The Unusual Legacy of Robert Preston and Meredith Willson

Posted by medusamorlock on July 16, 2009

The Dynamic Robert Preston, Singer of "Chicken Fat"

I’m about to make a stop at the Baby Boomer station here, so beware all ye young folks. (Like there are any reading a classic movie blog..right.) I think you might have to be over thirty to have the words “Chicken Fat” mean anything to you other than the thick yellow liquid floating on the surface when you’re making soup stock, but I’ll wager there are more than a few of us for whom those words bring to mind tennis shoes, starched gym uniforms, and unbearable calisthenics. And we have actor Robert Preston and composer Meredith Willson to thank for that.

If you’re nodding along with me, you remember “Chicken Fat”. It was a record played in schools all over the country, starting around 1961, and pretty much it was all kids’ patriotic duty to become physically fit. You see, back in 1956 President Eisenhower had started up the President’s Council on Youth Fitness, soon after discovering that American children weren’t measuring up to their European counterparts when it came to being healthy and athletic. This was clearly unacceptable — little Johnny becoming fat and flabby while little Johann did push-ups with one hand while lifting weights with the other? Not in these United States.

So a national effort began to emphasize physical fitness in schools. I’m sure you remember, if you grew up in those years, running the 50 yard dash, or doing broad jumps, or all those other playground activities that may have been a little bit fun, but mostly were kind of a political movement for which we were the foot soldiers. Eisenhower’s successor President Kennedy really took this mission seriously. After all, weren’t athletics an important part of the Kennedy legacy, with their famous football games on the lawn of their family compound? Naturally Kennedy, with his youthful vigor, would find the cause of physical fitness to be an important issue for America.

The President’s Council on Youth Fitness got to work. Using sophisticated media planning and with the help of the National Advertising Council, the cause of physical fitness for youth became a major agenda item. Here’s where show business comes into the picture. Meredith Willson was riding high in the entertainment world. His musical The Music Man had hit Broadway in late 1957, and became a smash hit, a critical darling, a multiple Tony Award winner, and a musical theatre classic. It was 1958′s Best Musical winner, as well as earning a Tony for star Robert Preston as Best Actor in a Musical.

Preston was an alumnus of Southern California’s Pasadena Playhouse — fellow thespians included George Reeves and Dana Andrews — and his very masculine good looks and undeniable charisma brought him to the attention of Hollywood. Signed at Paramount Studios, he started getting major supporting Robert Preston and Meredith Willson Make Time Magazine's Cover roles, in big titles like 1939′s Beau Geste with Gary Co0per, and many in C.B. DeMille productions like Union Pacific, Northwest Mounted Police, and Reap the Wild Wind. After service in WW II, Preston returned to Hollywood but wasn’t able to pick up with the same momentum, his post-war roles not nearly as prestigious or interesting as his earlier work. He began to alternate New York theatre work with his Hollywood movies, as well as doing a lot of live dramatic television which originated from NYC. In 1957, though he was not a singer and had in fact never sung a note on stage, Preston was tapped to portray traveling salesman and persuasive near ne’er-do-well Professor Harold Hill on Broadway in The Music Man – and a star was re-born.

Robert Preston was it. He was the embodiment of American pluck and grit, of that particular brand of fast-talking charmer who could be relied upon to do the right thing in the end despite a whiff of larceny. So while all of America was enthralled with Preston’s dynamic Harold Hill — the Broadway cast album was in households all over America — it was the perfect time for a little entertainment pizzazz to come to the aid of the country. Composer Willson heeded the call of the President’s emphasis on making the country physically fit again, starting with the kids. He wrote a catchy, show bizzy, quasi-boot campish, lively march with the unlikely title of “Chicken Fat”, and got his Broadway star Robert Preston to record it. Scored lushly and conducted by noted Hollywood musical director Bernie Green, and backed up with a professional chorus, “Chicken Fat” is every bit as entertaining as Preston’s award-winning rendition of “Trouble” The "Chicken Fat" Record as Distributed to Schools from The Music Man, and just as catchy.

The record of “Chicken Fat” was distributed to schools and radio stations all over the nation. There were two versions of the song, a three minute version intended for play on radio, and a nearly seven-minute version expressly designed to be used in schools, accompanied by instructions for a workout routine to go along with the song’s lyrics. Whether played in individual gym classes, or blasted over the intercom every morning for school-wide exercise, “Chicken Fat” became a piece of every Baby Boomer’s childhood memories. Though at the time we may have mocked it and resented Preston’s eternal good humor as we attempted to keep up "The Music Man" Original Cast Album with his exhortations, “Chicken Fat” did its job. Fitness test scores went up.

Of course, Robert Preston repeated his role as Harold Hill in the 1962 movie version of The Music Man, a beautiful production which though nominated for six Academy Awards — including Best Picture — only took one home, for Best Music Scoring. While many kids exercising to “Chicken Fat” were no doubt unaware that it was the Music Man himself singing, I very much remember being fascinated that a movie star would have done something like that, and always enjoyed hearing it…if not the exercise that went along with it.

There have been other versions of “Chicken Fat” throughout the years, but there’s nothing like the original for sheer bravado and an unforgettable vitality that for many of us will bring a pang of heartfelt nostalgia for our long ago childhoods. Thanks not to “Chicken Fat” but to The Music Man, Preston regained his stature in Hollywood and went on to more Broadway successes. Meredith Willson had another big hit — though not as big as The Music Man — with The Unsinkable Molly Brown, which was made into the movie starring Debbie Reynolds and the late Harve Presnell in 1964.

I think it’s probably time for a big-time revival of “Chicken Fat”, what with all the media attention these days on childhood obesity. I doubt I’ll hear it over the sound system in the gym I go to, but I wouldn’t mind it. I’m working hard to make my middle-aged chicken fat go away, too!

And here’s a cute video for the short version, set to historical photographs:

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17 Responses The Unusual Legacy of Robert Preston and Meredith Willson

Posted By jbl : July 17, 2009 1:37 am

Funny, I was in high school from 1962 – 1966 (and of course junior high the two years before that) and I never heard that song before. Classic Robert Preston!

Fond as I am of the Music Man, though, my favorite Preston roles are those from nearer the end of his life – the Blake Edwards movies, and The Last Starfighter for instance. The poster child for someone playing a joke and truly enjoying the hell out of it is Preston in the last scene of Victor/Victoria, perhaps my favorite of these movies.

Posted By john august smith : July 17, 2009 8:46 am

Preston was the best thing in SOB and Victor/Victoria! Always worth watching in his Paramount films.

Posted By moirafinnie : July 17, 2009 10:41 am

This is great, Medusa!

Hey, I was in grammar school in the ’60s and don’t remember “Chicken Fat” either.

Too bad, ’cause anything connected with Robert Preston was aces with me. Having grown up listening to the cast album of “The Music Man” over and over, and falling deeper under this charismatic actor’s spell after seeing “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs”(1960) and “All the Way Home” (1963), as well as a little known made-for-television film, “My Father’s House” (1975), it wasn’t until years later that I found out he’d made so many movies at Paramount in the ’30s and ’40s. Pairing him with other actors as a second lead and a shifty type seemed to be his fate in numerous Alan Ladd and Cecil B. DeMille movies (btw, Preston couldn’t stand DeMille!), but he never really got his due back then.

I hope that you have had a chance to see “Cloudburst” (1952), a really nifty British mystery about a man who’d worked in military intelligence during WWII, who applies the same techniques to a search for someone who has hurt his wife. Preston is great in that one, which I saw on TCM. I’d also love to see “Island of Love” (1963) with Preston as a con man fleecing some investors in a movie and going on the lam to a Greek island with Tony Randall–it’s sort of “The Sting” meets “The Odd Couple” meets “Summer Lovers”–not a great movie, but a funny one as I recall.

Isn’t it time to have a Summer Under the Stars Day dedicated to Robert Preston??

Posted By Medusa : July 17, 2009 10:52 am

JBL and Moira, I guess “Chicken Fat” wasn’t as ubiquitous a presence as President Kennedy would have liked, eh? They sure played it in my Southern California schools!

And Moira, I think you should do one of your amazing biographical posts on Preston — you could really do him justice. I just skimmed his career for this “Chicken Fat” post, but he deserves so much more.

I really love him, too. Please do your magic on him, soon! :-)

Posted By Jenni : July 17, 2009 11:45 am

Oh how I love The Music Man and Robert Preston. What a fun post! I’m not a boomer, and when I was in elementary school, Chicken Fat wasn’t played at all. I’m sending this post off to my sister-in-law who has an excellent memory, and just may have encountered Chicken Fat when she was in school. I second the motion to have a
Summer under the Stars focus on Robert Preston. I also liked his performance in Tulsa with Susan Hayworth.

Posted By Rancho Mo : July 17, 2009 11:48 am

I don’t remember Chicken Fat from my grade school years in the 60′s (maybe we missed out on it in parochial school) but I remember other calisthenic records blaring on the loudspeaker. Maybe I was so traumatized that I blocked it out! But I loved The Music Man as a kid, still one of my favorite musicals. I had the tremendous pleasure to direct a voice over session with Mr. Preston in the early 80′s. TOTAL class act! A most charming gentleman. I even got him to sign my LP of the original cast recording of the ill-fated Mack & Mabel (I saw it twice in summer tryouts before it headed to Broadway).

Think I’ll put Chicken Fat on my iPod and listen to it at the gym :)

Posted By NCeddie : July 17, 2009 12:23 pm

Oh, you got Trouble! That starts with T— it rhymes with C— that stands for Chicken fat!

Us Boomers would surely have been happier if Meredith Willson had adapted and promoted the “Think System” approach to calisthenics!

Thanks for the memory jog.

Posted By NCeddie : July 17, 2009 12:34 pm

Addendum:

Then Preston could have been singing,
“The Sadder But Wider Girl For Me.”

Or maybe,
“76 thromboses hit the coronary, while 110 cornets played the aire.”

Posted By Suzi : July 17, 2009 3:03 pm

I don’t remember “Chicken Fat,” either but I do remember being traumatized by President Kennedy’s horrible approach to make me and my friends physically fit during school hours — the dreaded gym class. I never thought anything was so stupid and inconvenient in my life — getting dressed for school, then going to school to change into different clothes for less than an hour of gym, then changing back to school clothes. Also, some teachers were downright sadistic about making us do the recommnended amount of calisthenics. Kennedy’s program was a big fat failure in my experience.

If only Robert Preston led the gym class, then it would have been worthwhile.

Posted By Medusa : July 17, 2009 4:02 pm

NCeddie — love “The Sadder but Wider Girl For Me”! :-)

And Suzi…I’m so with you about hating gym class. It took over forty years to get me back into exercising!

Posted By Marianne : July 18, 2009 5:02 am

Oh I love this! Was just thinking about it the other day, something I never forgot. We did this almost every day in phy ed when I was in elementary school—and it was my favorite thing to do. Would love to find the record….
Was in elementary school in Minnesota, 1962-1968

Posted By Medusa : July 18, 2009 11:35 am

Marianne! Glad you remember this from school! Maybe there were just pockets of “Chicken Fat” around the country…you and I obviously were in a couple of them! :-)

You can download the song from various sites, including the JFK library site —

http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/JFK+in+History/The+Federal+Government+Takes+on+Physical+Fitness.htm

There’s a link at the top of the page to “Multimedia” (by the fitness badge) and it opens up a “Chicken Fat” window and there’s a download link, to the long version! You’ll never be without CF again!

Thanks for your comments!

Posted By abby : July 18, 2009 4:35 pm

actually, your part in the blog saying that noone young is interested in classic movies was wrong. i’m just 14, and my friends always joke around with me because i’m such a classic movie fanatic. (and no, by classic, i don’t mean legally blonde).
lately, though, i have gotten my friends interested in it, and one of my friends and i are going to watch vertigo next week. so, i guess i’m trying to say that even though there are some catty girls at there, the teenage population these days is not hopeless. (:

Posted By franko : July 18, 2009 8:30 pm

YES! YES! I REMEMBER “CHICKEN FAT!!!” AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!

Posted By Medusa : July 19, 2009 12:25 pm

Hi Abby!

We are SO happy to find young classic film fans — all us Morlocks started out as kids loving movies, and once you get that classic movie love thing going, it’s impossible to kick it!

You have many years of wonderful movie-watching ahead of you — so much to catch up on! In many ways you are very lucky because now many older films are available more easily than when many of us were kids; we had to catch them on TV before VCRs made them more easily viewable. And there were no stations like TCM playing just old movies!

Yes, I’m sure many of us are jealous for the thrills you will get watching classics for the first time! There’s nothing like it!

Thanks for writing and keep watching!!! :-)

Posted By Claudia : September 6, 2009 7:49 am

Oh boy, I sure remember this from grade school and was thinking about it because of all the bru-ha-ha over Obama’s upcoming speech to students. What would 2009′ers make of Kennedy’s big physical fitness push?
No one has mentioned the part of the song I remember:
Thank you Mr President for your speech the other day
We know you are so right, we must all get fit and stay
Yes, we like to exercise. It’s not work it’s more like play
This is how we do our part for a healthy USA!
or something like that…went to a Catholic grade school in Mn and I liked the song but didn’t much care for the jumpingjacks and situps.

Posted By Liz Taylor : August 3, 2010 3:37 pm

Will the movie “Dark At The Top of the Stairs” ever be released on DVD???????

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