Film

The Music Man

Name: The Music Man
Genre: Comedy, Family, Music, Romance
Released: 1962
Cast: Robert Preston, Shirley Jones, Buddy Hackett, Ron Howard, Hermione Gingold

A dazzling, big-hearted swindle of a musical: Robert Preston sells snake oil disguised as civic virtue to an Iowa town too charmed to check his credentials. It's fast-talking, tune-stuffed, and unapologetically corny, built around one of the great flim-flam performances ever put on film. Perfect for anyone who wants nostalgia with a wink and a bandwagon.

TMDb rating

7.1

If you liked this

Guys and Dolls1955

Another charming con man works a crowd with rapid-fire patter and songs that double as sales pitches. Sinatra and Brando bring the same sly, irresistible energy as Preston's Harold Hill.

But The gambling-den setting and streetwise New York rhythm feel worlds away from small-town Iowa innocence.

The Sting1973

If you loved watching a con artist work a whole town, here's the con itself as the whole plot, elaborate, playful, and gorgeously plotted with Newman and Redford at their most magnetic.

But No music, no romance subplot, and a much colder, more calculating tone than the Music Man's warmth.

Singin' in the Rain1952

The gold standard of American movie musicals, pure joy in motion, with the same appetite for spectacle and showmanship that makes Harold Hill's parade scenes sing.

But It's about Hollywood itself, not small-town life, so the Americana flavor is completely different.

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Something you would not have found on your own.

The Lady Eve1941

Same engine as Music Man, a magnetic liar disarming a skeptical target, but transplanted into pre-war screwball comedy instead of small-town musical Americana.

Barbara Stanwyck plays a card shark seducing a naive mark with dazzling wordplay and total command of the room, the same seductive con-artistry as Harold Hill but faster, sexier, and twenty years earlier.

But Black-and-white screwball pacing and rapid, dense dialogue can feel like a different language if you're used to musicals.

Hello, Dolly!1969

Another turn-of-the-century con with a heart of gold, this time a matchmaker instead of a bandleader, wrapped in the same lavish, brass-band Broadway energy.

But Barbra Streisand's Dolly is a much bigger, brassier presence than Marian Paroo's quieter skepticism.

Paper Moon1973

A Depression-era grifter and a sharp-tongued kid work small towns together, swapping songs for black-and-white grit but keeping the same con-man-with-a-conscience arc.

But It trades music and color for a spare, melancholy tone that's much less sunny than Music Man's optimism.

Oklahoma!1955

Rodgers and Hammerstein's frontier musical shares the same wholesome courtship plot and rousing ensemble numbers, all sunburned fields instead of Iowa storefronts.

But It's more earnest romance than comic swindle, so the trickster energy of Harold Hill is largely absent.

Mary Poppins1964

A stranger arrives in a stuffy community and transforms it through sheer charisma and song, echoing Harold Hill's ability to charm skeptics into believers.

But It's gentler and more whimsical, with none of the moral ambiguity of a genuine con artist at its center.

17761972

A talky, tuneful slice of American mythmaking that shares Music Man's love of period detail, patriotic pageantry, and men arguing their way into history.

But It's founding-father politics rather than small-town romance, and considerably drier in tone.

State Fair1945no page yet

A wholesome slice of Iowa farm life with music and courtship woven through county-fair pageantry, capturing the same nostalgic Midwestern Americana.

But It's slower and sweeter, without a trickster hero or any real conflict driving the plot.

F for Fake1973

Where Music Man dramatizes a charming fraud, this documentary interrogates fraud itself, asking whether Harold Hill's kind of beautiful lying is theft or art.

Orson Welles' essay-documentary about art forgers and hoaxers turns into a meditation on his own career as a magnificent liar, a real-world Harold Hill examining the ethics of charm.

But It's fragmented, self-referential, and closer to a philosophical puzzle than a story, with no plot to follow in the usual sense.

Hustlers2019no page yet

Strips away the wholesome candy coating to show the same charm-as-currency scheme in a modern, morally messier, considerably trashier register.

Strippers running a con on Wall Street clients swap brass bands for stiletto heels, but the pleasure of watching charismatic operators read a room and take it for everything works exactly the same.

But Explicit content, a much harder edge, and real financial and legal stakes make this a very different animal tonally.