Meredith Willson - America's Music Man

On December 19, 1957, Meredith Willson, a rookie Broadway writer, composer, and lyricist, attended the premiere of his first musical.  No stranger to the Manhattan theatre district, he had spent countless hours playing flute in the pit orchestras there and in the adjacent boroughs during the 1920’s, when he was not touring with John Philip Sousa’s band.  However, never before had he poured so much time and energy into any one project, a full-blown Broadway musical comedy.

On opening night, along with the director and producer of the show, Willson and his wife Rini paced in the lobby of the Majestic Theatre on 44th Street.  Just before the overture began, they moved inside and took their seats just before the curtain rose.  Even though out of town audiences in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. had given the show enthusiastic responses (famed playwright William Saroyan had even said that Willson had a “jackpot” on his hands) the composer and his wife waited in anxious silence, while the popular music literati prepared to review his production. 

            Just weeks before, the Willsons had paused to admire the marquee. The announcement acknowledged that that Meredith Willson, the flute prodigy from Mason City, Iowa, had orchestrated this personal show.  He was very proud of that moment of the project that he and his wife had nurtured for over a half decade.  Staring at his name emblazoned in Broadway lights, he considered that the moment might be fleeting and not the more lasting stuff of which dreams are made. 

As the orchestra warmed up, the couple took two seats near the exit, so they could beat a hasty retreat if the homespun wit which Meredith exhibited on radio, television, and at celebrity parties failed to please the first night crowd.  Sitting hand in cold, sweaty hand, the Willsons waited as the house lights dimmed, the ellipsoidals and fresnels began to build on the act curtain, and the overture started with a whistle, a drum roll-off, and a march.

            Should he have been more conventional with the opening number, “But He Doesn’t Know the Territory”?  Would the viewers be transported back to 1912 Iowa along with the train riders who debated the long-suffering business of salesmanship?  Was the show too folksy for the sophisticated New York crowd?  Was the show too long?  Too short?  The time for worrying was over, for the scene had already begun as a steam locomotive decelerated and approached the station, where it was time to meet the mythical inhabitants of River City through their song “Iowa Stubborn.”  The make or break opening for The Music Man was underway.

            Pride in his Mason City birthplace swelled in Meredith Willson that opening night, and The Music Man quickly became a success.  At some point during the premiere he discovered that the New York crowd enthusiastically embraced the story about his friends and family who lived over 1000 miles to the west.  And as the caricatures of Mason Cityans came alive on stage, the real people, places and situations came back to Willson as he sat watching.  A failure of this play might denigrate his friends and cousins left behind in north central Iowa almost forty years earlier.  Yet as he eased into the opening night performance, he probably thought back to Mama, Papa, Dixie, and Cedric in the house on Superior Street and of those seemingly endless hours on the parlor piano under the tutelage of his mother Rosalie.&