mr. Willson's thumping musical score…It's here, and the rich, ripe roundness of it, the lush amalgam of the many elements of successful American show business that Mr. Willson brought together on the stage, has been preserved and appropriately made rounder and richer through the magnitude of film.”
– Bosley Crowther, The New York Times