The Big Parade

In the 1950s, Meredith Willson's The Music Man became the third longest running musical after My Fair Lady and The Sound of Music a considerable achievement in a decade that saw the premieres of other popular works by Rodgers and Hammerstein and Lerner and Loewe, not to mention Frank
Loesser's Guys and Dolls and Bernstein and Sondheim's West Side Story. The Music Man remains a popular choice for productions and has been parodied or quoted on television shows ranging from Family Guy to Grace and Frankie.

Though Willson is best remembered for The Music Man, there is a great deal more to his career as a composer and lyricist. In The Big Parade, author Dominic McHugh uses newly uncovered letters, manuscripts, and production files to reveal Willson's unusual combination of experiences in his
pre-Broadway career that led him to compose The Music Man at the age of 55. McHugh also gives an in depth look at the reception of The Music Man and examines the strengths and weaknesses of Willson's other three musicals, with his sustained commitment to innovation and novelty. The Big Parade is
packed with new revelations about the processes involved in writing these works, as well as the trials and tribulations of working in the commercial theatre.


"The legacy of Meredith Willson is hugely enhanced by this fine, meticulous, and compelling book by Dominic McHugh, whose perspective as a researcher and talent as a writer coalesce into a book that reveals much previously unknown information about a hidden giant of the theatrical and musical
world." -- Michael Feinstein, Singer, Founder of The Great American Songbook Foundation

"Dominic McHugh has done two remarkable things: written a well-documented and rich history of Willson's The Music Man and his other, lesser-known musicals, and filled an important void in musical theatre history. This book will fill a niche in our understanding of this time period and build on the
work of other notable historians in painting a picture of one of the most fertile periods of musical theatre." -- Elizabeth Wells, Professor, Mount Allison University