After leaving home, Molly falls in love with the very first man she meets, even though he's lazy, he drinks, and he more or less tricks her into marrying him. Then they're rich, because he discovers gold in his backyard. Then the second half is basically the Beverly Hillbillies as these two uneducated folks buy a fancy house in Denver and try to fit in with upper crust society there. Then they go to Europe, then they come back, then they split up and she goes back to Europe and he goes back to his mine country. Then she decides she loves him more than Europe, comes home on the Titanic, returns to Denver a hero, reunites with her husband.

I simply didn't understand, as an audience member, what was supposed to draw me in to this musical.

I learned that Debbie Reynolds is Carrie Fisher's mother and I was pleased to find out that Harve Presnell was a Broadway man and not a film actor. He has an admirable brassy quality to his sound.

I'm disappointed that this music didn't speak to me more. My expectations of Meredith Willson were too high, it seems. There was a theme that ran beginning to end, probably from Molly's first song of the show. But I didn't get any of that really charming, bounce-all-over-the-place melody that I like from Meredith Willson (e.g. "You Ought to Give Iowa a Try" and "It's Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas"). And Johnny's signature song, "I'll Never Say No to You" didn't stick in my head, even after three or more repetitions through the film. Either that's a bad sign for the melody, or that melody and me don't get along well. For a lesson in melodies that stick in your head after seeing a show only once, my case study is Les Misérables.

Sorry for the fourth grade book report. I'll try different formats in the future.


time: 15 min