Plot summary for
The Music Man (1962) More at IMDbPro »

Confidence man Harold Hill arrives at staid River City intending to cheat the community with his standard scam of offering to equip and train a boy's marching band, then skip town with the money since he has no music skill anyway. Things go awry when he falls for a librarian he tries to divert from exposing him while he inadvertently enriches the town with a love of music. Written by Kenneth Chisholm {kchishol@execulink.com}

Professor Harold Hill likes a challenge and when the other salesmen on the train west tell him that Iowa is the biggest test of all of sales ability, he gets off at River City. We know it's the 20th century there, only because of a reference in one of the songs to Gary, Indiana. Marian the librarian doesn't buy the professor's line but he convinces many of his other potential customers that the new pool table that has just been placed in the billiard parlor could mean "trouble in River City." How to keep the youngsters "moral after school?" Form a boys marching band. Written by Dale O'Connor {daleoc@interaccess.com}

Classic of flag-waving, feel-good, musical comedic Americana, based on a hit Broadway show, with a refreshingly jaundiced subtext: Footloose con man sets out to fleece a repressed Midwestern community during the early days of the twentieth century, but instead learns a lesson in moral responsibility from the town's comely librarian. Written by Carl Schultz

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