A fast-talking traveling salesman who goes by the name of Professor Harold Hill (Robert Preston) lands in River City, Iowa, in the summer of 1912. Many residents soon come under his influence, and not necessarily in a bad way. The four combative school board members now walk around together and perform as a barbershop quartet (The Buffalo Bills). A key group of ladies are busy practicing "Grecian Urn" positions, led by Eulalie Mackechnie Shinn (Hermione Gingold), wife of Mayor George Shinn (Paul Ford). And everybody else is busy ordering instruments and uniforms from the professor, so that River City can soon sport its very own boys' band. That is, when the townsfolk are not singing, dancing and cartwheeling on the streets, themselves. Because this is what people do in musicals. And the town will end up with a boys' band, right? Right?

Oh, and the young-uns are also doing a lot of thinking these days, because the good professor endorses "the think system" for playing music. If you can think a piece of music, then you can play it, he says. One has to wonder if playwright Meredith Wilson was calling upon Norman Vincent Peale's book on the power of positive thinking, since the book was published in the 1950s, before the musical was ever performed. Hill's "think system" seems to foreshadow Walt Disney's advice of "If you can dream it, you can do it," and William Arthur Ward's extended quote, "If you can imagine it, you can create it. If you can dream it, you can become it." Not to mention the book The Secret (2006), which further popularized this simple approach to life.

In the day of The Music Man, however, this technique was just another laughable element of the professor's modus operandi. But now? Maybe we shouldn't dismiss it out of hand.

Naturally, a love interest of some kind has to develop among the main characters. And the most unlikely gal to fall for this unlikely new guy is Marian Paroo (Shirley Jones), the town librarian and piano teacher. (Stereotypes abound.) How can she not see through the "professor" and understand what he's all about? As Harold sets out to woo Marian -- for whatever reasons -- this budding affair is mirrored among the River City teenagers in Tommy Djilas (Timmy Everett) and Zaneeta Shinn (Susan Luckey). Oh, the stars in their eyes!

Stand-out appearances are made by additional recognizable faces. Buddy Hackett plays Marcellus Washburn, one of the professor's former shady connections; who, as it turns out, can also sing and dance. Mary Wickes chimes in as one of the ladies in town, Mrs. Squires. She's one of my favorite character actresses, and I always look for her. Pert Kelton is Mama Paroo, Marian's very Irish and brogue-rich mother. Monique Vermont is adorable Amaryllis, a little friend to Winthrop Paroo (Ronny Howard), Marian's much younger brother. When this movie was released, we had known Ronny as Opie Taylor for only about a year and a half. And since The Andy Griffith Show was filmed in black and white, it may not have prepared the movie audience for the full technicolor experience and to see just how startlingly red little Ronny's hair was. Sure, and that he was Irish, don't you know.

Robert Preston also starred in the Broadway musical production of The Music Man when it opened in 1957. (Barbara Cook played Marian Paroo then.) The movie gives a subtle nod to its theatre roots at the end of each main scene, when the stage lights dim to focus a spotlight on just the primary players, in stop-action.

Watching now, it's fun to see Shirley Jones at a younger age than when she was Momma Partridge on TV (1970-74). Even if you turn away from the screen, you can recognize her speaking voice. What we may have forgotten is just how high her soprano vocals reach and how powerful her vibrato is, too. Preston and Shirley Jones were 16 years apart in age, and yet their on-screen personalities don't show quite this much difference.

Nearly all of the songs here are memorable. Of course, the signature tune is "76 Trombones." But don't forget about "Ya Got Trouble" ("With a capital T, and that rhymes with P, and that stands for 'Pool'"), "Marian the Librarian" and a trio of love songs: "Goodnight, My Someone," "Being in Love" and "Till There Was You." "Gary, Indiana," is quite an infectious one. I personally love the harmonies of the barbershop quartet. Their "Lida Rose" has great rhymes and intertwines perfectly as counterpoint to Marian's "Will I Ever Tell You?" (Earlier, "Pickalittle (Talk A Little)" and "Good Night Ladies" match up well, too.) It's no wonder that Ray Heindorf won an Academy Award for the best musical score, and that the The Music Man won a Golden Globe for best musical.

The Music Man is a terrific musical and romantic comedy that features some truly funny moments. I mean, any cast that includes both Gingold and Hackett just has to be fun. Sure, examples of chauvinism from both 1912 and 1962 appear, but they are understandable and moderately tolerable. All in all: The Music Man still offers a wonderful viewing experience and a diversion from real life. It will leave you with at least one or two songs in your head, a tendency to shriek "Ye Gods!" or "Great Honk!" at your friends, and maybe even a greater respect for the careers of Shirley Jones and Ron(ny) Howard. If you haven't seen it lately, take time to watch it again. And have fun singing along with Shirley and Robert and the rest.