THE MUSIC MAN
TCM, 8:00 p.m. ET
Meredith Willson’s classic Broadway music came to the big screen in 1962, immortalizing the pitch-perfect con-man role of Harold Hill as embodied by Robert Preston. Add Shirley Jones as Marian the Librarian, and little Ron Howard as lisping Winthrop, and there’s plenty of justification to watch this week’s TCM entry in “The Essentials” – no matter how many times you’ve seen it before. There’s so much to point out here. The “one Grecian urn, two Grecian urns” tableaux nonsense was based on an actual, terrible turn-of-the-century midwestern “act” known as the Cherry Sisters. The love song “Till There Was You” was sung by The Beatles on their debut appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. And so on…