Word: preston
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...Broadway The Music Man, now Broadway's hottest ticket, is a triumph of Meredith Willson's one-man showmanship (book, lyrics, music) and an exuberant romp for Robert Preston as the itinerant con-man who invades an Iowa town and conjures up a fine, corn-fed band...
...sharp-eyed critics watching his performance, it was incredible that Actor Robert Preston Meservey should have spent a dozen years as a second-string Hollywood leading man. Bon of a French Huguenot and Irish line, Robert was two years old when his parents moved from Newton Highlands, Mass, to the going-to-seed Lincoln Heights section of Los Angeles. He grew up, among Italian and Mexican families, in a neighborhood dotted with rundown homes. But the Meserveys were a close-knit unit. Bob's mother fed her family on music, and as a small boy Bob learned to play...
Finding the man to play Harold Hill was a more complicated problem. Television Comic Milton Berle wanted the part. TV Actor Art Carney was considered, and so was Dancer Ray Bolger. Da Costa had seen Robert Preston in a few summer stock shows; Bloomgarden, too, knew Preston's work. Says Da Costa: "Preston has energy and he has reality. He's an actor who can project himself larger than life. And he has enough sureness of technique and enough urbanity to portray the con man and the opportunist without resorting to a wax mustache. The part calls...
...Preston tried out first for Da Costa and Bloomgarden, and his version of Trouble-the toughest song in the show -sold them. Next, they had to sell Willson. Willson heard Trouble and bought...
...this to come off as a story about a charming renegade who reforms, a show with a lot of love and no hate, one that a sophisticated viewer could see with pleasure and that a child could watch with understanding." The cast also credits Da Costa-as well as Preston-for having welded the troupe into one of Broadway's happiest companies...