The Music Man" marched into Broadway 53 years ago this season. An instant hit, because it touched -- and still does -- the American nerve-center: Us!
Who doesn't like to be seen as glib and optimistic as Professor Harold Hill? Or as sweet and wholesome as Marion the Librarian. The entire cast is stuffed with sweet and wholesome, if not naive, Iowans at the turn of the last century. A bracing theme carried over from Mark Twain's Huckleberry days on the Mississippi...the pastoral Americana of Currier & Ives illustrations...the radio soap operas of the 30s & 40s...the cozy family sitcoms of the 50s & 60s...the siren songs of the Great Communicator in the 80s.
Every country has its mythic legends. The Greeks their Olympian gods...the Germans their Teutonic gods ...the Irish their forest gods....the Americans their frontier-busting cowboys and gunslingers. And now lately our costumed Tea Partiers whose magical thinking and fairy tales re-enact Thomas Jefferson and Betsy Ross parading down the streets of Washington.
We dismiss legends at our own risk! These are real and powerful things in the lives of people. When crowds leave the theatre after "The Music Man" or today's parades and rallies, they carry with them a spirit and a zeitgeist akin to a bronco daring to be saddled.
Hollywood and manufacturers have been profitably lassoing these passions for years. However, movies and merchandise are fleeting affairs. What can be more lasting are movements. Political movements led by the proverbial man-on-the-white-horse. How many well-funded Americans are today standing along the corral fence ready to jump in and ride this snorting horse...?
Let me count the ways.
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