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Preston tried out first for Da Costa and Bloomgarden, and his version of Trouble—the toughest song in the show —sold them. Next, they had to sell Willson. Willson heard Trouble and bought.
Trouble was a song, but it was also a shadow on the show. For all his big-money-making successes on Broadway, Bloomgarden had to scrounge to find the $300,000 producing tab. He thought that the Columbia Broadcasting System would jump for The Music Man. CBS had made a mountain of money investing in hit shows and pressing musical albums; e.g., the company footed the $400,000 bill for My Fair Lady, collected both royalties and extra profits from the smash sale of My Fair Lady recordings. "These CBS executives filed in and sat down," Bloomgarden recalls. "They were cold and serious. Meredith went over to the piano and did Trouble. They just sat there without cracking a smile. Then Meredith did some other numbers from the show. They still sat on their hands. They thought it was corny. Meredith and I were absolutely miserable." Bloomgarden tried NBC, Decca Records and a flock of other big-time investors, but it was no sale. After nearly six months of plugging, he finally raised the money piecemeal, including $1,000 of it from Music Man's pressagent, Arthur Cantor, who is now happily collecting at 10 for 1.
The Shape. With money and a cast, the show still had a long way to go. Willson's script needed cutting and shaping to give it a nonstop lilt and easy movement. Director Da Costa, a craftsman who has worked quietly in the theater for more than 20 years, buckled down. Says he: "I thought the time had come to send the public out of the theater light-hearted instead of depressed. I wanted this to come off as a story about a charming renegade who reforms, a show with a lot of love and no hate, one that a sophisticated viewer could see with pleasure and that a child could watch with understanding." The cast also credits Da Costa—as well as Preston—for having welded the troupe into one of Broadway's happiest companies.
Among the best of Da Costa's touches is the train scene: in a railroad car are nine traveling salesmen, some playing cards, others reading newspapers—the Wall Street Journal, selected by Da Costa as perfect for 1912 typography and makeup. During the long weeks of rehearsals, the salesmen, backed by a full orchestra, chanted an intricate number called Rock Island, passing phrases from one to the other in complex antiphony. As they spoke, the rhythms changed, grew faster and faster in time to the clackety-clack of the train:
Cash for the merchandise—cash for the button-hooks—
Cash for the cotton goods—cash for the hard goods—cash for the soft goods . . .
Cash for the hogshead, cask and demijohn.
Cash for the crackers and the pickles and the flypaper.
Look whadayatalk, whadayatalk, whada-yatalk, whadayatalk, whadayatalk? . . .
In Philadelphia tryouts, audiences remained cold to this opening. Instead of throwing out the scene, Da Costa had a brainstorm: he threw out the orchestra.