Globe Gazette Editorials, 1962

The Globe Gazette
Mason City, Cerro Gordo County, Iowa
May 23, 2012

  MASON CITY — High school bands came from all over the country — more than 100 of them - to march in the 1962 Band Festival parade.

Jim Reynolds of Clear Lake, a trumpet player in the Clear Lake High School band, remembers one of the out-of-state bands in particular. Reynolds, a senior in high school at the time who later became a band teacher and director, said, “I had my first real job back then as a night clerk at the Lake Shore Hotel.

“That’s where the band from Bossier City, La., was staying. When their bus pulled up in front of the Hotel, we played ‘Dixie’ for them,” he said.

“Another thing I remember about that band — the day before the parade they took their horns and put them in the lake and washed them.”

Reynolds said the bands and the band directors took the competition for awards seriously on parade day.

“We saw the band from Lockport, Ill., lining up and everyone was just gawking, they looked so good. One of their kids was fooling around and he got pulled out and replaced,” he said.

Of the 121 bands participating, Lockport took top honors and Bossier City took second place.

Back in those days, after the parade, all the bands gathered at Roosevelt Stadium for a mass band concert.

“It never worked,” said Reynolds. “There were 100 bands. You’d have some bands at one end of the field playing one measure and bands on the other side of the field playing another measure.”

Another lasting memory for him is how tired he was. “I worked all night at the hotel, marched in the parade and went home and went to bed,” he said.

Bob Logan of Clear Lake was the high school’s assistant band director.

“The marching band competition was really fantastic,” he said. “It was something to see. And I remember seeing the movie stars — Shirley Jones and Ronnie Howard and Robert Preston.”

Logan said the movie premiere was supposed to start at 10 p.m. at the Palace Theater in Mason City but didn’t start until about 11:30.

“I think some people slept through it. I didn’t. It was a good movie,” he said.

The star-studded weekend drew news coverage from all over the country.

Hazel Flynn, a Midwest native who was a reporter for the Hollywood (Calif.) Citizen News, wrote:

“Over a thousand trombones, instead of just 76, split the air over Mason City today as this town threw a lollapalooza of a dual celebration. It was the first national competitive marching band festival and the world premiere of Warner Brothers’ film of Meredith Willson’s Broadway hit, ‘The Music Man.’

“I doubt if Mason City or Willson will ever forget this day. Nor will this writer, if only because she got to see the corn growing again, sat under huge, dark green shade trees and on velvety lawns and smelled the wonderful scent of meadows and clover.

“And when this disciplined and talented young America proudly paraded with heads high, playing beautiful music, much of it patriotic, something said to us, ‘don’t worry, all is well with our youth’.”

The Globe Gazette
Mason City, Cerro Gordo County, Iowa
May 24, 2012

MASON CITY — The Hotel Hanford was the scene of many a party and fancy gathering in the days of “The Music Man” premiere. Perhaps never was this more true than at the post-premiere Champagne Supper in the hotel’s Wedgewood Room at midnight Tuesday, June 19, 1962.

The movie premiere was at 9:45 p.m. Tuesday at the Palace Theatre. Guests invited to the supper afterward didn’t get around to eating until about 1 a.m. Wednesday, the Globe Gazette reported. Hosted by Technicolor Corp., the dinner featured colored tablecloths in red, blue, orange, green and purple. The menu included Lobster Newburg and Chicken a la King a la Sherry.

Mason City native Meredith Willson, composer of “The Music Man,” delighted everyone when he sat down at the piano to play and sing music from his hit show.

Most of the celebrities, who also included Robert Preston, Shirley Jones, Ronny Howard, Morton da Costa, Arthur Godfrey and Hedda Hopper, stayed at the Hotel Hanford. They arrived in Mason City Monday, June 18.

They participated in interviews by the press corps at 5 p.m. Monday in the Grand Ballroom. A prime rib buffet followed in the Euchre and Cycle Club, according to the Globe Gazette.

Retired Mason City businessman Jack Buehner, now of Daytona Beach, Fla., was 40 at the time. He and his wife, Essie, attended the champagne dinner. He wore a tuxedo.

“It was pretty darn nice,” said Buehner, a retired executive with Henkel Construction Co.

The highlight for him was being seated next to Jones at the dinner.

“She was very nice,” he said.

He remembers Preston amusing the crowd by climbing on a luggage cart in the hotel lobby and riding it around.

Many Mason Cityans back then spent a lot of time at the Hanford.

There were company parties, service club meetings and breakfasts or lunches at the Belt ‘N Buckle restaurant, formerly the Plantation Room. As late as 1968, women dining in the Belt ‘N Buckle were asked to wear hats and gloves. Many a gentleman had his hair cut at the hotel barbershop in those days.

The elegant Euchre and Cycle Club, a private club on the top floor of the hotel, featured prime rib buffets on Sundays.

Among the famous guests who stayed at the Hotel Hanford over the years were former President Herbert Hoover and jazz composer and band leader Duke Ellington.

“It was very elegant,” said Mason City resident Jean Lawson. “A lot of people had cocktail parties and dances in the ballrooms. People would rent the ballrooms and get a band. There were lots of bands around.”

Alyce Bailey of Mason City also remembers private cocktail parties in the Wedgewood Room, at which Hob Mason, a popular Mason City pianist, would play.

Lawson remembers one year in the mid- to late-1960s when a Beaux Arts Ball was held as a fundraiser for the MacNider Art Museum, which had been donated to the city by Hanford MacNider in 1965.

“It was a costume ball,” Lawson said.

Bailey said she and her husband, the late Dick Bailey, and many other couples rented costumes from Minneapolis for the event.

The fanciest parties were in the Euchre and Cycle Club, Lawson said.

“(Former manager) Ernie Kuhn Jr. knew how to put on a party.”

The hotel was purchased in 1969 by Good Shepherd Health Center and is now The Manor apartments for senior residents.

Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles, California
June 07, 1987

MASON CITY, Iowa — It's easy to visualize Meredith Willson guiding a marching band down Main Street here, playing "Seventy-six Trombones." Leading the big parade at the North Iowa Band Festival in Mason City was a special treat for Willson during the '50s, '60s and '70s. The north central Iowa farm center of Mason City, population 30,000, was the author-lyricist-composer's home town -- his real-life River City.

Mason City's "Music Man," however, would probably not be pleased with what's going on in the town square; the old Cecil movie house, where Willson wiled away a lot of his youth, is being torn down.

Creator of the smash Broadway and film hit "The Music Man," Willson died June 15, 1984, at St. John's Hospital in Santa Monica. He was 82. He is buried in the family plot in the Mason City cemetery where his tombstone reads: "Meredith Willson 1902-1984. 'The Music Man.' May the good Lord bless and keep you."

The epitaph was selected by his widow, Rosemary, who explained: "May the good Lord bless and keep you was his mother's blessing to children as they left her Sunday school class and the name of one of Meredith's songs." His mother's name was Rosalie. She's the Rose in "Lida Rose," one of the songs from "The Music Man." Lida was Rosalie's sister, Meredith's favorite aunt.

Willson was born in Mason City and lived the first 17 years of his life here, said town historian Art Fischbeck, 67. "His father was the town baker. His grandfather was one of Mason City's first settlers."

His hometown provided Willson the background and the characters for "The Music Man." He would later recall: "I didn't have to make up anything. I simply remembered Mason City in Iowa as closely as I could the way it was when I was a boy growing up."

Willson played flute and piccolo at Mason City High from 1915 to 1919. Upon graduation he joined the John Philip Sousa Band, later became a member of the New York Philharmonic and went on to direct several orchestras and compose music from hit tunes to symphonies.

But he is best remembered for "The Music Man," which opened on Broadway on Dec. 19, 1957. The film version premiered in Mason City on June 19, 1962. Townspeople still talk about the movie premiere, held in conjunction with the annual North Iowa Band Festival. Willson lead 121 bands through the streets of Mason City on that day. Not surprisingly, Mason City High School has one of the top high school music programs in the nation and the Mason City High School band consistently ranks among the best in America.

"Meredith Willson was a strong supporter of the program. The community, the kids, the school just don't dare to let that tradition end or die," said Everett Johnson, executive secretary of the Iowa High School Music Assn.

Iowa band law passed in the 1930s allow cities and towns to support municipal bands in annual budgets.

"Most communities of any size have a municipal band," Johnson said. "Every elementary, junior high, high school and college in the state has a band. Music is part of Iowa, part of the people's lives."

Gilbert Lettow, 43, music instructor at Mason City High School for 15 years and director of the school symphony, concert, marching and jazz bands during the last seven years, recalled how Willson would walk into the school's music building unannounced during rehearsals.

"He had a kind of enthusiasm that was absolutely fantastic. He never forgot his home town, his high school," Lettow said.

When Willson's widow, who lives in Brentwood, Calif., learned last year that the school needed 250 new band uniforms, she donated $27,000 toward the purchase. Interviewed the day after she returned home from a trip to Beijing for the May 8 opening of "The Music Man" in the Chinese capital, Rosemary Willson spoke of her husband's strong ties to his home town.

"We were forever flying to Mason City. We never missed the North Iowa Band Festival every June. At the drop of a hat Meredith would say: 'Honey, let's go home for a few days.' He loved Mason City and all his friends back there," she recalled.

"The Music Man" received excellent reviews in China, she added. "I thought it was well done. I don't speak Chinese, but they laughed in the right places. 'Shipoopi' was one number they really went wild about."

As the Mason City High School Marching Band ran through a practice session recently on the school grounds, Kate Wilson, 17, a senior in the band observed:

"Sure Mason City is special. It's River City. 'The Music Man.' We can all relate to that." Junior, Kevin Enabnit, 17, added: "Mr. Lettow is our Prof. Harold Hill. He isn't quite the con-man Prof. Hill was, but he sure runs a super music department."

Many businesses in town use the name River City instead of Mason City, including River City Auto Body Shop, River City Bowling Alley, River City Glass Co. and River City Home Video.

At funeral services for Meredith Willson at the Mason City First Congregational Church, Mayor Kenneth E. Kew remarked: "He was a small-town boy. He was Iowa stubborn. To me each time I hear 'Seventy-six Trombones' I get chills of pride.

"From this day forward, whenever I hear thunder rolling across the sky like timpani and bass drums, I'll say to myself there goes Meredith. He's leading another big parade."

Books by Meredith Willson

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The Globe Gazette
Mason City, Cerro Gordo County, Iowa
September 18, 2014

'The Music Man in Concert' premieres in Mason City
by Laura Bird

MASON CITY -- Drawing a crowd from beyond North Iowa, "The Music Man in Concert" premiered Thursday night in the North Iowa Community Auditorium, Mason City.

"'The Music Man' is one of our favorite musicals," said Dave Clark.

Clark and his wife, Ginnie, traveled all the way from Cedar Rapids for the show. They heard about it through a radio station.

"It just always has been a favorite," Dave Clark said. "The music and the story and Meredith Willson being from Iowa."

The couple enjoys the musical so much that they've previously traveled to Mason City to see The Music Man Square and Willson's boyhood home.

"It's a good museum," Dave Clark said. "Very well done."

It was a multiple generation event for Staci Andrea of Ventura. She was there with her two daughters, Paige, 11, and Skylar, 14, and grandmother, Vanna Nelson, Hanlontown.

"We decided it would be good for all of us," Andrea said noting that her children have heard a lot about "The Music Man" and Willson in school.

Nelson came along because she's a fan of Jones.

"I think it's great," she said about Jones returning to Mason City. "We always watched her on TV."

Nelson added that she's always wanted to go to a Broadway show and "this is the closest I'll get."

The show opened with a live band playing "Seventy-six Trombones" while a slideshow of pictures from the making of the 1962 film musical played.

Jones then entered on stage to the delight of the audience.

"I'm so happy to be back in Mason City, Iowa," she said. "It's so beautiful here."

She went onto explain that she was cast for the role of Marian the Librarian when she was 27 years old and had just got done doing a movie where she played "a woman of the night."

Jones also said there were a lot more photos — many never before seen — that would be shown throughout the show.

"To this day I'm still asked what was it like to work on 'The Music Man'" she said.

Only revealing a few details, the show continued on with Harold Hill, played by Cassidy, arriving in town and the town's people singing "Iowa Stubborn."

"The Music Man in Concert" will be performed a second time Friday night before going on a Midwest tour. Tickets are available at www.niacc.edu or by calling the NIACC Box Office at 641-422-4188.

Transcriber's Note: "The Music Man" premiered on Broadway in 1957 and was adapted twice for film in 1962 and 2003. It took him some eight years and thirty revisions to complete the musical for which he wrote more than forty songs. Willson's second musical "The Unsinkable Molly Brown", ran on Broadway for 1960 to 1962 (532 performances) and was made into a 1964 motion picture starring Debbie Reynolds.

Photographs courtesy of The Globe Gazette

Transcriptions by Sharon R. Becker, October of 2018