Meredith Willson

Meredith Willson, born Robert Reiniger Meredith Willson on May 18, 1902, in Mason City, Iowa, was an American composer, lyricist, book writer, flautist, conductor, musical arranger, bandleader, playwright, and author. He died on June 15, 1984. His parents were Rosalie Reiniger Willson and John David Willson, and he grew up alongside an older brother, John Cedrick, and a sister twelve years his senior, children's writer Dixie Willson. On August 29, 1920, Willson married his high-school sweetheart, Elizabeth "Peggy" Wilson; the marriage lasted twenty-six years.

Willson's musical training began early. As a child he played bass drum in a Salvation Army band, and he developed into a flute and piccolo virtuoso. He studied at Frank Damrosch's Institute of Musical Art in New York City, the institution that later became The Juilliard School. His instrumental skill earned him a position in John Philip Sousa's band from 1921 to 1924, followed by a tenure with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini from 1924 to 1929. He subsequently relocated to San Francisco, California, where he served as concert director for radio station KFRC, making his on-air debut there in 1928 on Blue Monday Jamboree. He later became a musical director for the NBC radio network in Hollywood.

Willson's film work brought him two Academy Award nominations. He composed the score for Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator in 1940, earning a nomination for Best Original Score, and arranged music for William Wyler's The Little Foxes in 1941, which received a nomination for Best Music Score of a Dramatic Picture. During World War II he served with the United States Armed Forces Radio Service, where he worked alongside George Burns, Gracie Allen, and Bill Goodwin, functioning as bandleader and a recurring character on the Burns and Allen radio program. In 1942 he hosted his own NBC program, Meredith Willson's Music, a summer replacement for Fibber McGee and Molly, and from 1946 to 1947 he helmed Sparkle Time on CBS, his first full-season radio program.

Willson's postwar radio career included creating the Talking People, a choral group that delivered commercials by speaking in unison. In 1949 he hosted his own program, and in the early 1950s he appeared regularly as a panelist on the Goodson-Todman game show The Name's the Same, a position he later said he valued for its steady salary, which he saved toward his Broadway ambitions. Beginning in 1950, he served as musical director for The Big Show, a ninety-minute comedy-variety program on NBC hosted by Tallulah Bankhead. For that program he composed "May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You," which Bankhead spoke over the music at the close of each broadcast. He also contributed to Jack Benny's radio program during this period.

The development of Willson's most celebrated work, The Music Man, spanned eight years and approximately thirty revisions, during which he wrote more than forty songs. He described the musical as an Iowan's attempt to pay tribute to his home state. A key collaborator in shaping the storyline was writer Franklin Lacey, whom director Vladimir Rosing introduced to Willson during the 1950 production of The California Story, California's centennial production at the Hollywood Bowl. The Music Man premiered on Broadway in 1957, starring Robert Preston and Barbara Cook, and ran for 1,375 performances over three and a half years. The cast recording won the first Grammy Award for Best Original Cast Album. The show was adapted for film in both 1962 and 2003, received a production at New York City Center in 1980 with Dick Van Dyke in the title role and Meg Bussert as Marian, and had its first Broadway revival in 2000 at the Neil Simon Theatre with Craig Bierko and Rebecca Luker, running 699 performances. A second Broadway revival opened on February 10, 2022, at the Winter Garden Theatre, starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster. The show's 1957 production earned Willson the Tony Award for Best Musical. In 1959, Willson and his second wife, Ralina "Rini" Zarova, recorded an album titled ...and Then I Wrote The Music Man, reviewing the history of the show and performing songs from it. In 2010, Brian d'Arcy James and Kelli O'Hara portrayed Willson and Rini in an off-Broadway entertainment based on that album.

Willson's second Broadway musical, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, ran for 532 performances between 1960 and 1962 and was subsequently adapted into a 1964 motion picture starring Debbie Reynolds. His third Broadway credit, Here's Love, was an adaptation of the film Miracle on 34th Street and ran for 334 performances during an eight-month engagement in 1963 and 1964. His fourth musical, 1491, told the story of Columbus's efforts to finance his voyage and was produced by the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera in 1969 but did not reach Broadway.

Beyond the stage, Willson composed symphonic and chamber works, including Symphony No. 1 in F minor: A Symphony of San Francisco and Symphony No. 2 in E minor: Missions of California, both recorded in 1999 by William T. Stromberg conducting the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra. Additional orchestral compositions include the O.O. McIntyre Suite, Symphonic Variations on an American Theme and Anthem, the symphonic poem Jervis Bay, and Ask Not, which incorporates quotations from John F. Kennedy's inaugural address. His chamber output includes A Suite for Flute. Among his popular songs, "You and I" reached number one on the Billboard charts for Glenn Miller in 1941 and was also recorded by Bing Crosby and Tommy Dorsey. His song "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" was written in 1951. In 1964, Willson produced three original summer variety specials for CBS under the title Texaco Star Parade, the first of which premiered on June 5, 1964, and featured guest stars Caterina Valente and Sergio Franchi alongside a production number with 500 California high school band members.