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[0:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: One of the first pieces of Broadway trivia that I really grasped onto when I was younger was that in 1957 at the Tony Awards, the two musicals that were up for Best Musical were THE MUSIC MAN and WEST SIDE STORY. And THE MUSIC MAN won. And for me as a youngster, I could not believe that that was the case. WEST SIDE STORY that has this kind of score and this kind of dancing to tell this tragic story with very real and serious issues that that would lose to something as fluffy as THE MUSIC MAN. And that was the thing that I touted and marched around with for many, many years. I have since eaten a couple slices of humble pie offered to me by people that I respect through conversations that have helped me to realize that MUSIC MAN is the better show.

And I think that the Tony Awards got it right. Even though I personally like WEST SIDE STORY more, and maybe I feel that it was more courageous, I think in terms of construction, I think THE MUSIC MAN is kind of a perfect show.

[1:45] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, a lot of people would agree with you on that, I think. But what I think we're going to do here today is talk about how THE MUSIC MAN is more than just fluff, and how it's quite intelligent and remarkably well-constructed musical theater. So let's get started.

[1:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Welcome, everybody, to A Musical Theatre Podcast where we discuss the cultural and emotional impact of some of our favorite musicals in theater history. My name is Jeffrey Scott Parsons. You can call me Jeff. And today I have Teri Bibb sitting across from me.

[2:01] Teri Bibb: Oh my gosh, that's so nice of you to say.

[2:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: But it's true. You're like a queen of American musical theater sopranos.

[2:16] Teri Bibb: Well, thank you.

[2:17] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I always hate interview shows where they interview really talented people and they say, you're incredible. How does that feel? How does it feel to be so incredible? Chita Rivera is like, um, I think I'm good.

[2:38] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: One of my favorite times that I got to see you perform, though, was when we were both in Michigan. Shout out to our friends at Farmer's Alley.

[2:47] Teri Bibb: Farmer's Alley!

[2:47] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. And they had brought you out to do your one woman show.

[2:51] Teri Bibb: Right.

[2:52] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Remind me the name of it.

[2:54] Teri Bibb: Once Upon a Song.

[2:55] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And it's really stunning. Like an elegant, beautiful evening of music, the spotlights.

[3:04] Teri Bibb: Women.

[3:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: The great women of movie musicals, which was my introduction to the art form. And you sound glorious. And one of my favorite things that you say after, is it a Katharine Grayson song? You're like, these women just sang so freaking high.

[3:21] Teri Bibb: Yeah, that's the challenge of doing a one woman show, especially for a 90 minutes, you know, two 45 minute acts is just finding a place to take a drink of water. I have strategically placed a piano solo or a little video clip here and there. So there's just not dead air while I'm like, just watch me drink for a minute here.

[3:40] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And you even get to change costumes.

[3:41] Teri Bibb: I do. Well, I like to, I like my gowns.

[3:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: As you should. If I could have a gown closet, I would.

[3:51] Teri Bibb: Yeah, I definitely have a gown closet.

[3:52] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Do you? That makes me so happy. So over your career, how many times have you done THE MUSIC MAN?

[4:00] Teri Bibb: Seven different productions.

[4:02] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Okay. And when was the first?

[4:04] Teri Bibb: The first was '98. So over a 20 year span, actually, which is kind of funny. Yeah, '98, I did a little tour of the Southwest with Barry Williams of the Brady Bunch fame as Harold Hill.

[4:21] Teri Bibb: That was my first time doing the role, which is, I had auditioned for it a couple of times prior to that, but I had not gotten it. And so that was my first time.

[4:29] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: How fun.

[4:30] Teri Bibb: Yeah.

[4:30] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Did you immediately like it?

[4:32] Teri Bibb: I did. Yeah. I mean...

[4:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I mean, had you seen, I mean, you'd seen it before.

[4:35] Teri Bibb: I had seen it. I'd seen, I'd seen, I'd grown up on the movie, of course, wanted to be Shirley Jones when I was growing up. And yeah, I...

[4:42] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: She's wonderful in that movie.

[4:44] Teri Bibb: Oh, she's magnificent. Yeah.

[4:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: She really is.

[4:46] Teri Bibb: She's great in everything she did. And then, you know, and one of the last times that I did THE MUSIC MAN was actually with her.

[4:52] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, she would play Widow Peru?

[4:54] Teri Bibb: She did. She played my mom. It was a semi-concert version, another tour that I did in 2014. Where she played my mom. And she also did some narration. She told a few stories. She stepped in and out of the show.

[5:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, interesting. How fun.

[5:10] Teri Bibb: She put on an apron and became Widow Peru. And then she would take it off and be Shirley again and tell anecdotes. And we tweaked it a little bit so that when I sang "Goodnight, My Someone," I sang it with her.

[5:22] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Lovely.

[5:22] Teri Bibb: To her and with her. We sang the little duet at the end that I use usually with Amaryllis because it was a very condensed concert version of the show with just eight adults. There were no children. We picked up a Winthrop in every town.

[5:34] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, that's a great idea.

[5:36] Teri Bibb: That would just come on and sing, well, "Fargo Wagon" for everybody. And we actually opened in Iowa.

[5:43] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No way.

[5:44] Teri Bibb: So we got to tour the Meredith Wilson house.

[5:48] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Is it Mason City?

[5:48] Teri Bibb: Yeah. That was really fun. And Patrick Cassidy, Shirley's son, was Harold in that version.

[5:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Great casting.

[5:55] Teri Bibb: Yeah.

[5:56] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: All right. Let's talk a little bit about Meredith Wilson since you got to tour and maybe you can throw some things out that maybe you saw while you were there. I think THE MUSIC MAN, which has music, lyrics, and book by one person, which is...

[6:11] Teri Bibb: Very unusual.

[6:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Very unusual for musical theater. And granted, it's well documented that he had some help. But still, to be in charge of all of those things in musical is incredible and kind of a lightning bolt in a bottle.

[6:25] Teri Bibb: And usually spells disaster.

[6:26] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Sure, sure. Usually, if you hear that the same person is doing it, you're like...

[6:31] Teri Bibb: You need somebody, you need another set of eyes.

[6:34] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: But I think it's a great example of writing what you know. Because he's born in Iowa.

[6:41] Teri Bibb: Right.

[6:42] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And his mentor, Frank Lesser, was always telling him how much he enjoyed hearing him talk about the Iowa way of life, the people that he grew up with. So he obviously has a kind of natural propensity to tell stories about where he comes from. Boom, right there.

[7:02] Teri Bibb: He becomes a very accomplished piccolo player and flute player and plays in the John Phillips Sousa band.

[7:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's right.

[7:13] Teri Bibb: As well as the New York Philharmonic.

[7:15] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So, wow, right there, exposure to John Phillips Sousa, which a lot of the score is, you know, basically sounds like "Stars and Stripes Forever." After that, he moves to Hollywood and starts working in the film industry. He becomes a composer for film, gets an Academy Award nomination for "The Great Dictator," which is a Charlie Chaplin film. The William Wyler "Little Foxes," he also does as well, both of which received Academy Award nominations. From there, he goes into radio, which is hilarious, because I feel like most Broadway composers start in Broadway and then realize, oh, I can make much more money in Hollywood. And it was kind of the opposite for Meredith Wilson. He starts in Hollywood, then goes to radio.

[7:54] Teri Bibb: He hosts several shows and then eventually finds himself working on a radio show called "The Big Show," which was hosted by Tallulah Bankhead, who's, you know, such a character. And he decides that for the commercials for this show, instead of just breaking for a commercial and having somebody read copy, that he was going to have a chorus speak these commercials in rhythm, almost like a rap.

[8:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, my gosh.

[8:25] Teri Bibb: Right? So which is also laying the groundwork for a lot of the musical conceits that he came up with for THE MUSIC MAN. So between all of those things, where he comes from, the music that he's exposed to, and the discoveries that he makes while working in radio, really all come together to kind of inform how one person could write this entire musical.

[8:50] Teri Bibb: It's also said, however, that Franklin Lacy, who I don't know, but apparently helped him quite a bit with the story.

[8:56] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: He only took story credit, but he helped with the show.

[9:01] Teri Bibb: And then, I didn't know this, but when I was recording an episode with Michael Betts last week about "Hello Dolly," and we were talking about ghost composers that come in and write different songs for shows without credit in the score. And I asked what his favorite one is of those rumored songs. And he said, it's "My White Night," that it was written by Frank Lesser, with help from Meredith Wilson.

[9:32] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, really?

[9:32] Teri Bibb: Yeah.

[9:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Interesting.

[9:34] Teri Bibb: And I was like, really? I had never heard that. I thought it was crazy. And then, while revisiting the film, that's really the only difference, is "My White Night" is replaced with that other song.

[9:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: What is it?

[9:47] Teri Bibb: To me, it's so forgettable.

[9:49] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, because "My White Night" is so...

[9:51] Teri Bibb: Is so beautiful and perfect.

[9:53] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So it's like, okay, why would Meredith Wilson replace "My White Night" with something if it wasn't for the fact that maybe he just didn't feel comfortable with Frank Lesser's song being in the score? It still has the bridge.

[10:06] Teri Bibb: All I want is a plain man, an honest man.

[10:11] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So maybe that was his part. And then the...

[10:14] Teri Bibb: Oh, excuse me. And then the Frank Lesser part was the refrain. I don't know.

[10:19] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, yeah.

[10:20] Teri Bibb: But I'd say that that's my favorite part, is that little interlude in the middle, where she sits and says what she wants. And I would like him to be more interested in me than he is in himself, and more interested in us than in me. I think that's such a telling line, and one of the most beautiful parts of that song.

[10:40] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Fast forwarding, Meredith Wilson sets up camp in Brentwood, California, just down the freeway from us. And he went to church at this United Congregation in Christ or something like that. And he donated money to have a stained glass window installed right above the pew where he sat, and it's musical instruments. So he's the music man. And it's still there. And so at some point, I'm going to make a trip to Mecca over the next couple of weeks and go see the Meredith Wilson stained glass window.

[11:17] Teri Bibb: Oh, he must have been there a lot.

[11:19] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah.

[11:20] Teri Bibb: To want that there.

[11:21] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: The entire rest of his life, I guess. Because after THE MUSIC MAN, he writes "Unsinkable Molly Brown," which is a hit. I mean, it's not a sensation in the way that THE MUSIC MAN has become, but it's a hit on both stage and in film.

[11:38] Teri Bibb: Do you like that show? Have you seen it?

[11:40] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I have. I love the movie as well. And I have seen a couple of productions of the show. I know that they're trying to revive it with Beth Malone.

[11:49] Teri Bibb: Oh, what a great idea.

[11:51] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. And kind of restructuring the book a little bit. Because I think one of the big problems, at least that they faced on stage originally, was that the climax of the whole story is the Titanic.

[12:02] Teri Bibb: Right.

[12:03] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And it's only one little scene with, like, they're on the lifeboats toward the end of the second act. And she's like, don't give up. And then blackout. So if you can make something more of that.

[12:16] Teri Bibb: Yeah.

[12:17] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I don't know. I have big hopes. Then he also does a musical version of "Miracle on 34th Street."

[12:22] Teri Bibb: Right.

[12:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Which is kind of a flop.

[12:25] Teri Bibb: Yeah.

[12:25] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Doesn't do anything. And that's about it. That's all he does in musical theater. There was one more that I'm forgetting.

[12:32] Teri Bibb: I could be forgetting, too. Because at the home that we toured in Mason City, there was a piano with some music on it that they put there as props, you know. Not actually his music or his writing, but something that they went to the music store and bought and put there, you know, to demonstrate. And I have a memory of vocal selections from a musical and me thinking, oh, I didn't know he wrote that. But now, of course, I can't think of what it was.

[12:55] Teri Bibb: He also did "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas."

[12:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: He probably made some money from that.

[13:01] Teri Bibb: I don't know what royalties were like back then.

[13:04] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, but I'm sure.

[13:05] Teri Bibb: Yeah.

[13:06] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: So that's Meredith Wilson. It takes him eight years to write the show, 40 drafts, so many different songs. That's when all of, I think, the help from his mentors and friends kind of came in to help him figure out what it was going to be. When it's all ready to be produced, now they're trying to find the cast. And they've got this guy named Morton DaCosta, who's going to be the director.

[13:53] Teri Bibb: And they are then looking for a Harold Hill and a Marion the Librarian. Marion, from the get-go, I think, is Barbara Cook, because Maureen DaCosta had directed Plain and Fancy, which she was in. And then the season before, she had made the huge splashes, Conagunda and Candide. Have you ever had to sing Claire and Piquet?

[14:17] Jeff: No. I actually worked on it a lot. Back in the days when I was touring with Phantom and they were getting ready for the revival that Hal was directing. And since I was working with Hal presently, I was a handful of actresses that were at the top of the list that he wanted to see. But touring is hard on you and singing Christine. So I found it just a skosh too high. If it had been a half step down, you know, if I was completely fresh and rested, but I could sing it, I could sing those high E's at the end. Or they were E flats, E flats, because we had an E in Phantom, but it was just one. When is it? Is it in Think of Me?

[15:03] Teri Bibb: Oh, it's in the cadenzas. She sings three C's in a row and then she sings an E, but we only had to do that once. And this was a lot of E flats at the end of a very long, difficult aria, just over and over and over. And I just found it just a little bit too challenging. I have my hats off to anybody. And I think it's a very specific voice type that that is easy for.

[15:27] Jeff: Right. And Barbara Cook was a, I mean, she was a light soprano.

[15:31] Teri Bibb: Well, but she was also really versatile. And the way she continued her career into her later years and just morphed into this cabaret chanteuse, you know, she sings with such feeling and such emotion. I mean, she was always my idol. That's who I wanted to sing like.

[15:50] Jeff: Really?

[15:51] Teri Bibb: Yeah.

[15:51] Jeff: What, Music Man, She Loves Me, what were your favorites?

[15:53] Teri Bibb: She Loves Me, especially.

[15:54] Jeff: Yeah.

[15:54] Teri Bibb: I mean, that, to me, that is the quintessential soprano role. I mean, great spirit, incredible songs and unbelievable book scenes. I've done that show four times, I think.

[16:09] Jeff: Including New York.

[16:10] Teri Bibb: Yeah, that's where I made my Broadway debut. I was the standby. So I got to do it, I think, 11 times totally. And I quit Phantom. We were at the Kennedy Center at the time. I quit that to do She Loves Me on Broadway.

[16:25] Jeff: I have recorded three episodes at this point, and all of them have included She Loves Me.

[16:34] Teri Bibb: It's just the perfect, to me, it's the perfect little jewel.

[16:38] Jeff: It is a little jewel.

[16:38] Teri Bibb: I love it so much.

[16:39] Jeff: It really is. You're totally right. I might have to have you back and we'll do a She Loves Me.

[16:43] Teri Bibb: I love it so much. Yeah.

[16:45] Jeff: Okay, so Barbara Cook signs on for Marion. Now they're looking for Harold Hill, which is kind of the crooks that the entire show lands on. And she says in her biography that when she went to listen to the score for the first time, that she was there to hear the score and Andy Griffith was there.

[17:06] Teri Bibb: Interesting.

[17:07] Jeff: Isn't that interesting?

[17:07] Teri Bibb: Yeah.

[17:08] Jeff: So he was a possibility. They had also offered it to Gene Kelly, who had turned it down. A lot of people turned it down. Ray Bolger really wanted to do it, who's a fantastic song and dance man, but maybe not much sex appeal. So they passed on him and ultimately gave it to Robert Preston, who at this point was not known as being a musical kind of guy. He was a Hollywood actor, mostly in westerns.

[17:44] Teri Bibb: So he's kind of making his musical theater debut as Harold Hill and just owns it. And when you, there's such an elegance about him and such a musical energy, it's hard to believe that he...

[17:59] Jeff: Because he seems like he's totally in his element.

[18:01] Teri Bibb: Yeah. Yeah, completely. That's exactly how I should have said it. When you've done the show, what would you say the biggest requirements are of the guy playing Harold Hill? What makes a great Harold Hill?

[18:15] Teri Bibb: Confidence and charm and swagger, but there also has to be an underlying sincerity. There has to be an underlying vulnerability, if you will, because he can't be too slick because then he comes off as smarmy and he does some rather unappealing things. And so you have to have that vulnerability and softness to undercut that so that you see him through the eyes that Marion and Winthrop and ultimately the entire town sees him in.

[18:50] Jeff: I think that is the dreamer quality, right? Because more than anything, he's this dreamer. He believes it. He's selling them a tall tale, but there's always a band.

[19:02] Teri Bibb: Yeah. Let's go through the plot a little bit, just kind of go through the show and talk about our favorite moments or maybe even the moments you don't care for. But the show begins with this, like I said, this John Philip Sousa overture, which then gives way to an opening number that has no underscoring whatsoever. And that feels revolutionary to me, that there is an opening number of a musical that has no music.

[19:33] Jeff: Right. And it's quite lengthy. And it establishes a lot of what's happening without being obviously exposition related. I think it's a brilliant piece. And it's one of the more challenging numbers of the piece and one that is rehearsed more than many numbers in the show.

[19:53] Teri Bibb: You get your call for the next day. You're like, oh, they're doing the transient again. Oh, the salesmen are called. Yeah. Because it's just challenging. It's exposed. Everyone has equal weight. And you cannot lose your focus. You have to really keep your ears open. Because it just takes one falter for the whole train to become derailed, so to speak. You lose that rhythm.

[20:21] Jeff: Now, in addition, in addition to being an amazing actress and soprano, you're an amazing proofreader. And a little known fact, you're really good at grammar. And I'm wondering, is there a definition of a, is it onomatopoeia?

[20:42] Teri Bibb: Where it sounds like a word that sounds like what it is?

[20:45] Jeff: Yeah. Yes.

[20:46] Teri Bibb: In a way, this number in and of itself.

[20:49] Jeff: Is the train.

[20:50] Teri Bibb: Is a train, right? Even the words that he's used. Even the, what do you talk? What do you talk? That's the clickety click.

[20:56] Jeff: Yes, sir.

[20:57] Teri Bibb: Oh, yeah.

[20:57] Jeff: Yes, sir. And so all of these salesmen are on the train, right? And they're talking about being salesmen. And since they're on a train, it's almost as though the chug, the momentum of the train has taken over the pattern and patter of speech that they're using to communicate with each other. And during the number, we find out about this guy, Harold Hill, who has made it kind of impossible for any other salesmen in the Midwest, because he goes in and swindles people out of their money and then runs out of town. And so then the next guy who comes in basically gets tired and feathered and shut away. So all of the, all of these stories and rumors are being passed around among this train full of salesmen. And then when it comes to stop in River City, Iowa, a guy stands up and says, you know, I think I'm going to give this place a try. And it turns out Harold Hill's been sitting there the whole time.

[21:51] Jeff: Now they're doing a revival, right? With Hugh Jackman in New York. And I'm just wondering how they're going to do this, because there's no way that an audience in 2019 that's seen Music Man as much as it is, is going to be doing anything but trying to spot where Hugh Jackman is on that train, right? Because you know what I mean? I wonder if they're just going to do it traditionally, if they're going to find out.

[22:14] Teri Bibb: Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, typically what they do is put his back, you know, he's always mostly in profile or even three quarter away from the audience with a hat on, or sometimes even a newspaper. But that becomes obvious if he's the only one not speaking, unless they add more salesmen that don't speak.

[22:30] Jeff: They just have like Winthrop with a suit.

[22:33] Teri Bibb: Yeah, it's a very short salesman sitting there.

[22:37] Jeff: Yeah.

[22:38] Teri Bibb: So anyway, I'm really curious to see what they do. That gives way to kind of the opening number of Iowa, which is called Iowa Stubborn. Now we talked about spending some time in Michigan. That was my first time in the Midwest. But it sounds like you've been on tour a lot. So where are you from originally?

[22:56] Teri Bibb: I was born in Texas and grew up in Oklahoma.

[22:58] Jeff: Oh wait, where in Texas?

[22:59] Teri Bibb: A Big Spring, a little town.

[23:01] Jeff: What? You know Big Spring?

[23:03] Teri Bibb: You're kidding. That's where I served my mission.

[23:06] Jeff: Really?

[23:06] Teri Bibb: Yes.

[23:07] Jeff: That's insane.

[23:08] Teri Bibb: That's crazy. I would go to Big Spring for my district meetings. And I was in an even smaller town called Big Lake, which is like 60 miles north or south.

[23:19] Jeff: Which is hilarious because a lake is bigger than a spring.

[23:24] Teri Bibb: Go figure. What's funny about Big Lake is there is neither a lake nor is it big.

[23:29] Jeff: Right.

[23:29] Teri Bibb: I was there in that little town and we had a car, but you're only allowed to drive so many miles in the car if you didn't have a bike. So we would save all of our miles because we would have to drive to Big Spring each week. And then while we were up there, we would go to Walmart because there weren't any... The grocery stores in Big Lake were just so expensive because of the inflation. You're just this tiny town and so the little local store has golden grams for $6 a box. It's insane. So I know Big Spring really well.

[24:05] Jeff: That is so crazy.

[24:06] Teri Bibb: That's crazy.

[24:07] Jeff: It is crazy. Well, we were there because it was an Air Force town. There was an Air Force base, a Webb Air Force base. My father was Air Force and so career Air Force. So we lived there till I was four. And then we moved to Tacoma, Washington. And that's where my little sister was born. And then in the middle of the fourth grade, after my dad got back from Vietnam, we moved to a little town, Altus, Oklahoma, which is another Air Force town. There's still a base there. And that's where I went to grade school, junior high, high school.

[24:36] Teri Bibb: And so do you consider yourself like an Oklahoma gal?

[24:39] Jeff: Well, yeah. I mean, in that that's where I spent my formative years for sure. And then I went to Oklahoma City University. So yeah, I think of myself more of as but also I've lived so many places and wanted couldn't wait to get out really, you know, just as a child wanted to get out and see the world have adventures. And so don't really define myself in that way.

[25:00] Teri Bibb: I just learned more. So then, you know, the Midwest much better than I do. What, in terms of what Meredith Wilson explores in Iowa Starburn, do you kind of get what he's going for?

[25:14] Jeff: Sure, except for I would say, I not I haven't personally had a lot of Iowa experience other than a few times on tour. I would say that most of the Midwest has a friendlier reputation than than his Iowans.

[25:30] Teri Bibb: Yeah, yeah, totally. Like I there was being an Air Force town, a lot of people would come to Altus from all over the country. And there was a family that had moved in from New Jersey from the East Coast. And they walked into the United grocery store. And four people said, Good morning, how are you today? And they freaked out and left? Why are you talking to me? I don't know you. So I think, yeah, I think it's maybe partially true with their frosty exterior. But it's also a conceit of the show to set up that these people were not easily flim flammed. And yet, or they they purported to to themselves to not be easily flim flammed. And yet they totally were. What I my experience in the Midwest was that there's a refreshing lack of pretense.

[26:16] Jeff: Yeah. Where in California, I think that people, I wouldn't say that people are fake. But I think that people can pretend to be nice to you, because more than likely, they're going to go into the get into their cars and never see you again. You know, so I was like, I can pretend to be nice, because I have my own space. In New York on the East Coast, nobody has their own space. So they just don't have time to pretend to like you. And then in the Midwest, people think, what does pretend mean? Like, they just like, it's not even a concept in terms of culture. So if they're polite, then they're going to be polite and friendly. And if they're not interested in you. Straightforward. This is just straightforward.

Yeah. Anyway, IOA, they, they sing Iowa Stubborn, which is, like you said, establishing this group of people who seem like a challenge for, for Harold Hilt. And he is ultimately trying to sell them a boy's band, get them to buy instruments, get them to buy uniforms, he's going to teach them how to play, you know, and be in the band. But the truth is that he has no training, he doesn't know anything about music and has no intention of teaching them anything about music, and that he'll jump town by before they figure that out. Right. So what he needs is an in to get these people riled up.

[27:46] Teri Bibb: And the inn turns out to be a new pool table that's being, well, I guess installed in the main...

[27:53] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yes, in the billiard parlor.

[27:55] Teri Bibb: In the billiard parlor downtown. And so he starts spreading this rumor that this pool table is going to turn all of the boys in the town to destructive behavior, and they need to get them involved in some sort of wholesome activity... Like a band.

[28:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Like a band. Just an idea. And he does this all through another type of patter song. Is it just called Trouble?

[28:19] Teri Bibb: Yeah.

[28:20] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah? I think it's just called Trouble.

[28:22] Teri Bibb: Which is a tour de force and really fun to watch. I wanted to talk a little bit about Ona White at this point, because I think that she's a choreographer that most people don't know about. And yet if you go to see, say, The Music Man, you will see touches of her all over the place because she came up with such an iconic vocabulary in terms of dance. And I think the first example was right here in Trouble with the pulses. Trouble, trouble, trouble. Or, oh, we got trouble with the shimmery jazz hands. Those are all things that she established right at the beginning. And every community theater you're going to go to is probably going to lift those things very lovingly from that original stuff. But what's really interesting is that she was nominated for Tony Awards her entire life.

She never won one. And every time she had a big hit, like The Music Man, there was always another hit that same season that maybe wasn't as big, but had a more celebrated choreographic element. So in this case, Music Man, West Side Story, Jerome Robbins, right, is the one who steps forward as like the big choreographer of the season. She does Mame, which also is a huge, huge hit. But that same season is Sweet Charity. So Bob Fosse takes the gold for that. And then later on, she just kind of keeps getting assigned, I don't know, assigned or chooses these projects that just aren't very good. Like I Love My Wife and these flop shows, which she does quality work for, but aren't hits and kind of do nothing for her.

[30:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I didn't realize that she never got a Tony.

[30:03] Teri Bibb: Isn't that strange? But The Music Man, her work in that is every bit as iconic as any other Hello Dolly, West Side Story. Try seeing a Shapoopy that doesn't have the little, you know, legs back and forth cakewalk sort of thing. Or the trombones in 76 Trombones.

[30:20] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Absolutely. I love Music Man as well, because there are so many great characters. So you've got Harold Hill, you've got all the salesmen, you've got these, and then these really interesting people in Iowa, all of whom have backstories and names. And you've got the mayor, who is constantly trying to give his Gettysburg address, and thinks that he, like many small town governments, thinks he's much more important than he actually is. He always has these lines that are this close to being the right saying, but they're not.

[30:54] Teri Bibb: Right. He's full of malapropisms, always. Yeah, that's what-

[30:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: What was that?

[30:59] Teri Bibb: Malapropism.

[31:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Wow, write it down, podcast listeners.

[31:04] Teri Bibb: It might not be the correct use of that word.

[31:07] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I don't know, it sounds cool.

[31:07] Teri Bibb: Malaprops.

[31:08] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah?

[31:09] Teri Bibb: Yeah. Another funny thing, since I've done seven productions of it, it is often the case that the man that they have cast as Mayor Shin has trouble with those lines.

[31:21] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, really?

[31:22] Teri Bibb: Yeah. I mean, maybe-

[31:23] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Just trying to remember why they're wrong?

[31:26] Teri Bibb: Maybe it's, yeah, what exactly is wrong with them? And so sometimes it's a joke within a joke, as far as the cast goes, because the line is written incorrectly, and the actor can't seem to get it right. And so-

[31:38] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Can't get the incorrect right. That's kind of brilliant.

[31:41] Teri Bibb: Yeah, that's kind of brilliant. We had Dear Alan Young as our Mayor Shin, Mr. Ed fame.

[31:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh!

[31:47] Teri Bibb: When I did it in '98 with-

[31:48] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Wait, was he Wilbur?

[31:51] Teri Bibb: Yes. Well, wasn't the horse Wilbur?

[31:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, I don't know.

[31:55] Teri Bibb: The horse was Mr. Ed.

[31:56] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's right. Yes, he was Wilbur.

[31:57] Teri Bibb: Oh my gosh, how cool.

[31:59] Teri Bibb: And he was a marvelous Mayor Shin, but he also struggled with those lines, and he would just kind of stutter along until he finally got it out. And it added, it was a great quality for Mayor Shin, and he was so endearing as a person.

[32:14] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: That's fantastic.

[32:15] Teri Bibb: Yeah.

[32:15] Teri Bibb: His wife is Yulele LePay.

[32:17] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yulele, which is a great character.

[32:19] Teri Bibb: I mean-

[32:19] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, I hope to play her someday.

[32:21] Teri Bibb: You'd just graduate. You're like, skip Widow Peru, I want to go straight to UK.

[32:25] Teri Bibb: Yulele McEchnie Shin. I love that she's three names as someone who's Jeffrey Scott Parsons. Like, she is a woman who must be called by all three names at any moment.

[32:34] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And she's reticent. She has great lines as well.

[32:38] Teri Bibb: She has fantastic lines.

[32:40] Teri Bibb: The Grecian urns.

[32:41] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh my gosh. The first time where we see her, she's participating in this patriotic display, and she's kind of a conundrum in that she seems to be both dedicated to the arts and then also-

[32:56] Teri Bibb: Very judgy about them.

[32:57] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Very judgy about them, right? Because she doesn't like Marion and her books.

[33:02] Teri Bibb: Right.

[33:02] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And yet she's constantly looking out for the welfare of the community in terms of being exposed to the arts. So it's kind of, it's an interesting character.

[33:11] Teri Bibb: Yeah. Yeah.

[33:12] Teri Bibb: You've got all of her minions, all of whom have names.

[33:16] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: The Pickle Little Ladies.

[33:16] Teri Bibb: The Pickle Little Ladies. Can you explain to me Marcellus? How do he and Harold Hill know each other?

[33:23] Teri Bibb: They were in business. They traveled together for a period. He was his sidekick. Marcellus was his-

[33:33] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And were they doing the boys band at that point?

[33:35] Teri Bibb: Yes, they were. They did many things, including the band.

[33:40] Teri Bibb: And then they had too many close shapes for Marcellus's taste, so he somehow ended up in this town.

[33:46] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Kind of settling down and leaving that life.

[33:49] Teri Bibb: Yes, leaving that life behind until Greg, as he knows Harold Hill, Greg shows up and he says, he's the one who tells him about the pool table.

[33:59] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And does he know that Marcellus lives there, or is it just purely coincidence?

[34:02] Teri Bibb: No, it's purely coincidence.

[34:04] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Okay.

[34:04] Teri Bibb: Yeah, he has no idea.

[34:05] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Wow, that's impressive. So then he's helping Harold Hill.

[34:09] Teri Bibb: Lay the groundwork and puts him in contact with Marion.

[34:14] Teri Bibb: Yeah, tells him that he won't get anywhere in this town because there's a stuck up librarian that's also the music teacher and she'll expose you.

[34:21] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Immediately. But Harold Hill's like, actually, I've made it an art of doing music teachers. I got this, no problem. He starts to try to do that. And Marion immediately shuts him down.

[34:33] Teri Bibb: Yeah. I remember going to see a production of The Music Man and you were in the audience and we had a little conversation afterward. And I remember just seeing how passionate you were about the character and connecting to her depth and that it's not just a typical ingenue. How do you see her?

[34:54] Teri Bibb: Well, there are a lot of theories as to how she ended up in this town.

[34:58] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, interesting.

[34:59] Teri Bibb: And how she ended up befriending old Miser Madison and inheriting this job at the library and the books. I've worked with some directors who think Winthrop is actually her child.

[35:13] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Okay, come on, people.

[35:15] Teri Bibb: I know.

[35:17] Teri Bibb: And it does become problematic as one ages in this role.

[35:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: To have a little brother who's 10.

[35:27] Teri Bibb: That's fair.

[35:28] Teri Bibb: I'm like, well, let's see, I'm 40 and I have a 10-year-old boy, Widow Peru. She was fertile for a lot of years.

[35:35] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It was a surprise.

[35:38] Teri Bibb: Yeah. So there is that element. But some people just, you know, they read a little more into the backstory as to why this happened. So I personally just think that she tells her mother about being backed into the library desk by Luther Grider or somebody's removable backseat. I think she's had bad experiences with dating men, especially being an intelligent, articulate, well-read single woman of a certain age for that time period. She wasn't just going to give in to just anybody.

[36:12] Teri Bibb: And she has standards, as her mother said, way too high of standards.

[36:18] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: She was never going to meet.

[36:20] Teri Bibb: Who do you expect this knight in shining armor to come riding up?

[36:23] Teri Bibb: And that's why she sings My White Knight to her mom to explain what she's looking for.

[36:29] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Do you think that there is a degree of men hoping that she is desperate enough to just kind of sleep with whoever?

[36:38] Teri Bibb: I would imagine so. But also that's why she's judged so harshly by the women in the town, is that she's not giving in. She's not living the life that they're all expecting her.

[36:50] Teri Bibb: And I get the impression that she's more educated, that I don't know if she actually went to like, I didn't do enough research to know if back in 1910, 11, 12, if there were women's colleges, I'm assuming there were, that she could go for a year or two, maybe, and maybe had a bad experience with a love interest, or maybe it was just that her father was ill. That's why she came home to take care of her mother and her younger brother.

[37:17] Teri Bibb: I think maybe subconsciously, that's what I always felt.

[37:20] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. But she's stuck in, for whatever reason, she's stuck in this provincial place that she doesn't feel she belongs. And she's a dreamer, too.

[37:29] Teri Bibb: That's beautiful. So they are kindred spirits, though they may not recognize it at the beginning.

[37:35] Teri Bibb: When she comes home, there's a little girl playing the piano, because she's a librarian, but she's also a piano teacher. So she's, Amaryllis is the little girl, and she's there taking her piano lesson. And this is another great example of Meredith Wilson using something narrative driven to create a song. So you've got her exercises, her piano exercises, and her little pieces that she's rehearsing, that become the way that Widow Peru and Marion are communicating. And it's so smart.

[38:10] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It is very smart.

[38:11] Teri Bibb: It's a great, great scene. In it, Marion's kind of revealing all of this information about neither does anybody else in this town. And Widow Peru's shooting down everything that she, you know, every gun in her artillery. At which point, then Winthrop, the little boy comes in, and Amaryllis tries to talk to him. It's obvious that Amaryllis has a crush on him. And he won't say anything. Widow Peru makes him say something to her, say her name, which then reveals that he has this horrible lisp. And Amaryllis laughs. And then Winthrop gets angry. And then Amaryllis has the audacity to say, why does he get so angry? And I really want Marion to be like, because you're being a dick. But they don't. Instead, they try and like, shit some sort of...

[39:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Because I think the whole idea is that Amaryllis has a crush on him. And when you're in elementary school, that idea of making fun of somebody, but also having a crush on them is...

[39:24] Teri Bibb: Yeah, just like little boys throwing footballs in your face when they like you.

[39:28] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, it makes no sense, but that's what it is. Then they sing Goodnight, My Someone, which is also attached to one of her crosshand piece that Amaryllis plays. And here is one of the things that I kind of want to talk about. Because even though Marion is a very intelligent, you know, not at all stereotypical character, every song that she sings is about a man, essentially. And when we were recording the episode about Fiddler on the Roof, I kind of shared this experience that the first time I was exposed to the show, Golda scared me. Like, her character just seemed a little off-putting to me. And it has sent me down this road of wondering, is musical theater full of female stereotypes, or women who play them like stereotypes, or audience members like me who just have this really narrow idea of what women are and should act like? It's probably a combination of all three.

[40:36] Teri Bibb: Oh, yeah. I think it most definitely is a combination of all three.

[40:40] Teri Bibb: But especially for, I mean, sopranos in soprano roles, who are usually ingenues, what's your experience with that?

[40:48] Teri Bibb: That's a very loaded question, because it's something that I've struggled with, especially as I've gotten older. I'm in my 50s now, and the work has really dried up. That's why I created my own show. That's why I do mostly concerts now, and more plays, because there are more roles in plays for women as they get older. But for musical theater women, sopranos are inevitably ingenues, or young leading women. And then you can stretch it a little bit. And you have Anna Leonowens in The King and I, who can be a little older. Marion is often played a little older, meaning really into her late 30s as an actress. Now, I played Marion into my — way longer than I should have.

[41:40] Teri Bibb: But there aren't roles with the exception of the Mother Abbess in The Sound of Music, and she's usually cast like really character-y. She's often cast very heavy set or very motherly and matronly. She's not cast physically the way I look. I still look the way I looked when I was playing Christine in Phantom. I'm just older, but I'm still the same size. I still sing the same way. So there's the Mother Abbess. There's Nettie Fowler in Carousel, June's best and not all of her. But again, she's usually cast more character-y. Then there's Margaret in Light in the Piazza. And when that came along, I was like, oh, hallelujah. I got to play that. I played that at Farmer's Alley in Kalamazoo. And that's a brilliant acting role and a beautiful, legit soprano singing role.

And she's a woman in her 50s. But that is really it. Every other role is, you look at the canon, you look at Mama Rose, you look at Golda, they're all belty character women. I don't know what the sopranos are supposed to do. I don't know if we're just expected to have babies and retire, go away, or evolve the way Barbara Cook did. But you don't see... But even then Barbara didn't do shows in her later years. She never did a brilliant book musical after The Grasshopper. And she didn't stay looking the way she always looked when she was young. So yeah, it's a very... I don't understand it. I've never understood it. And there used to be Kate in Kiss Me, Kate. That was a role. Catherine Grayson did the film.

That was a role that you could age into. But when they did the recent revivals with God Rest Your Soul, Maren Mazzie, and other ones since then, they've lowered all the keys, at least a third. Wow. I don't think I realized that. So it's a little more mezzo-y. Yeah. And I went in to audition for it in the last 10 years. And the director said, oh yeah, this is the lower key. And I was like, oh, I didn't know that. And he said, yeah, it's just so much warmer and less shrill. And I was like, really? I think my voice is very warm. I don't know why you say that. Yeah. So they took that one away.

[43:49] Jeff Parsons: Wow. That's interesting.

[43:50] Teri Bibb: I got to do it in August with the Marina del Rey Symphony. And they did, because it was a 56-piece symphony, the only keys available were the original keys. So I got to sing it. Oh, that's amazing. But yeah. But even with Marian, I wonder, because Sutton Foster's playing it in New York, I wonder what the keys are going to be for that. Even that, remember the TV version?

[44:09] Jeff Parsons: Oh yeah, they lowered it for Kristen.

[44:12] Teri Bibb: And Kristen had the high notes, but they lowered it. They hired a soprano and then changed the keys.

[44:15] Jeff Parsons: I don't understand it. I don't understand it.

[44:17] Teri Bibb: At some point, we decided that in order to be a smart woman, you couldn't be a soprano, is what it looks like to me.

[44:24] Jeff Parsons: Yeah. And it doesn't really make sense to me. Why are they equated?

[44:31] Teri Bibb: Yeah.

[44:32] Jeff Parsons: You know, why can't you sing high and beautifully and be a woman of substance?

[44:37] Teri Bibb: Yeah. It doesn't make sense.

[44:39] Jeff Parsons: Do you and Rebecca Luker just get together and have these conversations? In my mind, that's what I do.

[44:44] Teri Bibb: I wish. I mean, I could see us having it. I don't get to see her very often. And it was funny, because she was always a step ahead of me in New York. So one of the reasons I left New York partly because my husband, Andy, wanted to come out here and do more film and TV. And at the time, there wasn't much film and TV in New York. Now there is a ton, but back then there wasn't 22 years ago when we moved out here. But one of the reasons I did was, it seemed to me that my option was to stay in Phantom. All roads seem to lead back to Phantom. And I was really ready to do something else or to understudy Rebecca and whatever she was doing next.

[45:19] Jeff Parsons: For you, Rebecca is alternate in Phantom.

[45:24] Teri Bibb: Because she was always just one step ahead of me. She'd been there longer. That's just the way things played out. And I love her. I think she's terrific.

[45:33] Jeff Parsons: Oh, she is wonderful. Beautiful soprano and a lovely person.

[45:36] Teri Bibb: Because you spent so much time with Phantom, do you feel like Christine is a smart person?

[45:44] Teri Bibb: You know what, that's a very valid question. Because I think that when we first started, because I started with the national tour, so there was Broadway and there was LA, and then we were the next company. I think when we first started, there was a school of thought that she was supposed to be played really dumb. She's just like this wide-eyed...

[46:06] Jeff Parsons: Yeah.

[46:06] Teri Bibb: And I didn't get that at all. I played her as a woman struggling with the loss of her father, who had this talent and didn't really know what to do with it.

[46:14] Jeff Parsons: Wow, I didn't even think about that.

[46:15] Teri Bibb: And this voice appears in her dressing room, and he's coaching her. He's teaching her how to sing. And she's really ambitious. She takes over for Carlotta and sings this aria at the top of the show. And she's confused by all of it. She's confused because he's mixed up in her mind as this father figure and mentor and teacher. And yet there's obviously a component where of mystery and allure. I didn't choose to go to the sexual places. Some people, like in the sequel, I guess they've slept together. And that's totally gross to me, because if they did, it was in the boat. And she wakes up in the boat and has very hazy memories, and that means what happened there. Christine, me too. I don't even want to think about that.

Because to me, he was a father figure and a mentor, and that's why she went with Raoul at the end. Not because he was deformed. And that is a deeper choice for Christine as well, because then it doesn't have really anything to do with the malformity of his face.

[47:19] Jeff Parsons: Right. It was his soul. She says it to him.

[47:22] Teri Bibb: Even though from his perspective, it is. Then of course, you couldn't love me because da-da-da-da. And she's like, no, it's because I think of you as my dad. And because you've done all these horrible things. You killed Luque.

[47:34] Jeff Parsons: Well, that's fair enough.

[47:35] Teri Bibb: And you've got Raoul in a noose. You're going to kill him in a minute and all that stuff. He's done some despicable things.

[47:41] Jeff Parsons: Well, that's fascinating.

[47:43] Teri Bibb: Because he was picked on.

[47:45] Jeff Parsons: Right. Not without blame, these men.

[47:50] Teri Bibb: So I chose not to play her dumb. I mean, the way the show is written, she's not as complex a character, and a lot of that is just choices that you make. I would have loved to have seen you do it. Because I think that on the page, to me, she seems a little victim-y.

[48:10] Teri Bibb: I got a note from Hal. I went through, I pulled, I've saved them all. He was a prolific writer. And I would send him birthday cards.

[48:17] Jeff Parsons: Hal Prince, by the way.

[48:18] Teri Bibb: He would write me back. And after he passed this summer, I pulled out all my notes from him, and just laid them out on the desk and reread them. And some of them I had forgotten. And in one of them, he said something about how much he appreciated my intelligence in the role.

[48:38] Jeff Parsons: What a great compliment.

[48:39] Teri Bibb: Yeah, I really took that to heart.

[48:41] Jeff Parsons: All right, sorry, back to Music Man. We get to see kind of the first big push for Harold Hill to try and court Marian in the library scene.

[48:49] Teri Bibb: Right, so that's after 76. So he's already started wooing the town in 76, and she's having no part of it. And so then he tries with her again, and she says, I have a shelf full of books in there, which will expose you. So you know, I'm not as easily hoodwinked and mesmerized as some people in this town. So then he follows her in the library. And that's another example of Anna White's brilliant choreography, the use of the books and the rolling library cart, and the students getting rambunctious with their dance while being completely quiet because they're in the library.

[49:30] Jeff Parsons: I'm also kind of obsessed with the fact that the kids go to the library to hang out. I don't think we give enough time to the fact that they're all in the library really loving life.

[49:43] Teri Bibb: Yeah. I want that. I want that. I want to live in that town.

[49:46] Jeff Parsons: Yeah.

[49:47] Teri Bibb: But you're exactly right, especially with the kind of hook that... And then you've got this rhythmic stamping of the books that fits so perfectly in it. It's another one of those songs that sounds like exactly what it should be in this. And it makes you wonder if they named her Marion, just so she could rhyme with librarian for this song.

[50:10] Jeff Parsons: Fair enough. You know, I wonder how early in the process that happened, or if it was just a coincidence.

[50:15] Teri Bibb: I mean, that's a fantastic coincidence, if that's the case.

[50:19] Jeff Parsons: In terms of your arc with the character, by the end of Marion the Librarian, where does she stand with him?

[50:26] Teri Bibb: I think she's sexually attracted to him. He gets in her face a lot in that number. And she gets carried away in some of the dancing. And she hasn't danced with a man in a long time. And he's obviously very attractive. I think she found him attractive the first time she saw him. But that number in the library is the first time she allows herself to give in a little bit. And that even makes her more angry. Because she catches herself at the end, and he sticks the marshmallow in her mouth. And she goes to slap him, and she misses, and she hits Tommy Jealous instead.

[51:31] Teri Bibb: It's like, jelly kill.

[51:32] Jeff Parsons: Well, it makes just as much sense.

[51:33] Teri Bibb: Yeah, I mean, what are you going to do, right?

[51:37] Jeff Parsons: Okay, what happens after Marion the Librarian?

[51:40] Teri Bibb: He shows up on her front porch, and he's wooing Mrs. Peru. Winthrop comes out and says a few sentences.

[51:47] Jeff Parsons: Because he's so excited.

[51:48] Teri Bibb: Yeah, he's excited about the band uniforms. He's going to get measured for a band uniform, and he asks if there's going to be a big, wide stripe up the side. And she witnesses this, and she's already angry that she gave in. And now she sees that he's working on her family, and especially her kid brother, who's hurting and vulnerable. And that's when she really lets loose on him. That's the harshest that she is with him.

[51:54] Jeff Parsons: Oh, that's right.

[51:56] Teri Bibb: So the next time she sees him, she's just as furious. And she's furious at him, and she's furious at herself.

[52:03] Jeff Parsons: Okay, my first experience with The Music Man was in a community theater production when I was in high school. And the Tommy Jealous, I can't remember what happened. But they brought me in, like, final dress to learn the show. And my one memory of the whole thing was that I was so flustered, I kept saying, jelly kill, instead of Julie Clyde.

[52:16] Jeff Parsons: And that leads right into My White Night.

[52:18] Teri Bibb: It's interesting that your director talked about this idea that Marion could be Winthrop's mom, because there is a real protectiveness, and in a way that a woman post-divorce would be about a new guy trying to get in with the kid, not knowing what the commitment or the future of the relationship is going to be. How dare you get my son to fall in love with you when you may be gone the next day?

[52:40] Jeff Parsons: There is kind of that play.

[52:49] Teri Bibb: Then she sings My White Night, which is fantastic. It's really an aria.

[52:53] Jeff Parsons: It is.

[52:55] Teri Bibb: And I remember in Barbara Cook's book, she talks about how she would give herself a task to help keep the show fresh when she was in New York. And one of the ones that she always liked to give herself was, how courageous are you going to be to communicate and act this song without needing to move around a lot? Which I thought is a really interesting way of looking at it. Because she's a very active performer, emotionally speaking. But then how do you communicate that without feeling like you need to move a lot?

[53:31] Jeff Parsons: And that's the kind of song that can hold that kind of dramatic power, I think.

[53:38] Teri Bibb: That's not the end of Act One, though.

[53:40] Jeff Parsons: No.

[53:41] Teri Bibb: Wells Fargo.

[53:42] Jeff Parsons: Yeah, Wells Fargo happens.

[53:44] Teri Bibb: Right after that, right?

[53:45] Jeff Parsons: Yeah, I have this love of Wells Fargo because then you really, especially in community theater productions, you get to see all of the different solos.

[53:53] Teri Bibb: Yeah.

[53:54] Jeff Parsons: And you...

[53:55] Teri Bibb: I bought a box of maple syrup on my birthday.

[53:58] Jeff Parsons: Exactly. And you're like, that guy probably works for the post office during the day.

[54:04] Teri Bibb: Yeah. Like, this little girl wants to be Annie so bad.

[54:09] Jeff Parsons: Right.

[54:09] Teri Bibb: You just get to see all the personalities.

[54:10] Jeff Parsons: Yeah, and I've done quite a few of those kind of productions where they would bring in three or four or five, you know, equity actors from some place, and then the rest of the company would be locals. My friend Audrey, she says, there are a lot of neighbors in that production.

[54:28] Teri Bibb: I've always wanted to see a production of Music Man in Fresno. Because in my mind, somebody goes, I hope I get my raisins from Fresno, and the whole audience just like bursts into applause.

[54:39] Jeff Parsons: That's what... Like they do at rock concerts.

[54:41] Teri Bibb: Yeah.

[54:41] Jeff Parsons: They say, hey, Chicago!

[54:42] Teri Bibb: Yeah, exactly. But you do it as a Music Man. That's my dream. That's my musical theater dream.

[54:48] Teri Bibb: So, thifter, thifter, Winthrop gets his...

[54:52] Jeff Parsons: Cornet.

[54:53] Teri Bibb: His cornet from the Wells Fargo wagon, which is a... Harold Hill personally hands it to him. Which is a delivery system, I guess we should say. Like the Wells Fargo wagon...

[55:00] Jeff Parsons: That's how they got their packages.

[55:02] Teri Bibb: The Amazon of this day. So he's bringing all the packages. Harold Hill gives the cornet to Winthrop. He's elated. And all fear of the lisp completely goes away.

[55:14] Jeff Parsons: Yeah.

[55:15] Teri Bibb: And she can't help but be touched by that.

[55:32] Teri Bibb: That will ultimately prove that he is a fake. He didn't go to the Gary Conservatory conservation class of ought five.

[55:44] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And she decides to destroy the evidence, yeah?

[55:48] Teri Bibb: Yeah, well, she doesn't destroy it, but she tears it out and puts it in a safe place. She doesn't give it to the mayor.

[55:52] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: All right. Oh, oh, we forgot the quartet.

[55:55] Teri Bibb: Oh, yes, the Barbershop Quartet. I love that in 2019, people still lose their minds.

[56:00] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, yeah. You could have that Barbershop Quartet perform at a high school. You could have high school kids come to see The Music Man, and they would still kill.

[56:10] Teri Bibb: Yeah. People lose their minds over that stuff. What do you think it is?

[56:14] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I don't know. I think it's something about the tight harmonies and just the way the barbershop tradition of being in really close and then to expand into a wider chord with that straight tone and that swell and a really good barbershop sound is so electric. My mom sang with the Sweet Adelines for years, the Sweet Adeline Chorus.

[56:39] Teri Bibb: What are they called? I can't think of it. It's a nationwide...

[56:42] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Like an association?

[56:43] Teri Bibb: Actually, it's international.

[56:44] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Really?

[56:44] Teri Bibb: It's international, and they have competitions, and they have quartet competitions, and then they have chorus competitions. That's what my mom did. She was in the chorus. The choruses are huge. They can be 150, 200 people. They stand on risers, and the front row does choreography, and the back rows do handography here and there. They sing these incredible barbershop arrangements. I don't remember where it was, but my mom's chorus, which they were the Rich Tones outside Dallas-Fort Worth, Richardson, Texas. Is that right? The Rich Tones, and they were an award-winning chorus. They were in the national finals, I think, and they were rehearsing, and I went into the room and listened to them rehearse for a half an hour.

I can't tell you how many times they would just hit a chord. Every hair on my body would stand straight up, and tears would just spurt from my eyes. I wouldn't feel emotional. I wouldn't feel like, oh, I'm going to cry. I would just suddenly go, oh, tears are spurting out of my eyes. It was a physical response to these chords, to the harmonics, to the overtones, to the pure tone of these 160 voices all coming together, and the way they start in one place and all slide in opposite directions and all land at the same time. It's just electric, and that's when these four guys do it. In the midst of having these goofy characters and these arguments, when they just burst into these really pure barbershop sounds, I think it's always very effective.

And such a genius way of incorporating into the story as well, that they're the school board who can't get along until he teaches them how to sing, and he hears them all kind of arguing in their registers and identifies their timbres as being perfect for barbershop, which kind of leads you to think that maybe he does know a little bit about music. And so then he says to the women of the town, you'll never see these four apart, and they're like, that's ridiculous. But then he's totally right. They find this harmony that they haven't been able to find as colleagues.

[59:02] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, and very effectively used throughout the show in different, like you were asking me earlier if I had a favorite moment in the show. One of my favorite moments in the show is singing Light a Rose, singing my counterpoint to Light a Rose. I love that. I love it so much that I put it in my solo show. And then they come back and sing that again, after Charlie Cowell lays the bombshell on her about how many women he's been with. And that was another one of my favorite moments, because they would do this crossing of this beautiful Light a Rose stuff, and they would go, Good evening, Miss Marion. And that was a really nice way for me to get to the emotional space I needed to be in for Harold's re-entrance after I've just heard that he's got a woman, a music teacher in every town. That's heavy.

[59:50] Teri Bibb: Yeah. How great that you have something musical to get you into. For me, music is always...

[59:54] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. Well, and I think it is, even when you were saying, I wasn't even necessarily emotionally moved by this, but just because of the way that it sounded, my body involuntarily responded. That's why we have film scores, because your body responds to the spooky music and the Jaws music and the swell of beautiful vistas. You have a physical response to that. Act Two begins with Shapoopy.

[1:00:21] Teri Bibb: Yes. And that is my least favorite moment in the show.

[1:00:25] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Is it? How come?

[1:00:30] Teri Bibb: It feels formulaic to me. And even though I've done it several different times, and we've done it some different ways, it's always, you end up standing up and flapping your arms and doing this goofy dance. I don't know.

[1:00:40] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Welcome to my life.

[1:00:41] Teri Bibb: Like, how am I going to make this one work?

[1:00:48] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. And the song itself, I find a little bit problematic in today's, you know, I just...

[1:00:52] Teri Bibb: Oh, I don't think I've ever even listened to the...

[1:00:53] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. A woman who'll kiss on the very first date is usually a hussy, and the second time out is anything but fussy.

[1:01:06] Teri Bibb: Yeah. And the third time around, she's a girl I'm glad I found. She's my Shapoopy.

[1:01:14] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. So it's a little... The girl who's hard to get.

[1:01:19] Teri Bibb: Yeah. I mean, is it meant to be you? Is it meant to be Mary?

[1:01:24] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, I don't think so. Like, the girl who's hard to get is your Shapoopy?

[1:01:30] Teri Bibb: Gosh, I never thought of it that way. I don't know. It's Marcellus. You know, I mean, we have to talk to some Marcelluses and see what they think.

[1:01:37] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I'm sure they did a lot. I'm sure Buddy Hackett really, like, picked a part. Get Jason Graw in here.

[1:01:41] Teri Bibb: I'm sure he has a lot of opinions. Jason, tell me about Marcellus and why he's the most important part of The Music Man.

[1:01:47] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: But great choreography. Why not? You get to see the kids dance their faces off. After that, this is when it becomes a love story.

[1:01:55] Teri Bibb: Yeah.

[1:01:56] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah. And it's all kind of leading up to this...

[1:01:59] Teri Bibb: It's the ice cream sociable.

[1:02:03] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, it was a different time. I'm actually kind of interested now, after having had this conversation, of moving to River City, but only in the Music Man time period.

[1:02:11] Teri Bibb: Right.

[1:02:12] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Because I want to have parties at the library and ice cream sociables.

[1:02:18] Teri Bibb: Yeah. Sounds great.

[1:02:25] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Gay rights probably don't exist. But that's okay.

[1:02:29] Teri Bibb: Yeah. They got to meet somewhere behind the footbridge. They couldn't meet on the footbridge.

[1:02:35] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Just under the footbridge. Like a little troll.

[1:02:38] Teri Bibb: Let's actually skip right until there was you, if you don't mind.

[1:02:41] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Oh, actually, no, we should talk about Charlie Cowell.

[1:02:43] Teri Bibb: Yeah. Well, there's the Charlie Cowell moment where he exposes him for what he really is. And she still makes the decision to stick up for him.

[1:02:51] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And another component, since you mentioned being thrust into the role of Tommy Chulis, is that he's kind of important in Marion's transformation as well.

[1:03:02] Teri Bibb: Tommy is?

[1:03:03] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Yeah, because he wasn't kind of a bad kid.

[1:03:07] Teri Bibb: Oh, that is true. He was kind of a ne'er-do-well. And Harold, giving him tasks, giving him mechanically minded, giving him the place for a flute player to behold his music, it took him off the streets. I think because he had heard for so long that he was a bad kid, he started to believe it. And Harold was the first one who said, you're not a bad kid.

[1:03:27] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: It makes me really think about Harold Hill's background. Like, was he that kid? Did he just kind of raise himself and figure out how to make a living? And then in the meanwhile, kind of gain a sense of empathy for anybody who doesn't have someone to believe in them?

[1:03:44] Teri Bibb: Yeah. I think this is a good moment, since we're talking about Charlie, the salesman, and calling out Harold Hill for what he is, which is a con man, that this, in many ways, not just because of how it sounds and because it takes place in the heart of America, it is a quintessentially American musical. Harold Hill, this type of character, who in many ways is like the epitome of the American dream, right? There is a little bit of the think system in every immigrant that comes to this country, thinking, I don't know how this is going to work, but I'm going to believe that it will. And kind of that, the craziness of that is something that we really esteem as American. It's why I think The Music Man feels very patriotic to people. I think it's why P.T. Barnum is a controversial character that we continually write about and, I mean, with The Greatest Showman, celebrate.

[1:05:03] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And I think it also, getting political here, I also think that it is kind of a gateway into having a personality like we have in the White House, and the polarity of the country and looking at that, looking at President Trump. Because in recently watching The Music Man, I couldn't help but feel like, oh, this is how Trump supporters view progressives, quote-unquote. The Charlie Cowles who come in and say, this is a con man. This is someone who is only out for himself. And then everybody else are, you know, the supporters saying, it doesn't really matter, because what he represents and gives to me is much more than what you're complaining about.

[1:05:46] Teri Bibb: Right. And even more than that, the whole trouble, him stirring up the town and making them worried about that is exactly what Trump did when he was running with the whole wall, the border wall and the Mexicans and the rapists and all that. It's very similar.

[1:06:01] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Really stirring up. Give them something to rally around and to get behind. Regardless of if it's true or not, yeah, valid or not.

[1:06:09] Teri Bibb: It makes me wonder, what is the difference between President Trump and Harold Hill? Like, why are we okay in musical theater with Harold Hill, but not President Trump?

[1:06:25] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: Well, besides the obvious that one is a piece of entertainment in real life, there's also the, what's at stake? You know, a bunch of boys in their band uniforms or democracy, as we know, or, you know, wars breaking out, you know, international relationships and allies and all of that. I mean, there's much more at stake here than what's at stake in the musical.

[1:06:52] Teri Bibb: I also think that in terms of the person, Harold Hill paints himself to, excuse me, surely be a savior of the town. And in many ways, as we said, kind of had to convince them they needed a savior, first of all. But he does take himself off the pedestal. We get the cathartic moment in the musical of him, of once it's come out, that he, you know, is kind of a con, a fake, that he sits down Winthrop. And it's very interesting that specifically, it's this little boy. And he says, I will tell you the truth about anything you ask. And what does Winthrop ask? Are you a fake? Yes. And he tells the truth. He says exactly who he is to this little boy. And I find it interesting that it's to Winthrop, and it's not Marion, and it's not anybody in the town.

It's the most innocent, who's gained the most, if you will, from his presence. And that moment of truth, is, I think, really helpful to us as an audience, to continue finding these characters endearing. Whereas I just, I think, maybe collectively, we don't get that from our current president.

[1:08:08] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: No, no sense of self-awareness, or aware of his own flaws, or any of that.

[1:08:15] Teri Bibb: I think that might be, for me, kind of the key to, to thinking that Harold Hill isn't just a total scumbag. The cool thing is that, I guess, Marion has reached the point in herself, where she doesn't need the truth.

[1:08:34] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I don't know, what do you think?

[1:08:35] Teri Bibb: Well, she, what she says to Winthrop is that it doesn't really matter that he gave you guys something to dream about, not just him, but herself, and the ladies, and the barbershop quartet. And she, she, she has seen with her own eyes, what he did for the town, just by giving them something to dream about, to plan for, to...

[1:09:01] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And that big emotional complex, of course, happens, of course, during the ice cream sociable.

[1:09:02] Teri Bibb: Right.

[1:09:03] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: And one of my favorite things about musicals, a chase scene.

[1:09:06] Teri Bibb: Yeah.

[1:09:07] Jeffrey Scott Parsons: I love a good chase scene. Let's rewind just a little bit before that, though, and talk about Till There Was You, which I think is kind of a tricky scene, because it includes one of the longest kisses.

[1:09:23] Teri Bibb: But it's orchestrated. It's underscored.

[1:09:25] Teri Bibb: So you just kind of, I mean, when I did Crazy for You, I felt like that was one of the longest kisses because you've been dancing so hard. And so you don't actually kiss, you just breathe, you just breathe on the other person into each other's mouths, like CPR style. And everyone's like, oh, it's so romantic. It's disgusting. So at least it's not that, but still, it's very, very long, and can easily just become, I think, a prom pose and a pretty song.

[1:09:53] Jeff Parsons: Yeah, see, I've never thought of it that way. Because I think of it as an incredibly passionate song and kiss. I mean, this woman has not been kissed a really long time. And she, in my version, every time I've done it, I've kissed him. He did not kiss me.

[1:10:13] Teri Bibb: Suffrage.

[1:10:14] Jeff Parsons: Yeah, well, first, first, he's trying to explain and she puts her fingers on his mouth. And she's like, no, no, you don't understand. My life, you have opened up my life. I never heard the bells. I never saw the birds. You know, you have, you have given me all of this. And it doesn't matter if I never see you again, because I will have had this. But before you go, I am going to kiss you and kiss you like I mean it. So I have never felt prom posy about it.

[1:10:45] Teri Bibb: That's so great. I love that. Now Marion has the entire, I mean, she kind of sings the entire thing first, right?

[1:10:50] Teri Bibb: Right. And then does he?

[1:10:52] Jeff Parsons: He joins her after the kiss.

[1:10:54] Teri Bibb: Does he sing it by himself a little bit?

[1:10:56] Jeff Parsons: After he confesses to Winthrop. And I, and he says, I wish you'd never come to River City. And I say, No, you don't. Look, look at all the stuff he gave us. And then I say, No, go Harold, get there about to get you. And Winthrop says, Go. And he says, I can't. And he says, Why not? And he says, For the first time, I got my foot caught in the door.

[1:11:12] Teri Bibb: Oh, that's right. And then he sings a little reprise, just a tiny little reprise. And he doesn't even get to finish it, really, the guys come out and grab him and he gets taken to the gymnasium.

[1:11:22] Jeff Parsons: Because I'm just now thinking that for Marion, she's realizing, right till there was you, I didn't realize that this is how life could be till you came in. And I think on some level, he's like, I didn't realize I was even capable of doing that for someone until you just told me.

[1:11:42] Teri Bibb: Right. So, and the fact that here's a woman with all the facts, and she's not turning him in. Yeah, it's not like talk about self-sabotage, having to confront what you've always feared. And what you fear is maybe somebody loving you for who you are, right? It's really powerful.

[1:11:58] Jeff Parsons: So they bring, they bring him kind of tar and feather style to a weight trial, if you will, because every musical has a trial of some kind. And the town realizes that they feel a little grateful for everything that he's done.

[1:12:14] Teri Bibb: Yeah, because of Marion's speech.

[1:12:16] Jeff Parsons: That's right.

[1:12:16] Teri Bibb: Yeah, because everybody's like saying, I haven't seen my, you know, no one knows where their kids are. And they're out 40 bucks or whatever much for their band uniforms, and everyone's sort of piling on and then she shuts them down. And she said, Have you forgotten what this town was like before he came here? You know, and so everyone sort of gets on her bandwagon again, until after she's finished, the mayor says, Well, let's just remember one thing. He promises a band. Where's the band?

[1:12:44] Jeff Parsons: Where's the band? Where's the band? And then the band enters with all of these ragtag, adorable little kids in ill-fitting band uniforms, terrible with their instruments. And it's such a fantastic ending to the musical, because we have all been to, at least I have, to many a dance recital, many a soccer game of my nieces and nephews, where everyone's just like yelling on stage or onto the field of what they should be doing. And it certainly isn't like good, right? There's no level of expertise. There's no, there's very little skill. And yet, the kids are having a great time. And the parents are bursting are even happier. Yeah, you know. And that's ultimately what happens. They all start playing horribly. And the town is just so ecstatic to see their little kid even try to be passionate about a musical instrument.

[1:13:52] Teri Bibb: Did you have any of that when you were little? Did you have where?

[1:13:57] Jeff Parsons: Yeah, I played. I started when I started junior high, the high school band director came around to all the junior highs, we had three in our town back then. And he would say, Look, there's a high school band, we're award winning, it's a great opportunity to learn an instrument. And he went into all the junior highs and recruited, basically, and helped us help set us up with lessons. And I got a clarinet when I was in the seventh grade and started playing in the junior high orchestra. And then I played in the high school band. And then I even played it into college. It was part of my college scholarship was clarinet. Yeah, I was all state band. I was first chair. I was a pretty good clarinetist, although I just dug it out a little while ago, and it was disastrous. It was the ugliest sound you ever heard.

[1:14:43] Teri Bibb: Well, but that is that kind of goes for most instruments, inevitably, like woodwinds in particular sound like dying animals. Yeah, my dad used to come in and say, who's skinning a cat in here? Or maybe that was when I was singing. I'm not...

[1:15:03] Jeff Parsons: Oh, that's horrible. Same with like violins. I can't imagine.

[1:15:06] Teri Bibb: So bad. Yeah, I had an argument with a guy once we were doing Seven Brides for Seven Brothers at this dinner theater in Rockville, Maryland. And we were at the end of Seven Brides, we all get married. And we had a small orchestra. And the violinist was just awful. And every day he would play that Wedding March, you know, and it was, it really was like someone skinning a cat. It was... and one night I just had it. I came off stage at the end of the show and I was getting undressed. And I was like, it was one of those dressing rooms where the boys were on one side of the mirrors and the girls are on the other side.

[1:15:40] Jeff Parsons: Oh yeah, nonunion musical theater. Living the dream.

[1:15:43] Teri Bibb: Yeah, yeah. And I was like, what is wrong? Why can't the guy play the violin? It's so bad. And the guy who played the minister in the show, I don't remember his name, but he was so upset with me. He was like, the violin is a very difficult instrument. And I said, not for a violinist. It's not.

[1:16:00] Jeff Parsons: Yeah, it's bad. Oh my gosh.

[1:16:02] Teri Bibb: But I'm sure people in the pit have thought the same about me when I started singing.

[1:16:06] Jeff Parsons: It's a matinee. It's a matinee, isn't it, Jeff?

[1:16:09] Jeff Parsons: Sure is. And that's Music Man. That's Music Man.

[1:16:13] Teri Bibb: Oh my gosh. It's a sweet, wonderful, entertaining, incredibly entertaining, and very intelligently put together show. And I really, really love it.

[1:16:24] Jeff Parsons: Where do you think it ranks in terms of theater history? Do you think that it'll keep going?

[1:16:29] Teri Bibb: I do. I do. I think it's beloved. There are people that I know people my age and younger that revere it, you know, they can quote it, you know, that will go see it and anticipate where they're going to cry, you know, just stuff like that. I remember church leaders, high up church leaders, quoting the Tomorrow's Line. What is it?

[1:16:57] Teri Bibb: See, maybe tomorrow. My dear, my dear Miss Marianne, pile up enough tomorrows, and you'll find that all you have is a lot of empty yesterdays.

[1:17:05] Jeff Parsons: Oh, that's a great line.

[1:17:10] Teri Bibb: Yeah. Yeah, that made it into like the canon.

[1:17:10] Jeff Parsons: Oh, wow.

[1:17:10] Teri Bibb: Of like, LDS speak from the pulpit. So it's definitely loved where I'm from. I hope that it will continue to be done. I, the fact remains is that it's about a time when, when the culture of women was like, you just get married. So that's like a huge, that's a huge part of the plot. And I sometimes wonder if shows like this or My Fair Lady, like audiences just won't care to see those kinds of stories about women anymore.

[1:17:41] Jeff Parsons: Yeah, I mean, there are, there are things that are becoming, we're becoming more aware of being problematic in that regard, like even Carousel with the abuse, and My Fair Lady, like with the slippers at the end. I can get that. I think Music Man less so, because by the end, they're really meeting their partners. He's given up a fair amount to make the decision to stay.

[1:18:03] Teri Bibb: And, oh, that's actually really good. That's a really good point to bring up is that we feel that by the end...

[1:18:08] Jeff Parsons: She has tamed him as much as he has opened her eyes.

[1:18:14] Teri Bibb: Yeah, that he's, that he's not going to continue.

[1:18:18] Jeff Parsons: No, he's setting up shop next to Marcellus and he's going to actually lead the band. And Marion is a great partner to have because she actually knows about music. He has the dream and she has the know-how and they make a great team and a house. He doesn't even need to buy a house. Can move Widow Peru into Winthrop's room or maybe in the closet under the staircase.

[1:18:40] Teri Bibb: That's right.

[1:18:42] Jeff Parsons: So when the show opened, Barbara Cook has this amazing story about what Meredith Wilson gave her for opening that gift. And I wanted to read it from her book. She says, on opening night, he gave me the most beautiful present, a heart from Tiffany. When you opened the heart, you had two hearts. And when you opened that further, it became a four-leaf clover.

[1:19:04] Teri Bibb: Oh my gosh.

[1:19:06] Jeff Parsons: On the inside of each of those four hearts, he had engraved the beginning bars of all four of my big songs in the show. Then when you closed the heart up on one side, it said Barbara, and on the other, it said Marion.

[1:19:20] Teri Bibb: Wow.

[1:19:21] Jeff Parsons: It was this, it was so thoughtful, the nicest opening night gift I've ever received.

[1:19:25] Teri Bibb: Isn't that sweet?

[1:19:26] Jeff Parsons: Yeah.

[1:19:27] Teri Bibb: And everything that I've read about him says that he was a very warm, congenial, nice guy to work with, which I think is, especially for someone who seems to be really interested in working by himself, or at least taking credit for his work, is kind of impressive. We already talked about the fact that it came out the same time as West Side Story, but at the Tony Awards that year, it won Best Musical. Barbara Cook won Best Featured Actress, which is strange.

[1:19:58] Jeff Parsons: That is strange.

[1:19:59] Teri Bibb: I think it was a thing about Robert Preston's name was above the title, so he was leading actor, but then she was down a ways, so then she became, those weird rules.

[1:20:10] Jeff Parsons: Oh my gosh, I think I was totally wrong. It was actually 1958. Here, I've been saying 1957.

[1:20:15] Teri Bibb: Oh, 1958 was Music Man.

[1:20:18] Jeff Parsons: Yeah, 1958 was Music Man. So then, sorry, I pulled out my book here. So the Best Musical nominees in 1958 were West Side Story, New Girl in Town, The Music Man, O Captain, which was a total flop, and just has a nudie girl on the, I think it was a return to businessman nudie musicals, which was weird, and then Jamaica. And The Music Man was the thing that won pretty much everything. So, interesting year.

[1:20:48] Teri Bibb: And how many years later was the film of West Side Story?

[1:20:51] Jeff Parsons: Ooh, good question. Let me look.

[1:20:53] Jeff Parsons: And I'm wondering if it was made a film before Music Man was.

[1:20:57] Teri Bibb: I think Music Man was first. Okay, Music Man, the film was 1962.

[1:21:04] Jeff Parsons: West Side was 61.

[1:21:08] Teri Bibb: So West Side was first.

[1:21:10] Jeff Parsons: Wow, I didn't realize that. Maybe because Music Man was a big enough hit on Broadway and touring, etc., that they felt like they didn't need to make a musical version.

[1:21:22] Teri Bibb: I don't know.

[1:21:23] Jeff Parsons: A film, you mean?

[1:21:23] Teri Bibb: Yeah.

[1:21:24] Jeff Parsons: Oh, yeah, sorry, a film version. That's interesting.

[1:21:26] Teri Bibb: Does Barbara talk about not getting the movie?

[1:21:28] Jeff Parsons: She was, no, she left Music Man because she got pregnant. And so she was just interested in being a mom.

[1:21:37] Teri Bibb: Yeah, being the mom, raising the family.

[1:21:38] Jeff Parsons: And you know, Shirley was pregnant during the footbridge scene.

[1:21:41] Teri Bibb: Yes. Well, it's really funny to see her, because they took such a long time to make those movies, those, you know, big musicals at that point. They tried to hide it as best they could, but you can totally see it.

[1:21:51] Jeff Parsons: Yeah, yeah, especially during that footbridge scene. They've, like, squeezed her in.

[1:21:55] Teri Bibb: That isn't the famous story that she was hugging Robert Preston, and...

[1:21:59] Jeff Parsons: It was the embrace. It was the...

[1:22:00] Teri Bibb: It was the big one.

[1:22:01] Jeff Parsons: He felt...

[1:22:03] Teri Bibb: And she hadn't told anybody.

[1:22:04] Jeff Parsons: Because, yeah, because Maureen DaCosta had said, all right, she had told him, the director. And he was like, okay, but just don't tell anybody else.

[1:22:12] Teri Bibb: Right.

[1:22:13] Jeff Parsons: And then Robert Preston feels the kick. And it was like, what?

[1:22:16] Teri Bibb: What was that? And then she says, that was Patrick Cassidy.

[1:22:21] Jeff Parsons: Yeah, she told that story in our little tour that we did.

[1:22:24] Teri Bibb: It's a great story.

[1:22:25] Jeff Parsons: Yeah.

[1:22:26] Teri Bibb: Terry Bibb. Let's see what... Yeah, it's time.

[1:22:28] Jeff Parsons: Thank you so much for having a conversation with me.

[1:22:32] Teri Bibb: As always, if you have an idea for a show that you'd like us to cover on a musical theater podcast, you can always email us at amusicalpodcast at gmail.com.

[1:22:42] Jeff Parsons: You can find us on Twitter at amusicalpodcast.

[1:22:46] Teri Bibb: Thank you, Meredith Wilson.

[1:22:48] Jeff Parsons: Thank you, Anna White, Barbara Cook, Robert Preston, for giving us some great material to talk about.

[1:22:54] Teri Bibb: And Terry, I worship you.

[1:22:58] Jeff Parsons: Aw, you're the sweetest.

[1:22:59] Teri Bibb: Thanks, Jim.

[1:23:00] Jeff Parsons: Bye, everybody.