This half-hour documentary on the making of THE MUSIC MAN (1962) which is included on Warners' DVD edition of that film takes in the whole history of the phenomenon of Meredith Willson's Broadway musical show. Given its brevity, however, there is not a whole lot of depth in the commentary being imparted by host Shirley Jones and, frankly, one does not really walk away from it any more enlightened than he came in. Nevertheless, it was nice to see and hear some of the key participants in the film Jones herself and comedian Buddy Hackett and of both film and the original Broadway production Susan Luckey (who played the Mayor's daughter and said "Egads" a lot) and choreographer Onna White reminiscing about their long gone colleagues. We are told that, in spite of being a veteran of many movies, Robert Preston was a newcomer to the "song-and-dance man' act and that, in spite of his success on stage, he was not Warners' original casting choice for the role of Professor Harold Hill (it was Frank Sinatra!) but, in this age of unlimited sources of information available on the Internet, this featurette comes off a little dry.
