Last week I reported that one of my many birthday treasures was a visit to the Benedum Theater for a live performance of “The Music Man”. I have been a fan of the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera (CLO) since 1948, the third year it was in existence. I fondly remember going to Pitt Stadium that summer to see “Hit the Deck”, starring Gil Lamb. At that time the classical era of Broadway musicals, beginning in 1943 with “Oklahoma”, had just begun its two decades long run and the CLO featured instead earlier classics – “Show Boat”, “Rose Marie”, and “Naughty Marietta”. I doubt that we realized how fortunate we were to have so many wonderful blockbusters hitting Broadway every year, well into the 1960s.
The performance we saw this summer was outstanding. I was pleased that it was produced exactly as it had been presented originally. We have seen several classic musical plays recently in which the emphasis has been shifted, apparently to appease the “woke” generation. In a recent production of “Oklahoma”, Poor Jud’s role was elevated significantly, adding a very dark mood to a primarily joyous story. This presentation had an excellent Barber Shop Quartet, an appealing “Marian the Librarian” with a strong voice, and a more than adequate Harold Hill. My friend and expert musicologist Phil Atteberry liked the young man who played Hill, but implied that Robert Preston had nailed the part so well that anyone else playing it must be considered a substitute. I agree and am glad that Meredith Wilson refused Warner Brother’ insistence that Frank Sinatra play the role in the movie. Other actors playing Harold Hill in later productions include Eddie Albert, Bert Parks, Dick van Dyke, Forrest Tucker, and Hugh Jackman. I remember seeing Tucker in a performance at the Nixon Theater in 1958 and feeling short-changed.
So what is about Preston that fit him so well to the role? Harold Hill is a lovable, charismatic con man whose love for the children (and Marian) eventually convinces him he should changes his ways, give up swindling people, and settle down in River City, Iowa, as the director of a boys’ band. Suddenly I realized that I knew just such a person, eighty years ago. Early in the 1940s, Eddie Croft and his wife Peg moved to Bridgeville. He was at least as charismatic as Harold Hill. I don’t have any idea how he earned a living, although I do know he was Bridgeville’s Justice of the Peace at one point. In 1942, as a promotional gimmick, the Post-Gazette started an organization called the Junior Commandos to provide children with an opportunity to contribute to the War Effort. Eddie immediately conned the grade school principal (Helen Bowman?) into drafting four hundred elementary schoolers into the Commandos and had a photographer come out to take our picture, which appeared in the September 21, 1942 Post-Gazette. He worked the same magic to enlist several hundred junior and senior high kids as well; they too are immortalized by photos. As a reward, he was promoted to “Colonel” Croft and frequently praised for the efforts of his Commandos to collect scrap and newspapers. Concurrently Eddie had taken over the local Boy Scout Troop and magically re-energized it. By the time I became a Scout in 1943, Troop 245 was booming. We quickly became one of more active troops in the local Council, taking thirty or forty scouts to Camporees and regularly winning competitions at them. I can’t imagine Eddie ever profited from either venture and am firmly convinced he did it primarily because he loved kids. It was a sad day when he and Peg moved to Florida.
Ironically, Bridgeville was blessed with another charismatic figure at the very same time, Ed ‘Skip’ Batch; he was responsible for “Skip’s Indians”, Bridgeville’s version of Harold Hill’s boys’ band. Skip Batch was a popular Bridgeville barber, with his shop in a basement room on Station Street, under the Bridgeville Trust Company. He and his wife had three children, twin boys and a daughter. In 1939 they organized a modest drum and bugle corps to march in the Memorial Day Parade, and dressed its members in home-made Indian costumes featuring elaborate beaded head-dresses. The corps was an instant hit and soon morphed into a highly competitive organization, extremely popular at parades and firemen’s festivals all over southwestern Pennsylvania. Skip is credited with coming up with the idea for “fire batons”. At the climax of each performance he would hand Esther Pruner a baton with bright flames at both ends. She would twirl it a few times expertly, then throw it as high overhead as she could. We would watch it spin slowly as it came back down, then applaud our approval when she deftly caught it and resumed twirling it.
Anyone growing up in Bridgeville in those days will remember hearing the Indians practicing on a warm summer evening. First came the thunder of the drums, then the bugles blaring out “Over There”. I always wished their repertoire was a little broader; eventually I realized that there is a limit to the music that a drum and bugle corps can perform. The bugle (lacking the valves of a cornet or trumpet) can only play five notes — C and its harmonics (G, C, E, and G); “Over There” is one of the few familiar songs limited to those notes. Fortunately, it is perfectly appropriate for the venues in which the drum and bugle corps performed. Unlike Eddie Croft, I don’t think anyone would ever consider Skip Batch as a con man; he was solely interested in providing an opportunity for kids to have a musical outlet.
I suspect there were more similarities than differences between River City in 1912 and Bridgeville in 1942. Perhaps that is why I find “The Music Man” so appealing. It may well be the greatest American musical of them all.