Cast Bios - Original Production
From the 1957 Playbill

Robert Preston - Harold Hill

To say that Robert Preston was flabbergasted when Morton Da Costa asked him how he would like to play the title role in a musical comedy called The Music Man would be the understatement of the year. Up to that moment he had never danced a step onstage and had confined his efforts at vocalization to the privacy of the shower. But he had the courage of Da Costa's casting convictions and agreed to accept the role. Mr. Preston is a man of firm resolve. Eight years ago he decided he had had his fill of the heavy assignments Hollywood had been offering him, and he left the motion-picture calital to try his luck on Broadway. It tuned out to be good, and he hasn't yet ventured back to the Coast, despite a barrage of flattering offers. The play that brought him back to the living theatre was Jose Ferrer's production of Twentieth Century, and the part was that of the hyperthyroid motion-picture producer, wherein he succeeded Ferrer on Broadway. He came East to play the role on two weeks' notice and remained to star in such comedies as The Male Animal, His and Hers, The Tender Trap and Janus. He signed to play Joe Ferguson, the galloping Ohio State former football hero, in The Male Animal for a two-week engagement at the New York City Center and continued in the role throughout a season's run on Broadway. In The Tender Trap he appeared as Joe McCall, the visiting fireman from Indianapolis who descended upon the bachelor lair of Ronnie Graham and remained to enjoy the usufructs of an unattached male at large in Manhattan. In His and Hers he played a Hollywood press agent turned playwright, the ex-husband of another dramatist enacted by Celeste Holm. In Janus he found himself again entangled with a writer. In this instance Margaret Sullavan was the mate in question, and the union was complicated by her collaboration with Claude Dauphin in various literary and physiological pursuits. Mr. Preston made his most recent Broadway appearance last season as Jean Monnerie, a veteran of the French Resistance, in The Hidden River. A veteran of twenty years in show business, he has yet to celebrate his fortieth birthday. He started out in his teens playing Julius Ceasar with an itinerant stock company in Southern California. Then he joined the Pasadena Playhouse, appearing in some forty-two productions before being tapped for motion pictures at the age of nineteen. For the next thirteen years if there was a herd to be stampeded, a maiden's virtue to be threatened, or sundry deeds of dastardy to be performed, producers called automatically for Robert Preston. Among the pictures in which he appeared were Reap the Wild Wind, Northwest Mounted Police, Beau Gest (a remake), The Macomber Affair, Tulsa, Typhoon and The Last Frontier.

Barbara Cook - Marian Paroo

Barbara Cook is a fresh-faced, trim young blonde who sings even better than she looks- and that's going some. She invariably extends drama critics to use words like "delicious", and reporters who interview her come away employing similar adjectives, words like "supple" and "button-cute". The word Barbara likes more than any of them is "talented". Miss Cook comes from Atlanta, Georgia, and she began her career at the age of nine when she hoofed and sang in local amateur nights. Her first Broadway show came six years ago; it was called Flahooley and it ran six weeks, but it established her, and she has been busy endearing herself to audiences since. She has summer stock, a road-company engagement as Ado Annie in Oklahoma! Broadway saw her again as the Amish ingeue of Plain and Fancy in 1954, a direct result of her playing Carrie in a hugely successful revival of Carousel (she played Julie Jordan a few months ago in the equally well-received re-revival of Carousel at the City Center). Last season, she brightened the Broadway scene as Cunegonde in Candide. This Leanoard Bernstein operetta was technically a flop, but it extended the critics' adoration of Miss Cook, and led directly to her present role of Marian the Librarian in The Music Man. Miss Cook is forthright about her career. "I think you ought to have definite ideas about what you do. You to have a plan and believe in it." Planned or unplanned, Miss Cook bids fair to be around for a long, long time. Incidentally, her television credits (they're substantial) include the Max Liebman production of Babes in Toyland, the salute to Rodgers and Hammerstein on the Ed Sullivan Show, the Producers' Showcase production of Bloomer Girl, and a lot more.

Pert Kelton - Mrs. Paroo

Pert Kelton got her name at the suggestion of an actress aunt named Jane Kelton whose greatest success in the early 1900s was in the part of Pert Barlow in a play called Checkers. Miss Kelton was born of vaudevillian parents in Great Falls, Montana; first faced an audience at the age of three in Capetown, South Africa; continued to appear in the family act as a child; and at the age of twelve became a "single" in vaudeville. Soon after, she graduated into musical comedy and appeared in Sunny, Five O' Clock Girl and Du Barry Was a Lady. This sent her to Hollywood and numerous roles in movies thereafter. Her most recent appearances on the New York stage were as Mrs. Daigle in The Bad Seed and Mrs. Peachum in The Threepenny Opera. In private life, Miss Kelton is the wife of Ralph Bell and the mother of two boys.

The Buffalo Bills - Oliver, Jacey, Olin, Ewart

The Buffalo Bils are four people, on of whom is named Bill, and one of whom comes from Youngstown, Ohio (the other three are genuine Buffalonians or whatever you call people from Buffalo). The Bills, who are making their Broadway debut in The Music Man, are in international champion barbershop quartet (they won the title in Omaha in 1950) and are devout members and boosters of the SPEBSQSA, which as everyone knows is the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America. Al Shea- who sings lead- is a policeman with the Buffalo Finest. Bill Spangenberg-bass-is a truckdriver. Wayne Ward and Vern Reed, who sing baritone and tenor, respectively, are salesmen for engineering supply firms. All of them have been barbershop-quartetting it for many years, picking up spare money on nights and weekends, entertaining for social groups, lodge meetings and regular concert dates. They have also made several fast-selling barbershop-quartet albums for Decca. The "ring" (that's that thrilling, throbbing sound that comes from the ultimate harmony) that the Buffalo Bills achieve when they're really hitting on all four is considered the best in the business.

More coming soon...

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