Go Read It!

Speaking of The Music Man, as I seem to often be doing here lately: If you ever read Meredith Willson's autobiographical account of the birth of that show, you know that it went though many changes. In the final show, Marion the Librarian had a younger brother who was ashamed of his lisp. In earlier drafts, the brother was confined to a wheelchair, referred to (indelicately) by Willson in his book as "the spastic boy." In this article, Amanda Morris examines early drafts and writes about what Willson planned at one point and why he changed his mind.