Ruth Leon recommends…. Meredith Wilson – America’s Music Man

Meredith Willson – America’s Music Man

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Those of us who only know his name as the man who wrote The Music Man will be fascinated as I was to find out just how important Meredith Willson  was in the history of not only the American musical theatre, but also of popular music, and the concert hall. I hadn’t realised that he scored films for Charlie Chaplin, wrote popular songs performed by the likes of Frank Sinatra and The Beatles, and was a world class flautist under the batons of John Philip Sousa and Arturo Toscanini.

He excelled in all of these and during WW2 he was in charge of all music for the American military. He loved his hometown, Mason City, Iowa, which of course was the model for River City in his massive musical theatre hit.

In addition to The Music Man which is constantly being revived somewhere in the world, and recently on Broadway, he also wrote The Unsinkable Molly Brown, an international hit in its day, and Here’s Love, a less successful Broadway musicalisation of the classic movie Miracle on 34th Street.

He was a pioneer in the early days of radio and television and wrote hundreds of songs that became popular and often newsworthy. He was at the centre of American popular music for many years. Who knew?

This is a traditional old-fashioned biographical documentary from Iowa Public Television Station, somewhat plodding in places, but it’s the story of an artist we thought we knew and find we didn’t, and that, to me, is irresistible.
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Sutton Foster is the narrator, and there are interviews with many music luminaries.

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