Almost every summer since I was 9, I’ve gone to at least one movie at the CAPA Summer Movie Series at the Ohio Theater in Columbus. My parents started taking me in 1985 or so, with a screening of My Fair Lady, and I’ve listened to Clark Wilson play thousands of songs on the Morton organ–almost always arriving early.
I’ve missed a few summers when I was living in other places, but have always taken the opportunity to see classic films on the big screen whenever I can. My wife and I even had our first date there in 2004 (Ghostbusters).
Last weekend, Noah, Melia, and I were in Columbus while my nieces are visiting from Germany (they flew here as unaccompanied minors with plan changes and everything… total pros). I went to a Columbus Symphony Picnic with the Pops for the first time in about 25 years (their Columbus Commons venue is miles better than the old location at Chemical Abstracts), and I was amazed at the redevelopment that has happened downtown since I last lived in Columbus in 2007. City Center Mall, which was a cornerstone of my experiences downtown as a teenager and through my twenties, turns out to have been a millstone holding back the area, and Columbus has finally got the exciting, vibrant downtown it deserves–not the Continent, not the Short North, not the Brewery District, not the Arena District, but cool stuff happening right at the center of the universe, within spitting distance of Broad and High (it’s the center, because that’s where the street numbers start). As someone who has been going to downtown Columbus since the 1980s, I have to say that it has never looked better. Good job, Columbus!
We went to a showing of the 1962 film adaptation of Meredith Willson’s The Music Man. I first saw this movie in middle school general music class (when it was only around 25 years old!), and have loved it ever since. It was something I showed to students regularly during my K-12 teaching years, and a part of me has always dreamed of playing Harold Hill. This was my first time seeing it on the big screen, and the first time my kids saw it. Noah got into it and had a good time; much was lost on Melia, who was restless, but she’s five and seemingly possessed of perpetual motion.
I’ve always gotten a little soft about this movie, especially at the end, and this time, having not seen it in quite a few years, I had a lump in my throat through most of the last 30 minutes. There’s so much to unpack:
The show is genius, and watching on a big screen with a crowd really helps drive home how wonderfully comedic it is–jokes always land better at the Ohio Theater, and The Music Man is full of them, from obscure slang of the 1910s to the outrageous hats of the women of River City, to the one-liners and sight gags that are relentless–not relentless in the way that Mel Brooks are the Zucker Brothers are, because every comedic moment is tossed off casually and serves to build the characters.
And the characters are endearing–they all have quirks and tics that make them familiar and unique–the mayor’s wife has about seven of the ten really great lines in the film (“What Eleanor Glynn reads is her mother’s problem!”). Yes, they are broadly-drawn, but it’s a musical–we don’t have time for character development beyond the principals, and yet, it seems to happen, at least in Winthrop and some of the River City ladies.
The romance between Harold and Marion is one for the ages, and predicable, but Willson uses music in such a perfect way–in the scene just before Harold’s arrest, we are shown that Harold and Marion have been literally singing the same song the entire time. They both have their pretensions and their ideas about life, about music, and their discovery of each other erases the cynicism with which they enter the film.
It speaks to this former band director on another level: I don’t know that I suffer from impostor syndrome, but there are times I feel like I might, and Harold Hill is a band director who is an actual impostor. And yet, his love of music carries him through, somehow, in the end.
And of course the incredible library dance sequence (and the bag of marbles that actually contains marshmallows–more of Harold Hill’s misdirection and trickery)!
Experiences like this are why I keep coming back to the Ohio–congrats on 50 years of summer movies, and here’s to 50 more!