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Poster for The Music Man
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Released
1962 · FILM

The Music Man

A charismatic con man poses as a boys’ bandleader to swindle a trusting Iowa town of its money—until his charming ruse collides with genuine affection and the community’s unexpected demand for real music.

The story of that man and his 76 trombones, and the wonderful, wonderful tune he played on every heart in town!

Directed by
Runtime
151 min
ComedyFamilyMusical

Synopsis

In the 1910s, traveling con artist Harold Hill deceives the trusting residents of a small town in Iowa by pretending to be a boys' bandleader, using this scheme to collect money before disappearing.

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 16

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by William H ZieglerShot by Robert Burks

Box Office

1962 · Box office

Made its money back — grossed 3.5× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$15.0M

Budget$4.2M
Worldwide gross$15.0M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Music Mande
  • Vivir de ilusiónes
  • Capobandait

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