movie careers

Hollywood is a fickle place.

Terry and I watched The Music Man on the 4th of July. It was a great experience watching the DVD using our Blu-ray player on our flat screen television with the sound bar and woofer. It is a marvelous movie and it holds up well after 54 years. Robert Preston and Shirley Jones were superb in their respective roles and seeing them at the time I am guessing that Hollywood producers and critics would have expected them to have stellar movie careers.

So what happened? Robert Preston never got past being stereotyped as the Harold Hill con man. He played that role in both Victor Victoria and in The Last Star Fighter. He really didn’t have any other significant movie roles. (That’s not to say that The Last Star Fighter was a significant role.)

And Shirley Jones? There were her four years in The Partridge Family. But she never did anything that came close to her role in The Music Man.

Hollywood. It’s a fickle place.