The Music Woman? The Forgotten Legacy of Author Dixie Willson

Most people of a certain age remember The Music Man, a hit Broadway musical and movie set in a small Iowa town. The author, Meredith Willson, was born in Mason City, Iowa, which became his model for the fictional town of River City.

But few are aware that Meredith had an older sister, Dixie, who was also an accomplished author.

Lucille Reineger Willson, who chose to go by the name of Dixie at an early age, was born in 1890 and was 12 years older than Meredith. She was a prominent and prolific author of popular children’s books, magazine articles, poems, short stories, movies, and several books for adults.

Perhaps her most enduring work was a 1923 children’s book titled Honey Bear, illustrated by Maginel Wright Barney (also the sister of a famous man, architect Frank Lloyd Wright). It’s the story of a bear who has a party with a baby in the forest. When the parents hunt for the baby, they find the baby and the bear having a wonderful time sharing a pot of honey, both very sticky. Afterwards, Mommy calls the baby “Honey,” and supposedly mothers everywhere began to use that term of endearment.

Tom Wolfe, author of The Right Stuff and Bonfire of the Vanities, credited the “rollicking rolling rhythm” of Honey Bear for giving him the desire to be a writer even before he learned to read. “In homage to Dixie Willson, I've slipped a phrase or two from Honey Bear into every book I've written," he said.

In the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, Dixie’s stories and poems appeared regularly in national magazines. Several of her stories became films, including The Age of Desire (1923), God Gave Me Twenty Cents (1926), An Affair of the Follies (1927), and 3-Ring Marriage (1928) which starred Mary Astor and Lloyd Hughes. God Gave Me Twenty Cents was shown at the opening of the Paramount Theater in New York and won a “best picture” award, an early version of an Oscar. Unlike her children’s books, Dixie’s short stories and films tended toward tales of lust and infidelity, though how suggestive the actual movies were is unclear.

Dixie sought new experiences to inform her writing. While living in New York, she applied for a job with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and spent 18-months as an elephant rider. That became the basis for her book Where the World Folds Up at Night (1932), which “takes the reader into the odd, glamorous and spangled world of the Big Top.” She also used her circus experiences for two children’s books, Clown Town and The Circus ABC.

As a writer for Ladies Home Journal and other magazines, Dixie received assignments to interview prominent people, including child-star Shirley Temple, actresses Barbara Stanwyck and Myrna Loy, the suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt, and Walt Disney.

Showing her versatility, Dixie wrote at least one mystery novel, The Mystery of the Scarlet Staircase, published in 1946.

Two more of Dixie Willson's many books

During the 1930s, Dixie became an inventor of sorts, creating a new product for children called Showboxes. Each Showbox, a play theater kit, contained everything children needed to put on a play, including a script, scenery, handbills, posters, tickets, and costumes. There were a dozen different boxes, including “Circus Cinderella”, “The Mystery of Gypsy Camp” and “Cowboy Caravan.” Despite enthusiasm from the toy industry, the Showboxes did not sell well, at least in part due to the Depression.

In the 1950s, Dixie was stunned when her brother produced “A Play by Meredith Willson” called The Music Man. She claimed the plan had been to have a joint sister-brother production, and that her writing formed at least part of the basis for Meredith’s play. There is evidence that she had begun writing a play about Mason City called “The Silver Triangle,” and that her brother had planned to write a symphony. After years of estrangement, their relationship apparently improved before her death in 1974.

Another of Dixie’s works, though not always attributed to her, is a poem which has been used on greeting cards and continues to resonate, especially this time of year.

The Mist and All

by Dixie Willson

I like the fall,

The mist and all.

I like the night owl's

Lonely call --

And wailing sound

Of wind around.

I like the gray

November day

And bare dead boughs

That coldly sway

Against my pane.

I like the rain.

I like to sit

And laugh at it --

And tend

My cozy fire a bit.

I like the fall --

The mist and all.

 

Sources:

Iowa history: Dixie Willson was Mason City’s Music Woman and more

Dixie Willson: Mason City’s Music Woman -

IAGENWeb ~ Cerro Gordo Co. ~ "They Started Here" Dixie Lucile Reiniger Willson

Dixie Willson - Biography - IMDbWellsCou

Into the Dusky, Rusky Forest | Lapham’s Quarterly

Dixie Willson--VisitMasonCity.com

1930's Mason City Writer Never Forgets Her Roots - Investigate Midwest

Multi-award-winning author Marie Wells Coutu finds beauty in surprising places, like undiscovered treasures, old houses, and gnarly trees. All three books in her Mended Vessels series, contemporary stories based on the lives of biblical women, have won awards in multiple contests. She is currently working on historical romances set in her native western Kentucky in the 1930s and ‘40s. An unpublished novel, Shifting Currents, placed second in the inspirational category of the nationally recognized Maggie Awards. Learn more at www.MarieWellsCoutu.com.

Her historical short story, “All That Glistens,” was included in the 2023 Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction collection and is now available free when you sign up for Marie's newsletter here. In her newsletter, she shares about her writing, historical tidbits, recommended books, and sometimes recipes.