Word: willson
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...Music Man is creatively a one-man show, with book, music and lyrics by Meredith Willson. One result is that it does seem created, that it displays a style, a sense of one-man showmanship. It also achieves a sustained swinging tempo; as his own triumvirate, Willson escapes all the Stop and Go, the Detour and Closed for Repairs signs of musicomedy collaborations. Boasting a brisk production, and in Robert Preston a delightful star, this 1912 tale of an itinerant con man, a musical ignoramus who invades an Iowa town posing as a bandleader, has unrationed, oldfashioned, bring-the-whole...
Growing up in small-town Mason City, Iowa, Composer-Author-Lyricist Meredith Willson tootled his flute in the local band, watched the trotters at the county fair, pumped water for Saturday-night baths, was taught to beware of anyone who smoked cigarettes, especially tailor-mades. "Innocent-that was the adjective for Iowa," says Willson. "I didn't have to make anything up for The Music Man. All I had to do was remember...
...veteran Music Man Willson still acts like a wide-eyed Iowa innocent. He is bowled over by the thumping success of his first musical ("I'm on Cloud 9012"), lavishes credit on the whole company for its "wholesome" approach to the job. "You hear all this business about Broadway sin and sex and smoke-filled rooms," Willson says, "but this company is different. It really is. Our kids weep with joy over the show, that's how much they feel about it. Do you know there hasn't been a gripe, not a bit of hysteria...
...often passed the craft of painting on to their children, and sometimes created artistic dynasties of the first order. Some of the greatest painters of the Renaissance grew great at home. The practice never took hold in the rough and tumble of American life, though Revolutionary War Hero Charles Willson Peale did raise two painting sons, one of whom, first-named Raphaelle, surpassed the father. But the 20th century does offer an outstanding example of an American artist following in his father's footsteps. The one is Andrew Wyeth (TIME, Jan. 7), at 40 the most revered young realist...
...traditions but of human endeavors."Nothing is so poor and melancholy," Santayana wrote, "as an art that is interested in itself and not in its subject." American painters in general have turned not to themselves but to the nation, embracing and mirroring its thousand aspects. Charles Willson Peale fought at Princeton and Trenton and wintered at Valley Forge. John James Audubon killed birds in the wilderness not only for models but also to feed his children. Frederic Remington actually rode the Wild West as ranch hand, cook and cavalryman. Grant Wood said that all his best ideas "came while milking...