The Big Parade: Meredith Willson's Musicals from The Music Man to 1491(Broadway Legacies)

In the 1950s, Meredith Willson's The Music Man became the third longest running musical after My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music: 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.

Table of Contents:
Foreword by Series Editor Geoffrey Block Chapter 1: Seeking the Roots of The Music Man: Meredith Willson's Cultural Eclecticism Chapter 2: From The Silver Triangle to The Music Man: Creating the Book for an Original Musical Chapter 3: Composing the Score for a Musical about Music Chapter 4: Marching Still Right Today: The Music Man from Philadelphia to Broadway and Beyond Chapter 5: After The Music Man: The Unsinkable Molly Brown in the Shadow of a Hit Chapter 6: Singing through Evil Times: Here's Love, Miracle on 34rd Street, and the Challenge of the Musical Adaptation Chapter 7: 1491: The Final Voyage Index

About the Author :
Dominic McHugh is Professor of Musicology at the University of Sheffield. He has published widely on the Broadway and Hollywood musicals, including six previous books, and has collaborated with many of the world's leading arts organisations, ranging from the Sydney Opera House to the Library of Congress.

Review :
Scholars, fans, and performers alike will find much to celebrate and awe over in this book, which alone is a magnificent accomplishment. The legacy of Meredith Willson is hugely enhanced by this fine, meticulous, and compelling book by Dominic McHugh, whose perspective as a researcher and talent as a writer coalesce into a book that reveals much previously unknown information about a hidden giant of the theatrical and musical world. Dominic McHugh has done two remarkable things: written a well-documented and rich history of Willson's The Music Man and his other, lesser-known musicals, and filled an important void in musical theatre history. This book will fill a niche in our understanding of this time period and build on the work of other notable historians in painting a picture of one of the most fertile periods of musical theatre. Writing a book on a Broadway creator who has long been overlooked and deemed by many as second-rate presents significant challenges; taking on the additional task of exploring that artist's unfamiliar works makes the job even harder. And yet McHugh has done both, and the result convincingly repositions Willson as a giant in his field and of his times. The Big Parade not only fills a gap but also serves as a model for other writers. McHugh has once again demonstrated how to conduct archival research with a mixture of contextual and analytical tools to exploremeaningfully the careers and works of Broadway practitioners whose lives exist along the musical margins of the literature and deserve much more.