Top Ten Films featuring Libraries, Librarians and the Book Arts
Compiled by Steven J. Schmidt
IUPUI University Library

Music Man, The (Warner Brothers, 1962) Not Rated

Director: Morton DaCosta.
Screenplay: Marion Hargrove.
Cast: Robert Preston, Shirley Jones, Buddy Hackett, Hermione Gingold, Paul Ford, Ron Howard.

Storyline: Conman Professor Harold Hill (Preston) mesmerizes a small Iowa town with his vision of a uniformed marching band in this delightful musical. Things don’t go quite according to plan when the librarian (Jones) convinces the Mayor (Ford) that he has to deliver what he promised.

Library focus: The young and beautiful spinster, Marion the Librarian (Jones) makes the perfect stereotype of a small-town librarian. Mrs. Shinn (Gingold), the mayor’s wife, denounces Marion for giving her daughter "smutty books" like The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Later Marion rips a page out of a library book to prevent the Mayor from uncovering one of Professor Hill’s lies. This movie, and the play that proceeded it, have forever engraved the name of “Marion the Librarian” on our profession. Despite her depiction as a stereotype hair-in-a-bun spinster, Marion presents a very positive image for librarians who are willing to fight against censorship. Admittedly, she does suffer one rather major lapse in her professional ethics when she rips a page out of a book to protect Prof. Hill, but this only proves that even librarians are only human.

Image copyright of Internet Movie Database.

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