Gotta agree with you kerryincolumbus about Barbara Cook - the absolute Best Broadway Diva ever! 1000 thumbs up!

They composed Being in Love in the movie because Warner thiught that My white knight was very operatic and jJones couldnt sing it.

I agree.Willson composed this marveleus operatic song becuse he had the right singer to perform it.Cook ijtroduced many different and difficult songs that iperatic singers like to song like Glitter and be gay,Magic Moment,Will He like me,Vanilla icecream and more.She didnt go to the opera because she didnt want(Berstein wanted her for Le Nozze diu Figaro and wanted to record Pierrot Lunaire with her.My white knight is Willson favorite song and if you can also listen Cook singing the longer version in her 1975 Carnegie Hall concert,Jones and Chenoweth arent as Cook and Rebecca Luker sang this song unmiked when Cook was 88 years old,

How did you ever manage to get that far into that horrid MUSIC MAN on ABC? I love Kristin Chenoweth, but that was such bad casting, as was most of the casting in that. I mean, I love Victor Garber, but he managed to take the role of Mayor Shinn and remove all humor from it! I mean! And that busines s in the middle of the "Marian" number in the library, where they turned Kristin into a Disney princess or something~not just wrong for the song and scene, but CRIMINALLY WRONG! She's supposed to be, against her conscious will, getting a taste of her "jungle, animal instinct," and they stick that crap in there. Oy! Just disgusting. I will say, when I saw a production with Emily Skinner as Marian, she sang "My White Knight" beautifully, just as written, as we hear here.

LOL I agree it was a TERRIBLE movie. Right off the bat, Harold Hill is supposed to be charismatic as all hell, and Matthew Broderick hadn't enough charisma to fit into a thimble. I don't remember why I watched the whole thing. All I really remember is Kristin's rather weak singing, the butchering of "My White Knight," and the gross miscasting and ghastly incompetence of Broderick.

"entirely different"- erm.

Hi Marcia, if I could give you 1,000,000 thumbs up I would! you are exactly right in your assessment of that HORRIBLE re-make!!

"My White Knight" is not in the film due to the fact they needed an ORIGINAL song (to the film) for OSCAR purposes. It made the score eligible. It had absolutely nothing to do with Shirley Jones abilities. She was quite capable of handling that song after dealing with TWO Rogers & Hammerstein film musicals. Learn your history.

I agree Shams

The way I read what you you wrote, it almost seems like you're sort of contradicting yourself, but I think I know what you're saying... The problem with so many singers today is that they aren't singing "intelligently". They are devoid of concept of what to do and it's crazy because it is as simple as letting a song like this TELL THEM what to do and what it is. It's not a one-off pop tune. It's a dramatic character you inhabit for three hours in the course of telling a story. But most singers today literally aren't inhabiting the persona of who they are as a song's character, and it's like trying to sing a song from The Music Man without knowing what the freaking story is, and not knowing the personalities in the show that make up the story. So in the end for a voice lesson or a jury recital they know the words, they know the notes, and as you said, they're loaded with technique to get the job done. But they don't know what to do with it. They see trees but not the forest because they don't know what the forest is. They don't TRY to actually tell a story, or "think" in terms of what the lyric's words ARE (at that point IN the story). They aren't... acting. When I hear Barbara Cook sing this I don't hear Barbara Cook. I hear Marion Parroo. And that's the way it's supposed to be... It's about completely divorcing yourself from the ego of who you are as "X" singer or actress (whoever you are), in order to completely BE someone else altogether for three or four minutes...