The Big Parade: Meredith Willson's Musicals from The Music Man to 1491

by Dominic McHugh

In the 1950s, Meredith Willson's The Music Man became the third longest running musical after My Fair Lady and The Sound of a considerable achievement in a decade that saw the premieres of other popular works by Rodgers and Hammerstein and Lerner and Loewe, not to mention Frank Loesser's Guys and Dolls and Bernstein and Sondheim's West Side Story. The Music Man remains a popular choice for productions and has been parodied or quoted on television shows ranging from Family Guy to Grace and Frankie. Though Willson is best remembered for The Music Man, there is a great deal more to his career as a composer and lyricist. In The Big Parade, author Dominic McHugh uses newly uncovered letters, manuscripts, and production files to reveal Willson's unusual combination of experiences in his pre-Broadway career that led him to compose The Music Man at the age of 55. McHugh also gives an in depth look at the reception of The Music Man and examines the strengths and weaknesses of Willson's other three musicals, with his sustained commitment to innovation and novelty. The Big Parade is packed with new revelations about the processes involved in writing these works, as well as the trials and tribulations of working in the commercial theatre.

288 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 3, 2021

Reviews

[Ed Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! This book is THE book on Meredith Willson's body of work written for the theatre. If you liked such recent in-depth work as Purdum's SOMETHING WONDERFUL about Rodgers and Hammerstein, or the Broadway by decade books of Ethan Mordden, you'll want to read Dominic McHugh's THE BIG PARADE.

And if you've ever seen, loved, or appeared in THE MUSIC MAN, THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN, or HERE'S LOVE aka MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET: THE MUSICAL, you'll devour this engaging, assiduously researched book. (If you're about to work on these shows in any capacity, this book should be your first supplemental research reading).

The bulk of the book is devoted to the evolution of THE MUSIC MAN, Willson's greatest hit, and if you think you know all there is to know about that...you don't. McHugh has accessed previously unavailable Willson papers, read different drafts of the show, and pulls it all together in a page-turning way that will please the academe, the aficionado, and the casual theatre fan.

Though the MOLLY BROWN, HERE'S LOVE, and 1491 chapters are shorter, they are equally well written and insightful and chock-full of detail. It'll make you want to revisit all these shows, their scores, and their cast recordings and soundtracks, and give you a new and deeper appreciation of Willson and his craft. Dominic McHugh definitely deserves "76 Trombones" for this book. Keep 'em comin'!

[John Kenrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

So much detail

A great many books on musical theater suffer from a shortage of factual detail. This book flies boldly on the opposite direction, practically drenching the reader in torrents of facts. Every stage and film score of Meredith Willson's career is examined thoroughly, as are the circumstances behind those projects. The author's research was obviously painstaking and I am in awe of what he has brought together here. I'm just not sure who all this mountainous effort is aimed at. It's hard to see how even the most rabid musical theater fan (and I rate myself a devout one) would ever find most of this info useful or worth remembering. But kudos to the author for a spectacular act of research.