# The Music Man **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 26, 2007, 5:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-man/424078 "2007-10-26T05:20:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![pinkfreud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pinkfreud/32/17603_2.png) [@pinkfreud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pinkfreud)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2007, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-man/424078/61 "2007-11-03T01:55:38Z")
Those who are fond of “The Wells Fargo Wagon” might want to enter [this contest](http://memelabs.com/CenterStage/). ---
**Author:** ![choie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/choie/32/7829_2.png) [@choie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/choie)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2007, 9:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-man/424078/62 "2007-11-03T09:41:17Z")
**Cervaise** , I loved reading your well-thought-out words. Obviously a musical connoisseur! But I’m a-gonna disagree with you anyway. 😃 [QUOTE=Cervaise] Would I pick _The Music Man_ over _West Side Story_ as a better musical? I don’t know. It’s a toss-up. The former doesn’t stretch the boundaries as much as the latter, but is nearly perfect; the latter is more revolutionary, and probably more influential, but has some flaws. How could you possibly choose? [/QUOTE] I sure could, and easily, too! I think TMM is just as flawed, if not moreso, as WSS – the inanity of ‘Shipoopie’, the repetitive nature of the barbershop songs, the copout ending… all drag the show down for me. Don’t get me wrong, I do love TMM, and like the OP I have very very fond memories of being introduced to this show by my late mom. (And Robert Preston’s performance in the film is one of my all-time favorites.) It’s a very good show indeed. But compared to WSS, it’s a trifle that had no lasting impact. WSS, with its gritty (for its day) storyline, integral Robbins choreography as storytelling technique, sublime Bernstein score and witty Sondheim lyrics (with a lapse or two), is superlative and was at the time widely acknowledged by critics as a breakthrough for American musical theater. Honestly I don’t know what the Tony folks were thinking! I guess TMM might have been a safer, less controversial choice, but why were they worried about safety? Really bizarre. As a sidenote, I don’t think having a criminal, sleazy and/or ethically-challenged guy as a lead / antihero was that much of a breakthrough. Harold Hill was beaten to the punch by Billy in _Carousel_, the eponymous _Pal Joey_, and most of the guys in _Guys and Dolls_. Admittedly the last group were comic baddies whose crimes were whitewashed. But hey, so were Hill’s! ---
**Author:** ![anyrose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/54ee81/32.png) [@anyrose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anyrose)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2007, 11:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-man/424078/63 "2007-11-03T11:57:37Z")
[QUOTE=Choie] Honestly I don’t know what the Tony folks were thinking! I guess TMM might have been a safer, less controversial choice, but why were they worried about safety? Really bizarre. [/QUOTE] remember the _year_ in which these were both produced. a musical about middle America? Lovely! Hooray! Let us honor it! a musical about gangs in NYC? one of which is a bunch of immigrants? and someone dies? horrible! no, we shall not honor it! ---
**Author:** ![choie](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/choie/32/7829_2.png) [@choie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/choie)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2007, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-man/424078/64 "2007-11-03T12:45:00Z")
> [@anyrose](#): > > remember the year in which these were both produced. a musical about middle America? Lovely! Hooray! Let us honor it! a musical about gangs in NYC? one of which is a bunch of immigrants? and someone dies? horrible! no, we shall not honor it! Heh. I know, but I just never associated that desire for middle-of-the-road acceptance (or fear of its disapproval) with the Tony awards or the live theater scene in general – historically, that community has seemed to be more accepting of controversial or innovative creative efforts than film or television of the same period. Could just be my own perception of it. ---
**Author:** ![Spavined\_Gelding](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/958977/32.png) [@Spavined\_Gelding](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spavined_Gelding)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2007, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-man/424078/65 "2007-11-03T13:29:13Z")
Just to be fair, Music Man may be about Middle America, but a Middle America in the (in nostalgic hindsight) golden years before the Great War, and a small town Middle America that never really existed outside Norman Rockwell’s covers for the Saturday Evening Post and Booth Tarkington’s Penrod stories. Non-the-less, it is great fun. Not a moral lesson, not high drama, just fun. In a lecture in Iowa City in 1958 Wilson said as much. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-music-man/424078.md?page=3)