--- title: "The Music Man" year: 1962 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/the-music-man" fi1m_score: 78 critics_score: 80 critics_reviews: 4 published: "2026-09-20T04:04:47.554581+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T04:05:05.179260+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # The Music Man (1962) Directed by Morton DaCosta · 2h 31m · MPA G · Comedy, Family, Music, Romance **Fi1m score: 78** · Critics 80 (early) from 4 reviews *In a sentence:* Harold Hill talks a town into a band it cannot play; for most of 151 minutes he talked us into it too > Morton DaCosta puts his Broadway hit on film more or less as it stood, and Robert Preston’s Harold Hill is worth the ticket on his own. The rest is handsome, faithful and a good half hour too long. ## Synopsis River City, Iowa, in the summer of 1912. A salesman calling himself Professor Harold Hill (Robert Preston) steps off the train with a scheme he has worked in a dozen towns: alarm the parents about their idle sons, sell them band instruments and uniforms, promise to teach the boys to play, and leave before anyone discovers he cannot read a note. The town is stubborn, but Hill finds an old accomplice in Marcellus Washburn (Buddy Hackett) and a way in through the new pool table that already has Mayor George Shinn (Paul Ford) worried. What he has not reckoned on is Marian Paroo (Shirley Jones), the librarian and piano teacher, who intends to check his credentials, and her small brother Winthrop (Ron Howard), who barely speaks. A rival salesman, Charlie Cowell (Harry Hickox), is one town behind and eager to expose him. ## Review Meredith Willson’s musical about a con man who sells a small Iowa town a boys’ band came to the screen with its Broadway director and its Broadway star intact, and it shows in both directions. Morton DaCosta films the show he staged rather than making a new one, which keeps every number and most of the jokes, and also keeps the running time at 151 minutes. It is warm, it is loud, and Robert Preston is the best reason to sit through it. If you like musicals of this vintage you will have a good evening. If you do not, nothing here will change your mind. Preston played Harold Hill on the stage and he plays him here as a man who has never once stopped talking. The part is mostly patter, spoken on pitch over a marching beat, and Preston sells it the way Hill sells cornets. “Ya Got Trouble” is the film’s best ten minutes: he walks the town square inventing a moral panic about a pool table, the crowd gathering behind him, and by the end he has the whole of River City chanting a word it had never worried about. We were grinning before we noticed, and slightly ashamed afterwards, which is exactly how his customers feel. It is a performance built entirely of confidence, and it does not crack once. Shirley Jones has the quieter job as Marian Paroo, the librarian who has read enough to know a fraud when one arrives by train, and she is good at being the only sane person in town. Her voice is the clean soprano the ballads need, and she sings “Till There Was You” without any of the winking that surrounds it. Ron Howard, no more than a scrap, plays her brother Winthrop with a lisp and a sulk, and his “Gary, Indiana” is the scene that got at us: a child who hardly speaks suddenly cannot stop, and Jones’s face as she watches him does more than the song. Pert Kelton, as their mother, has the driest lines in the film and knows what to do with them. Robert Burks shot it, and it looks like money. The town square is a full-size set in July sunshine, and Burks fills the wide frame with striped awnings, bunting and a hundred extras who all appear to have somewhere to be. Dorothy Jeakins dresses the men in boaters and candy-striped waistcoats and the women in hats a pigeon could nest in, and puts Hill in a suit just loud enough to warn you. DaCosta keeps one trick from the theatre: at the end of several numbers the lights go down around the singer until only a face is left, then black. It is a stage effect, and every time it happens the film looks like a photographed play. That is the film’s problem, and it is not a small one. William H. Ziegler’s editing lets the numbers run whole, which we approve of, but Marion Hargrove’s screenplay has not cut a scene the stage did not need, and the second hour sags between songs. Buddy Hackett’s Marcellus is given “Shipoopi”, a dance number about nothing that stops the story for six minutes while the whole town dances in a hall. Hermione Gingold and Paul Ford, as the mayor’s wife and the mayor, are funny in the first act and repeat the joke in the second and the third; Ford mangling a sentence is a pleasure that wears thin. There is a stretch in the second hour where we looked at the clock and were cross about it, because we had been enjoying ourselves so much a quarter of an hour before. The barbershop quartet, four bickering school board members who cannot agree on anything until Hill gets them singing, is the film’s neatest idea, and it is the show’s, not the film’s. That is true of nearly everything good here. DaCosta has done the honest thing and put the show on film with its shape intact, and the price is that it never becomes a film in the way *Singin’ in the Rain* or *Meet Me in St. Louis* did. The reviews of the time were warmer than we are; they saw a big sentimental parade and forgave it the length. We saw the same parade and counted the trombones. Watch it with the family, on a wet afternoon, with permission to talk over the middle third. Preston will bring you back. *Fi1m score 78, published 20 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (4) - **The New York Times** (90/100, inferred): The film version of the Broadway musical is a munificent, big, booming, sentimental show enhanced and expanded from the stage original. Robert Preston repeats his form-fitting performance as the con man who stays to play, surrounded by strong supporting turns and Willson's thumping score. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1962/08/24/archives/screen-preston-stars-in-music-manfilm-version-of-stage-comedy-opens.html) - **Variety** (90/100, inferred): An otherwise building, punching, handsomely dressed and ultimately endearing super-musical with only minor criticism for initial slowness. Robert Preston is the standout in the title role, backed by solid original cast members, delivering a triumph of corn, smalltown nostalgia and American love of a parade. [Read](https://variety.com/1961/film/reviews/the-music-man-3-1200420065/) - **The New Yorker**, Hans Koningsberger (70/100, inferred): The diverting film adaptation keeps the stage musical fresh and lively despite being a literal translation to screen. Robert Preston is agile and ingratiating as the dubious drifter, and the exuberant music and innocent merriment make it a pleasant summer entertainment, though a bit too long. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1962/09/08/1962-09-08-080-tny-cards-000072697) - **Time Out**, GA (70/100, inferred): Overlong but generally faithful and entertaining screen version of the Broadway hit, with Robert Preston in fine form as the con-man. Zestily performed and choreographed, beautifully shot, full of standards and endowed with warming nostalgia for old-fashioned ways. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/the-music-man) ## Details - **Director:** Morton DaCosta - **Director:** Morton DaCosta - **Screenplay:** Marion Hargrove - **Story:** Meredith Willson, Franklin Lacey - **Cinematography:** Robert Burks - **Editor:** William H. Ziegler - **Music:** Meredith Willson - **Costume design:** Dorothy Jeakins - **Producer:** Morton DaCosta - **Cast:** Robert Preston as Harold Hill; Shirley Jones as Marian Paroo; Buddy Hackett as Marcellus Washburn; Ron Howard as Winthrop Paroo; Hermione Gingold as Eulalie Mackechnie Shinn; Paul Ford as Mayor George Shinn; Pert Kelton as Mrs. Paroo; Timmy Everett as Tommy Djilas - **Runtime:** 2h 31m - **Certificate (MPA):** G - **Release (the US):** 19 June 1962 - **Genres:** Comedy, Family, Music, Romance - **Budget:** $4 million - **Box office:** $15 million ## Where to watch in the US - Tubi: free, hd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: AU, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1963: Best Art Direction, Color (nominated); Best Costume Design, Color (nominated); Best Film Editing (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Sound (nominated); Best Score, Adaptation or Treatment (won) ## If you liked this - *Meet Me in St. Louis* (1944): The same small-town America, sung by Judy Garland, with a real shadow underneath the bunting. - *Elmer Gantry* (1960), Fi1m 78: Burt Lancaster sells salvation instead of trombones, and Shirley Jones is unrecognisable from Marian. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/elmer-gantry.md) - *Les Demoiselles de Rochefort* (1967): Jacques Demy’s fairground comes to a French port town, and everyone dances in pastel. - *Oliver!* (1968), Fi1m 76: Another stage hit filmed big, with a rogue you should not like and do. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/oliver.md) - *Paper Moon* (1973): A con man and a child work the Depression Midwest, without a single song and no less warmth. --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/the-music-man