Filming The Music Man turned a household affair for Shirley Jones, who was secretly pregnant together with her second son, Patrick. “Robert Preston and my mother are on that footbridge singing,” recollects Shirley’s oldest, Shaun Cassidy. “Preston steps again and says, ‘What the hell was that?’ My mom seems to be down and realizes that was Patrick Cassidy, as a result of he’s simply kicked Mr. Preston from the womb.”
Shirley’s being pregnant, which she initially saved secret for concern of being fired, wasn’t the one impediment going through the movie’s manufacturing. Bringing the musical by Meredith Willson from the Broadway stage, the place it turned a smash in 1957, to movie additionally required some ruthless decision-making. “Though Robert Preston gained a Tony Award for The Music Man, Jack Warner wished an enormous star,” says Debra Warren, writer of Robert Preston: Ceaselessly the Music Man. Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra each wished to star. Warner Bros. additionally thought-about Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Dean Martin and Cary Grant for the position of con man Harold Hill. “Meredith Willson got here in and stated, ‘Pay attention, until you employ Robert Preston, you don’t do my present,’” recollects Shirley. “And that’s how Preston acquired the half.”
The studio had extra management over the opposite solid and employed Shirley, who had not too long ago gained an Oscar for 1960’s Elmer Gantry, over Barbara Prepare dinner, a earlier Tony winner within the position of librarian Marian on Broadway. “She was devastated,” says Warren. “However they wished the massive identify draw of Shirley Jones.”
The scenario additionally made Shirley nervous. “She feared that she would consistently be in comparison with Barbara,” explains Warren. “She was very pleasantly shocked as a result of Robert was very magnanimous and big-hearted. He by no means talked about the Broadway manufacturing, they usually turned buddies.”
Shirley, who was married to performer Jack Cassidy, usually introduced her son Shaun to work. “I used to be 4 years outdated,” he recollects. “I realized to journey a bicycle on the set of this film as a result of this older child, Ron Howard, was already driving a motorcycle across the lot. My mother acquired me a tricycle, and I began driving that round, chasing Ronnie.”
Ron started taking part in Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Present shortly earlier than being employed as Winthrop, Marian’s withdrawn little brother. “Ron had pure appearing expertise, however the singing and dancing had been a wrestle for him,” says Warren. In some dancing scenes, “they filmed him from the knees up!”
Greater than 60 years after The Music Man debuted in theaters, it stays a beloved basic. “Meredith Willson wrote The Music Man as a valentine to America,” explains Warren. “It affords a message of hope. The con man is rehabilitated. Marian transforms from a stick-in-the-mud librarian to somebody open to like. And the entire city chang- es from being a inflexible place to a spot the place everybody will get alongside.”
