Just a FYI about the Original:
When **The Music Man ** was on broadway, it was smash hit.
Naturally, Hollywood wanted to put it to film, and many leading men were considered.
The Powers that Be wanted and picked Cary Grant.
Cary Grant, having seen Robert Preston on stage, said, (paraphrasing) “There is only one harold hill and his name is Robert Preston.”
I agree completely.
Another minor point that irritated me–and I only watched a few minutes; just long enough to get irritated. Why did they have a black actress as one of the mayoresses’ friends? And a black couple at the sody fountain? Yes, it’s very nice that they are giving minority performers a break; but all I could think was, “that never would have happened in a small Midwestern town in 1910!” If they were so determined to be p.c., why not throw in a lesbian couple, and make the Mayor Asian?
All it did for me was to break the little believability it had: “This is not the Midwest of 1910; it’s Hollywood in 2003.”
I wish Buddy Hacket could have reprised his role. Imagine that.
Back in the '70’s I saw Dick Van Dyke in a touring production of “The Music Man”. He was great! He brought the energy and good-natured slyness of Professor Harold Hill (I almost wrote Henry Higgins).
I didn’t watch the Matthew Broderick version. It seemed like a train wreck from the start.
StG
It wasn’t bad. It was a Disney TV movie. I enjoyed it. Broderick does seem awfully stiff and uncomfortable, though. And he has no singing voice!! Jeez.
I taped it because I was watching Simpsons and am disappointed to hear so many people say it’s not very good. I’ll still watch it, though. I was in a stage production of it and it’s such a fun show to do (I was one of the “Grecian Urn” ladies:). )
The ads for it made me all excited, I thought Broderick would make a pretty good Hill.
StGermain, I’ve always thought Dick VanDyke would make a good Harold Hill. He has that quick wit.
The way I heard it was that Cary Grant, in turning down the part, said that not only would he not play Harold Hill, but if they cast anyone but Preston in the part he wouldn’t even go see the movie.
My wife’s continual comment throughout the movie was that Broderick was “too young” to be believable in the part; he didn’t look like he could have been pulling this sort of con for as long as the backstory implied. And I agree with most of the comments made about the characterizations being too bland.
And was anyone else bothered by the fact that Marion was inexplicably accepted by the “pick-a-little” group during the Fourth of July festival planning? Unless I missed something, it seemed like all of a sudden she was “one of the girls,” with the Mayor’s wife even doing a modified reprise of the “lump of lead as cold as steel” verse. Don’t remember anything like that in the original movie.
Oh, and both my wife and I would have killed to see Dick Van Dyke play Professor Harold Hill.
“FOUR SCORE…”
Cary Grant in a musical?
I havn’t seen the latest version yet and probably won’t. MM is one of my favorites and yes, there couldn’t possibly be another Harold Hill. MATTHEW BRODERICK!!! All I can say is I hope they had fun.
“FOUR SCORE…”
That’s funny. There is a similar story told about Cary Grant being considered for the role of Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. According tothis website Grant’s response to that request was “Only a fool would try to follow Rex Harrison to be Higgins.”
This story is also mentioned in this week’s Entertainment Weekly.
I guess producers in the 60s just thought Cary Grant should be in all musicals. Was he ever in a musical?
pat
According to the IMDB, Cary Grant never starred in a movie that has the “genre” of “musical” except for two shorts, in which I think he is just playing himself.
Cary Grant did sing “Puttin’ on the Ritz” in one film, which I remember seeing from “That’s Entertainment”.
“…andsevenyearsagoour—”
That was Clark Gable doing “Puttin’ on the Ritz.” Cary Grant sang – well, spoke – “Did I Remember” to Jean Harlow in “That’s Entertainment.”
I saw The Music man on Broadway a few years ago and Craig
Bierko played Harold Hill - I thought he was great at it.
I liked the “doesn’t know the Territory” opening number with Patrick McKenna. But after that, all I could think was cheap highschool production…
Seemed kind of lackluster, as if they were afraid to cut loose. Even the dialogue seemed subdued; a musical needs everything a little exaggerated. My girlfriend gave it half an hour, then got out her DVD of the Robert Preston movie.
If I had been casting a tv production, I would have considered Treat Williams. Seriously.
Can he sing?
As an Iowan, The Music Man occupies a place in my heart second only to the New Testament, or maybe the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem at Carnegie Hall. My first date with Mrs. Gelding was to a lecture at the University by Meredith Wilson.
I knew we were in trouble in the opening number, the Rock Island piece, when Walt Disney Inc. thought it necessary to intersperse the singing with shots of the locomotive drivers so that you would understand that the cadence of the train wheels matched the "Cash for the merchandise, cash for the button hooks * Cash for the cotton goods, cash for the hard goods * Cash for the fancy goods * Cash for the noggins and the piggins and the frikins * Cash for the hogshead, cask and demijohn. Cash for the crackers and the pickles and the flypaper. * Look whaddaya talk, whaddaya talk, whaddaya talk, whaddaya talk, whaddaya talk? * Wheredayagitit? * Whaddaya talk? " lyrics—which can be found here incidently. What Disney did was dumb down the whole production. I hated it. Give me back old Robert Preston.
Treat sang in the movie ** Hair **.
I didn’t make it very far, and I have no prejudice against movie re-makes or anything. Music Man is one of my faves but this was so…BLAH!
Did anyone else think it was too “brown?” I mean this is the era of HDTV and Digital Cable and they make a 3 hour movie that looks like everyone is covered in mud?
RilchYou MUST see the movie Hair!
For nostalgia, get the movie GodSpell.
It has an incredibly young and all but unrecognizable Victor Garber (who played the mayor in this version of The Music Man) playing Jesus.
Talk about a movie that Does Not Age Well.