In honour of next week’s production of “Guys and Dolls”, I thought I would look into the musical career of the composer and lyricist, Frank Loesser.

Frank Loesser (1910 – 1969) has been called the most versatile of all Broadway composers. Each of his five Broadway musicals: “Where’s Charley?”, “Guys And Dolls”, “The Most Happy Fella”, “Greenwillow” and “How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying”, is endowed with its own unique sound and style.

Long before Broadway success, Loesser was known for the dozens of song hits from his days in Hollywood.

Born June 29, 1910, in New York City, Loesser never studied music formally. His father was a distinguished teacher of classical piano, but Frank refused to study the classics, favouring popular music, which his father disdained. Frank taught himself the harmonica and the piano in his early teens. He dropped out of college during the Depression, supporting himself with an array of jobs that included selling newspaper advertising and working as a process server and city editor of a short-lived newspaper in New Rochelle.

In 1940, Frank made his official composing debut with the music (and lyrics) for the title song of the Paramount film, Seventeen. World War II intervened and PFC Frank Loesser was assigned to Special Services, providing lyrics for army camp shows. Finding himself with no collaborator, Frank resumed his composing career with the war-time hit, “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition.”

In 1948, producers Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin lured him back east to create a score for their musical version of Charley’s Aunt. “Where’s Charley?” became Frank’s first hit show, and with a score that included “Once in Love with Amy” and “Make a Miracle,” it proved that Frank was more than just a pop tune writer from Hollywood.

He followed this with one of the masterworks of musical theatre, “Guys and Dolls”, which opened to rave reviews in 1950, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical. His score was lush with hits, including “A Bushel and a Peck,” “Luck Be a Lady,” and “Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat.”

Reluctant to repeat himself, Frank decided on a simple country fable, “Greenwillow”, for his next project. In spite of seven Tony nominations, and a score that included “Never Will I Marry,” it ran only 95 performances in 1960.

In 1961, Frank bounced back with, “How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying”, which won the Pulitzer Prize and seven Tony Awards, including Best Musical. It ran four years on Broadway, with “I Believe in You” and “Brotherhood of Man” among the hits from the score.

In the midst of his stage work, Frank returned to Hollywood and created one of his best loved scores for the film Hans Christian Andersen (1952), with such songs as “Wonderful Copenhagen,” “The Inch Worm” and “Thumbelina,” which was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1974, Tommy Steele starred in a long-running stage version at the London Palladium.

Loesser worked at an amazing pace, rarely sleeping more than four hours in a row. In the late 1940’s, he formed a music publishing company, Frank Music Corp., with a focus on developing new composers and lyricists, furthering the careers of Richard Adler, Jerry Ross and Meredith Willson, among others. Today Frank Music Corp. is part of Paul McCartney’s music publishing company, MPL Communications. The Loesser shows are licensed by Music Theater International, which Loesser developed as a subsidiary of Frank Music Corp.

The Loesser legacy lives on. There have been major revivals of “The Most Happy Fella”, both on Broadway and at the New York City Opera; “Guys and Dolls” won the 1992 Tony Award for Best Revival and ran for three years, and was revived on Broadway again in 2008. The 1995 revival of “How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” starred Matthew Broderick, and became another long running hit. And it was a smash again when Daniel Radcliffe starred in a 2011 production.

Maki Gajic Murata, Composer-in-Residence