OK, let’s see… I arrive in town and manipulate the locals to perceive a need for a boy’s band. I take their money, purportedly for the buying of band instruments
…oh wait, scratch that “purportedly”. The kids actually get the instruments. Oh, but (as I said in an aside to my old chum from Brooklyn who knows my shtick) I stick around longer nowadays, and get the suckers to shell out for band uniforms, that’s the deal
…oh wait, those actually arrive also. The kids actually get the band uniforms.
Now how the heck was it that clever ol’ me was gonna fleece these folks? Just the cost of <ahem> music lessons? Really?
Nothing to add, just that I’ve wondered that in passing too! I mean, at the end of the day, with their instruments and uniforms, all the town is really lacking is a qualified band teacher; when Professor Hill skips town, surely the town’s budget could accommodate hiring a teacher. So where exactly are they getting ripped off??
Ultimately, he didn’t do anything illegal. He got the town to buy instruments and band uniforms on the promise that he’d teach them how to play them, but he did deliver the uniforms and instruments. It’s possible that he overcharged for the uniforms (not mentioned in the play), and he did get them to buy them on false promises, but people are getting what they paid for.
The issue was that Meredith Willson didn’t want Hill to be an out-and-out swindler, which would have cast a shadow over his relationship with Marion (he could have been playing here up to the end).
I always thought he was going to rip the town off by leaving after “ordering” the uniforms and instruments. But then he was touched by the earnestness of the town folks and fell in love with Marian the Librarian and he decided to stay.
I had a different question…I wondered if the little boy was actually Marian’s son…She was very reticent about falling in love with Professor Hill because she was “once bitten”.
It was a package deal – instruments, uniforms and lessons. I’m quite sure that Hill overcharged for the instruments and uniforms (after all, even River City-zians had access to Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs) and pocketed the difference.
I don’t remember the stage version, but in the movie it’s made clear that Winthrop’s father died in the fairly recent past – near enough that he’d know who his father (and mother) was. Besides, if Marion had a child out of wedlock, she wouldn’t be living in her home town anymore.
The movie is pretty much a line-by-line recreation of the stage version, with the same director, as a matter of fact. It’s one of the most faithful adapataions of a Broadway show ever.
I thought it was pretty clear from the movie that the townspeople wouldn’t have ordered the instruments and uniforms without Hill’s stating that he would be there to teach the boys how to play, and that he lied about the musical ability of the boys and their families. And he’d pulled the same or similar scams often enough in the territory that the territory was poisoned for other traveling salesmen. The anvil salesman had some sort of information on Hill that supposedly would’ve landed Hill in jail. There’s also the fact that Hill was operating under an assumed name (and he may have been doing something flat-out illegal under another name).
There’s dialog in the movie between Hill and the Buddy Hackett character indicating that Hill’s been pulling the instrument scheme for a while but that he’s only recently added in the uniforms. Buddy expresses concern at the additional time for the delivery of the uniforms. Although why Hill would have to be in town for the delivery of either the instruments or the uniforms is beyond me. Surely he could’ve ordered them and have them shipped to the Mayor or Marian or whoever.
There’s also the matter of his lack of “credentials,” necessitating his constant dodging of the school board…
As far as Winthrop’s parentage, if you believe Marian’s mother and Winthrop, Winthrop and Marian are siblings.
Yes, they are getting the uniforms and they are getting the instruments (in one of his early lines to Marcellus, way before he falls for Marion, he mentions having to stay longer because it takes a while for the uniforms to arrive). But in the opening song, all the salesmen tell us that they can’t sell instruments, people normally won’t buy them (“here and there a jew’s harp”). The general response to musical instrument selling is “no,” especially for people who need their money for practical things, like anvils.
So, when he doesn’t deliver on the music lessons, they’ve got perfectly functional items that they can’t use; an entire small town asking questions like “What the hell did I spend my good money on a trombone for?” and “What do I do now with this red uniform?” is going to be annoyed. Really annoyed.
He’s getting money from the musical instrument and band uniform companies (rather like a salesman’s commission). Anybody who’s ever priced brass instruments knows there’s a considerable markup; Hill (real first name ‘Gregory’ according to Marcellus) is skimming. Basically he’s selling refrigerators to Eskimoes and getting 20% off every one sold.
And his own. He teaches music by the “think system” – the boys are supposed to just “think about the Minuet in G” and then, somehow, they’ll learn to actually play it.
Still, it is true that, as drpepper pointed out, after the instruments and uniforms arrived and the band was organized and the boys were all rarin’ to go and Hill hopped the next train to Topeka, the town probably could have afforded to hire a real music teacher.
BTW, what was Hill’s real name? Marcellus calls him by it, once, in their first scene together, and it’s never mentioned again. Hill doesn’t even think to mention it to Marion, who forgives him everything but presumably would appreciate knowing just who she’s falling in love with.
Seems to me there’s a very practical reason the show couldn’t have been written so that Hill pocketed the money and never ordered the instruments (or left town before they arrived): There’d be no happy ending to the story.
Remembering vaguely from my community-theater stint as Zaneeta:
“The fellow sells bands, boys’ bands – I don’t know how he does it, but he lives like a king, and he dallies and he gathers and he plucks and he shines and when the man dances, certainly boys, what else? The piper pays him! Yes, sir!”
I’m going with Sampiro’s markup explanation. His big sell numbers, “Ya Got Trouble” and “76 Trombones”, were all about how badly the town needed something wholesome like a boys’ band for the young men to invest their energy into. He’s selling the concept of a band more than anything else, and that means sheet music, instruments, and uniforms, as discussed.
Marcellus calls him “Gregory” in their first scene together, IIRC. Is their dialogue about the uniforms in the same scene? If it’s later, I can see that as a ploy on Harold’s part to convince Marcellus (and himself) he’s not just sticking around for Marian.
Of course, a Boy Scout troop (and the Boy Scouts were founded in 1907, so the historical timing would have worked just fine) would have accomplished the same thing for less money. But that would have offered comparatively limited prospects, both for Hill’s profit margin and as a springboard for musical numbers.
I always assumed that Hill was selling this stuff C.O.D., and once the money hit his pockets, it’d never go any further – hence his need to take off after Tommy collected the money and gave it to Marcellus to give to Hill.
On further thought, though, after a couple of times of this the instrument and uniform companies probably wouldn’t take any more orders from him…I dunno.
Well, if you saw the “uniforms” that the boys were wearing, as they came off the truck, and the uniforms in their imaginations, I’m sure they paid much more than they were worth. Prosperous people paid big bucks (for the times) to see little Johnny and Jimmy and Harold shine, and no matter what dreck Prof. Hill sold them, that’s what they’d see. And he’d be out of town before the glitter rubbed off and they’d hear the sour notes and see the threadbare uniforms. He could even have an accomplice that sold him second-hand instruments and uniforms.
Pardon the self referentialness, but when I played Mayor Shinn (pic- I’m the one with the derringer) I made Shinn into less of a buffoon and more of a pseudo literate thug strictly because the guy who played Hill was so uncharismatic and smarmy (not to mention one of my least favorite humans) that I decided Shinn had to be an absolute bastard for the audience to side with Hill. (Shinn, after all, IS absolutely right about Hill from the start, so he can’t be that stupid.)
One night I scared the hell out of the kid who played Tommy. He thought I was actually going to hit him. That was fun.
