The Music Man

[David Guercio]

We all know that Robert Preston.  Shirley Jones and Buddy Hackett were all probably in the original Music Man movie right?  But somebody told me a few times that Dick Van Dyke was also in a movie version.  Is that true?

[txfilmfan]

5 hours ago, David Guercio said:

We all know that Robert Preston.  Shirley Jones and Buddy Hackett were all probably in the original Music Man movie right?  But somebody told me a few times that Dick Van Dyke was also in a movie version.  Is that true?

AFAIK, no, Van Dyke was never in a filmed/taped production of it.

He was, however, in the 1980 Broadway revival of The Music Man.  It also featured a very young Christian Slater as Winthrop.  This was a show that toured the country for 8 months prior to its arrival in New York.

It had a very short Broadway run of 8 previews and 21 performances, and the show only got middling reviews.

https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/the-music-man-13314

Here's a bootleg clip from a performance of "Marian the Librarian", and you can see it's kind of flat...

 

[David Guercio]

Whoa.  That’s neat.  Thank you.

[TikiSoo]

On 4/8/2021 at 8:17 PM, txfilmfan said:

AFAIK, no, Van Dyke was never in a filmed/taped production of it.

He was, however, in the 1980 Broadway revival of The Music Man. 

Thanks for that clip. I would have been thrilled to see Van Dyke perform that show live-I think he's perfect. No doubt Robert Preston created the charactor, but Van Dyke has the talent to make it his own, very well. Seeing performers sing & dance LIVE in front of an audience just seems so long ago....in a past life.