Born Robert Meredith Reiniger around Mason City, Iowa, Willson attended Damrosch Institute (later The Juilliard School) in New York City. The flute and piccolo player, Willson was a member of John Philip Sousa's band (1921 - 1923) and a New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini (1924 - 1929). Willson so stirred to San Francisco, California as the concert director for KFRC, and then as a musical director for the NBC radio network in Hollywood.

His function for films involved a music for Charlie Chaplin's 1940 film The Great Dictator, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award. When you took World War II, he worked for the United States' Armed Forces Radio Service. His operate sustaining a AFRS teamed him with George Burns, Gracie Allen and Bill Goodwin. Giving to network radio fallowing WWII, he created the Talking Population, the choral class action which spoke around unison when redeeming radio commercial message.

Willson's best known operate, The Music Man, premiered on Broadway in 1957 and was adapted twice for film (in 1962 and 2003). He referred to a play as "an Iowan's attempt to pay tribute to his home state." It took Willson a bit of eight years & xxx revisions to complete a musical comedy, for which he wrote supplementary than 40 songs.

His 2nd musical theater, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, ran on Broadway for 532 performances from either 1960 to 1962 and was made into the 1964 motion picture starring Debbie Reynolds.

His third (& apparently go) musical comedy was an adaptation of the film Miracle On 34th Street, called ''Here's Love! (1963).

His Symphony There is no. Ace Within F Child, A Symphony Of San Francisco, & Symphony There is no. Two Within E Minor, Missions Of California,'' were recorded inside 1999 by William T. Stromberg conducting the Moscow State Symphony Orchestra.

Willson penned the total of super easily-known songs, like "Gary Indiana," "It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas," & potentially "Till There Was You," which was the hit for the Beatles in 1963. He as well wrote a University of Iowa's fight song.

A cast recording of "The Music Man" won a super 1st Grammy award ever issued.

In the main, it was recognized that Willson wrote amazingly easily-crafted, complex, & subtle music that classical music fans can appreciate, by using intricate & periodically startling contrast, easily-crafted melody, & subtle orchestration, entirely when however appealing to mass audiences.

Willson & his married woman lived for years in the Mandeville Canyon part of Brentwood, California. In the 1960s, Willson is fondly remembered by friends & neighbors as a warmly & gregarious unsuspecting hosts world health organization loved nothing other than to play a piano & sing at many parties. Willson typically gave out autographed copies of his record album, "Meredith Willson Sings Songs from The Music Man."