Frank Loesser Research Articles

Baby, It's Cold Outside - or how hot is hot, how cold is cold?

Frank Loesser's song epitomises our fixation with temperature. But how do we define how hot is hot and how cold is cold? This short article looks at the history of temperature and why life today is much simpler than it was in the past.

Guys and Dolls by Frank Loesser

Reviewed by: Guys and Dollsby Frank Loesser Shelley Orr GUYS AND DOLLS. Music and Lyrics by Frank Loesser. Book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. Directed and choreographed by Josh Rhodes, in association with Asolo Repertory Theatre. The Old Globe, San Diego. 07 7, 2017. The question of representation is at the heart of the theatre. Simply put, an actor stands in for someone else; the person represented is necessarily absent. How we choose to represent that absent person, and with whom, is critical to the success of any production. As the oft-repeated saying goes, "casting is destiny." In the present moment, the question of who represents a character is often intertwined with who represents a culture onstage. It is against this backdrop, and in the wake of the #MeToo movement, that the production of Guys and Dollsunfolded at the Old Globe. While the production was well done from the perspective of executing the performance and honoring the spirit of the original, this show wanted to skirt the thorny questions of representation and hoped you would just sing along. So-called color-blind casting policies have a four-decade history. They were conceived as a measure to address an imbalance of representation on our stages. Over two decades ago, August Wilson astutely questioned its effectiveness in diversifying the theatre, and "color conscious" casting has instead been instituted more frequently, as has the practice of selecting seasons that better represent our whole population. We can still do better, as was clear in the case of Asolo Repertory Theatre/Old Globe's revival. The opening of the production was at once jarring, fascinating, disturbing, and masterful. What could possibly be jarring and disturbing about a highly polished professional production of one of the most-produced musicals of all time? Well, ironically, it was the forward-thinking, integrated casting—very much a product of our time—crashing into the sexist, racist, socially backward-thinking book and score from 1950—very much a product of its own time. Seasons at the Old Globe demonstrate that the theatre is committed to engaging with major issues facing our society, but this production pretended that we still live in 1950. We have left that particular set of societal norms behind, no matter how many people might wish to return to them. The overture was an innovation in this production. In addition to being the typical auditory experience, a five-minute preview of all the musical numbers, it was a grand dance spectacle that introduced us to the world: a fast-paced, fun, fraud-ridden, and fictional New York City. This launched the musical with high-energy, high-stepping choreography and quick changes of both sets and costumes. Lee Savage's large-scale, flashing marquees were a fantastic backdrop that referenced the Great White Way through the use of thirty-foot-tall, mobile, skeletal frames that held jumbo letters in mid-century fonts and chasing lights. Unfortunately, the precisely timed parade of skillful cast members in Brian Hemesath's well-tailored yet danceable period costumes was significantly diminished by the well-worn stereotypical jokes, most often sexist sight gags involving lusting men grand jetéing while grabbing at the behinds of high-heeled women. The groping jokes culminated in a "button" on the sequence when one of the sailors inadvertently groped a nun in his apparent zeal. The gag was extended when the nun revealed a mustache, and along with it "her" true identity as a male pickpocket in disguise. The Benny Hill–style humor came across as more than dated in the year of the first Women's March, which has been followed by the #MeToo and Time's Up movements. The production seemed to think that we should lighten up and enjoy the fun and frivolity, but we need to hold our theatres to a higher standard. Many audience members are not entertained by someone grabbing a woman, even if the choreography is clever and even if the "woman" turns out to be a petty criminal, himself on the make. The excuse that these kinds of jokes are appropriate to the musical's original 1950 setting just did not wash. Antics involving small...

Blueprint Specials by Tom Ridgely

Reviewed by: Blueprint Specials by Tom Ridgely J. Riley Caldwell-O’Keefe Blueprint Specials. By Special Services Division, Army Service Forces. Directed by Tom Ridgely. Waterwell. Under the Radar Festival, Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, New York City. January 7, 2016. Ascending industrial metal stairs and entering the USS Intrepid plunged the audience for Blueprint Specials into another world and set the stage for the first civilian productions of four World War II soldier shows. Decommissioned in 1974 and docked at Pier 86 in New York City, the 27,000-ton, 872-foot aircraft carrier was an impressive, imposing presence throughout the evening. Spectators were packed in its hangar and sat on uncomfortable plastic chairs in close proximity with one another. This helped create a sense of comradery during the performance, which fell somewhere between historical re-creation [End Page 587] and contemporary adaptation and prompted consideration of Americans’ current complex relationship to strategic patriotism. Click for larger view View full resolution Emily McAleesjergins (Peggy), Laura Osnes (Pallas Athene), and company in Blueprint Specials. (Photo: Ashley Garrett.) Waterwell’s production was especially significant, given that in 2016 the military defunded official soldier-show productions, which began with the 1940 establishment of the US Army’s Special Services Division. This morale unit originally produced the four “blueprint specials”—Hi Yank (1944), About Face (1944), PFC Mary Brown (1944), and OK USA (1945)—which contain music and lyrics by military service members Frank Loesser, Jerry Livingston, Hy Zaret, Peter Lind Hayes, Alex North, Jack Hill, Arthur Altman, and Ruby Jane Douglass. Each script is a blueprint containing complete directions for the costuming, scenery, musical score, and staging designed to be widely distributed for productions by soldiers with little or no performance experience. The four scripts are representative of the thousands of shows created by and for soldiers, which often addressed subjects such as being drafted, transitioning into the military, sex (or the lack thereof), dissatisfaction with military life, including the food, job duties, and homesickness, and pride in serving one’s country. Director Tom Ridgely combined the four scripts into one narrative performance that helped transport the audience with humor. PFC Mary Brown was presented in its entirety (minus one scene) and served as the production’s spine. This choice was not wholly surprising, as the other scripts more closely resemble variety shows. It is nevertheless significant, because PFC Mary Brown is one of the few works created specifically for the Women’s Army Corps (WAC). The play follows the story of Pallas Athene (Laura Osnes), who joins WAC out of a sense of duty and a newfound independent identity from her role as Jupiter’s wife. Ridgely incorporated scenes from Hi Yank and About Face to transform Sad Sack (Quinn Mattfeld), a central figure in those plays, into Pallas Athene’s love interest. He also included a song from a notable production of OK USA directed by Sergeant (T/4) Mickey Rooney that utilized “America (Is the Place for Me)” as its musical finale instead of the song originally included in the script, “OK, USA.” The former’s closing line, “America always will be our home,” which was sung by the entire Waterwell troupe in powerful harmony, bade the audience to rhetorically (re)claim the country. In the midst of this patriotic posturing the performance made apparent the transhistorical receptivity of identity-dependent patriotism. While it did some [End Page 588] work to undermine the reinforcement of mainstream gender narratives, whiteness remained centered in the production’s casting (and also in the makeup of the audience). Drag was prevalent in soldier shows throughout the war, and Ridgely incorporated drag performances throughout the evening. However, these were often overshadowed by the production’s rapid scene changes and constant movement, which had the effect of marginalizing certain nondominant expressions of gender. The production did at times spotlight gender nonconformity, but often within a humorous context. For example, the Limón Dance Company performed a beautiful slow-motion dreamscape in which Sad Sack was the hero of a basketball game. As suggested by the script, the chiseled male dancers wore pink tutus and followed José Limón’s original balletic choreography for the scene...

“I'll Never Know Exactly Who Did What”: Broadway Composers as Musical Collaborators

Though published vocal scores of Broadway musicals imply sole musical authorship the archives reveal a more complex picture. Five case studies illustrate different approaches to the compositional process in the 1940s and 1950s: Richard Rodgers, who produced fair copies in piano-vocal score for each of his songs; Cole Porter, who regularly used an amanuensis but sometimes produced fair copies; Frank Loesser, who initially used an amanuensis but later in his career produced detailed fragments of music for his arrangers to turn into performance scores; Frederick Loewe, who worked closely with an arranger to produce fair copies; and Robert Wright and George Forrest, who went through a complicated process of selecting and adapting the work of composers of art music such as Borodin and Rachmaninov. Detailed study of the available manuscripts makes clear that score production was nearly always a collaborative activity on Broadway, whether it involved amanuenses, copyists, arrangers, or orchestrators. Although in each of these cases the named composer retains an authorial role, in practical terms the archives reveal them to be “collaborators” rather than “authors,” working as a member of a team to create each performance score. As such, their aims were to facilitate performance events rather than to produce fixed works.

Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw, and: The Light in the Piazza by Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel, and: Guys and Dolls by Jo Swerling, Abe Burrows, and Frank Loesser (review)

Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw, and: The Light in the Piazza by Craig Lucas and Adam Guettel, and: Guys and Dolls by Jo Swerling, Abe Burrows, and Frank Loesser (review)

West End Broadway: the golden age of the American musical in London

West End Broadway is the first book to deal specifically with the 'Golden Age' of American musicals in London. Here is a history and a re-evaluation not only of the British productions of Broadway's most popular product but of the works themselves, beginning with a brief account of the origins of the genre and of the shows seen during World War II. The difficult conditions of war-torn Britain prepared the ground for changes that would come with peace. While Britain clung to tried formulas, a refreshing breeze was blowing in from the Atlantic, altering the nature of British theatre by sending New York's commercially successful musicals to the West End. The wider relevance of this history is underscored, as is the fact that these works effectively imported American social history into the culture of a Britain coping with the aftermath of conflict. In London, critical reaction to Broadway musicals was often strikingly different from that awarded in New York, and Broadway success could result in West End failure, while off-Broadway shows struggled to gain hold in Britain. West End Broadway discusses every American musical seen in London between 1945 and 1972. As the final works of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin made way for a new wave of writers and composers, the arrival of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! was celebrated as a breakthrough, heralding a period that included important works by Jule Styne, Leonard Bernstein, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Robert Wright and George Forrest, Harold Rome, Frank Loesser, Alan Jay Lerner, Frederick Loewe, and the first stirrings of the next generation in Stephen Sondheim. Offering a unique panoramic essay on British theatre of the Golden Age, West End Broadway is an authoritative, challenging and diverting contribution to an understanding of a forgotten aspect of the Broadway musical. ADRIAN WRIGHT is the author of Foreign Country: The Life of L.P. Hartley (1996), John Lehmann: A Pagan Adventure (1998), The Innumerable Dance: The Life and Work of William Alwyn (2008) and the novel Maroon (2010). His previous book, A Tanner's Worth of Tune (Boydell & Brewer, 2010), told the story of the post-war British musical. He lives in Norfolk, where he runs Must Close Saturday Records, a company dedicated to British musical theatre.

Review: Jerome Kern by Stephen Banfield, Foreword by Geoffrey Block; Sigmund Romberg by William A. Everett, Foreword by Geoffrey Block; Frank Loesser by Thomas L. Riis, Foreword by Geoffrey Block

Review: Jerome Kern by Stephen Banfield, Foreword by Geoffrey Block; Sigmund Romberg by William A. Everett, Foreword by Geoffrey Block; Frank Loesser by Thomas L. Riis, Foreword by Geoffrey Block

Review: Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889–1895 by Lynn Abbott, Doug Seroff; Ragged But Right: Black Traveling Shows, "Coon Songs," and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz by Lynn Abbott, Doug Seroff; Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890–1919 by Tim Brooks. Music in American Life; Lost Sounds: Blacks and

Book Review| April 01 2009 Review: Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889–1895 by Lynn Abbott, Doug Seroff; Ragged But Right: Black Traveling Shows, "Coon Songs," and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz by Lynn Abbott, Doug Seroff; Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890–1919 by Tim Brooks. Music in American Life; Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890–1922; Black People: Entertainers of African Descent in Europe and Germany by Rainer E. Lotz; Cross the Water Blues: African American Music in Europe, edited by Neil A. Wynn Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889–1895, by Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2002. xviii, 510 pp.Ragged But Right: Black Traveling Shows, "Coon Songs," and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz, by Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007. viii, 461 pp.Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890–1919, by Tim Brooks. Music in American Life. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004. x, 634 pp.Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890–1922. St. Joseph, IL: Archeophone Records, 2005. 2 compact discs.Black People: Entertainers of African Descent in Europe and Germany, by Rainer E. Lotz. Bonn: Birgit Lotz, 1997. 398 pp.; compact disc.Cross the Water Blues: African American Music in Europe, edited by Neil A. Wynn. American Made Music. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007. xii, 289 pp. Thomas L. Riis Thomas L. Riis THOMAS L. RIIS has been at the University of Colorado at Boulder as the Joseph Negler Professor of Music since 2002 and as Director of the American Music Research Center since 1992. His most recent book, published as part of the Yale Broadway Masters series, is entitled Frank Loesser. He served as a senior scholar, with a Fulbright Fellowship, at the University of Lüneburg (Germany) in 2005–6. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the American Musicological Society (2009) 62 (1): 252–260. https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2009.62.1.252 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Thomas L. Riis; Review: Out of Sight: The Rise of African American Popular Music, 1889–1895 by Lynn Abbott, Doug Seroff; Ragged But Right: Black Traveling Shows, "Coon Songs," and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz by Lynn Abbott, Doug Seroff; Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890–1919 by Tim Brooks. Music in American Life; Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890–1922; Black People: Entertainers of African Descent in Europe and Germany by Rainer E. Lotz; Cross the Water Blues: African American Music in Europe, edited by Neil A. Wynn. Journal of the American Musicological Society 1 April 2009; 62 (1): 252–260. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2009.62.1.252 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentJournal of the American Musicological Society Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2009 by the American Musicological Society. All rights reserved.2009 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Modulation as a Dramatic Agent in Frank Loesser's Broadway Songs

Modulation as a Dramatic Agent in Frank Loesser's Broadway Songs

The Experimental Pathology of Stress: Hans Selye to Paris Hilton

The Experimental Pathology of Stress: Hans Selye to Paris Hilton

"Stupid Sons of Fishes": Shared Values in John Steinbeck and the Musical Stage

It was at a conference venue some years ago that I had the temerity to disagree publicly with another scholar and in his presence. I refer to John Steinbeck's distinguished and genial biographer, Jackson J. Benson. My point of demurral concerned Benson's characterization of the Broadway musical comedy, as it was generally called before the era of Stephen Sondheim, as being sentimental and overtly rosy in its view of the human condition. With some years of record reviewing behind me by then, and a longtime interest in the Broadway musical before that, I tried to make the point that the most successful musicals combined sentiment with often darker and more serious concerns, a balance both Benson and I would recognize, curiously enough, in the work of John Steinbeck, against whom the same charges were so often laid. With this peaceable encounter in mind, then, I decided to explore the points in common that Steinbeck's writings evince alongside the celebrated musicals of the '40s, '50s, and early '60s—the period after Steinbeck moved to the East and wrote the books many have most frequently attacked in just the terms already mentioned. After making his move, Steinbeck made friendships among celebrated figures of the Broadway stage, just as he had earlier socialized with Hollywood types. I refer specifically to Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, and also to Frank Loesser, whose finest works coincide in time frame with John Steinbeck's adaptation to New York. Just as these composers and librettists have had their creations [End Page 107] see frequent revivals in recent years, John Steinbeck's writings have not gone out of print. Might the reason lie in those shared values, and would that be a terrible thing? Those values, not usual for the times, involve a belief in the redemptive worth of the individual in a democratic society, a trust in ordinariness, and an acceptance of homely truths undistorted by reckless ambition or perverted by naked self-interest; they require a social accommodation with a spiritual dimension eschewing cynicism, on the one hand, and sentimentality on the other. They also involve achieving a balance of an existence unafraid of having mediocrity and anonymity as neighbors. Steinbeck met Frank Loesser, Benson reports, in 1939, when Steinbeck was beginning an affair with Gwen/Gwyn Conger, which would turn into his truncated second marriage (Benson 405); like Gwen, Loesser's first wife, Lynn, was a singer, and through her the writer was introduced to her husband, Frank, not yet famous as a Broadway composer. At the end of Steinbeck's marriage to Gwyn a decade later, history repeated itself when future third wife, Elaine Scott, began introducing Steinbeck to her New York friends, among them Rodgers and Hammerstein (655). By some sort of fortunate timing, Steinbeck was just finishing the play he eventually called Burning Bright, which Rodgers acquired the rights to in his function as producer (657). And shortly before, he had been to an all-star party given in Ethel Barrymore's honor where he again saw Loesser, with whom he had never been out of touch (656). On reflection, it seems unsurprising that these representative American artists should have drifted into one another's company as the tensions of wartime were replaced by the perils of peace and the temptations of excess. Six years before, Rodgers and Hammerstein had supposedly revolutionized the Broadway musical by staging a show with a music-integrated plot and integral dance numbers, Oklahoma! The distinction is dubious, as Rodgers and Lorenz Hart had done something of the sort in the 1940s Pal Joey, and many would take the title back a generation to Jerome Kern's Show Boat. More to the point is the fact that Rodgers and Hammerstein had, half a dozen years before meeting Steinbeck, brought before wartime audiences a musical that celebrated America's soon-to-be forty-sixth state (as of the time...

Coming Up Roses: The Broadway Musical in the 1950s

The 1950s saw an explosion in the American musical theater. The Broadway show, catapulted into the limelight in the 20s and solidified during the 40s thanks to Rodgers and Hammerstein, now entered its most revolutionary phase, brashly redefining itself and forging a new kind of storytelling. In Coming Up Roses: The Broadway Musical in the 1950s, Ethan Mordden gives us a guided tour of this rich decade. With loving detail, Mordden highlights the shift in Broadway from shows that were mere star vehicles, showcasing a big-name talent, to the bolder stories, stuffed with character and atmosphere. During this period, subject matter became more intricate, even controversial, and plots more human and complex; Mordden demonstrates how, in response, musical conventions were polished, writing became more finely crafted, and dance became truly indispensable. Along the way we meet the key players: such greats as Ethel Merman, George Abbott, Jerome Robbins, Gwen Verdon, Bob Fosse, Stephen Sondheim, Frank Loesser, Cole Porter, Leonard Bernstein, and many others. We get the backstage scoop on why Guys and Dolls is so well-made, why West Side Story is so timeless, why The King and I and Gypsy pushed the envelope, and why no one ever talks about Ankles Aweigh. All this is peppered with a dash of industry gossip-the directorial struggles, last-minute script rewrites and cast replacements, the power of the poster listings-that made Broadway so nerve-wrackingly vibrant. This passionate and informed study illuminates a crucial period in American musical theater and shows us the origins of many of the musicals recently revived to huge success on Broadway.

“Guys and Dolls”: A Musical Fable of Broadway

Frank Loesser (1910-69) belongs to that sparsely populated circle of American songwriters from pre-rock era who wrote both music and lyrics to their songs; he was a man of prodigious talents and accomplishments. His older brother, Arthur, had a distinguished career as a concert pianist, teacher and author, a fact that once prompted Frank to jokingly refer to himself as the evil of two Loessers. In fact, he demanded of himself uncompromising standards that elevate him to a position of preeminence in arena of American musical theater. Loesser never repeated himself or fell victim to formulas; each artistic and box office success only led him to strike out in a new direction. Where's Charley (1948), an old-fashioned farce, was succeeded by Guys & Dolls (1950), which presented a radically different story and set of characters. The Most Happy Fella (1956) was based on Sidney Howard's gripping drama Knew What They Wanted. Loesser transformed it into a musical drama of operatic proportions. How To Succeed in Business without Really Trying (1961) was adapted from Shepherd Mead's best seller of same loquacious title. It was a spoof of corporate world that featured a hero who was a conniving brat-not material out of which successful Broadway musicals are usually made. It won a Pulitzer Prize. Loesser's most famous work and, arguably, his best is Guys & Dolls. The original production ran for almost three years on Broadway. There followed a London production, an all-black cast production, a movie version, innumerable productions in supper clubs and summer stock companies across country, countless amateur performances on college and high school campuses, and it was very successfully revived on Broadway in 1992. There is no means of verifying this, but Guys & Dolls may be most performed musical ever. This article examines Guys & Dolls in attempt to uncover some of secrets of its magic. The Genre Guys & Dolls: A Musical Fable of Broadway, opened in New York on November 24, 1950, and had a run of 1,200 performances. The music and lyrics were work of Frank Loesser; Book was written by Abe Burrows and Jo Swerling;' George S. Kaufman was director. Guys & Dolls is a hybrid musical theater piece in sense that it combines elements of both musical comedy and musical play.2 The basic thrust of a musical comedy is to present a succession of song types-ballads, duets, pattersmixed with concerted numbers, dances and humor. These are strung out on what is usually a tenuous story line involving two pairs of lovers, one romantic, other more lighthearted, and a cast of colorful supporting characters. Cole Porter's Anything Goes (1934) is a superlative example of genre. A musical play uses many of same ingredients, but places greater emphasis on development of characters and exposition of a believable, cohesive story: actions, spoken lines and songs are closely interrelated and develop organically. Such is case with Jerome Kern's/Oscar Hammerstein's Show Boat (1927), to cite but one of many fine examples of this genre. Historically, musical comedies have produced more hit songs than have musical plays (though there are numerous exceptions to this general rule). This is not due to a difference in quality: songs from musical comedies are not necessarily better than those from musical plays. It has to do, rather, with a difference in function and context. Cole Porter's I Get a Kick Out of You has been recorded many times by dozens of singers over course of several decades. It is a wonderful song, but its raison d'etre is not limited to characters who sing it in Anything Goes. The song has a life of its own, divorced from that musical comedy, and can be successfully performed outside that context. In contrast, many fine songs, integral to musical plays for which they were written, have little chance of becoming hits in broader commercial market because they are too closely wedded to specific characters and situations. …

From the Mountain Top to the Foothills

Abstract The American musical from “Oklahoma!” (1943) to 1990 is surveyed in an essay and bibliography. The entire Broadway careers of Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lerner and Loewe, Frank Loesser, Kurt WeiII, Leonard Bernstein, and Jule Styne are featured, along with the careers of Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber through the 1980s.

A most remarkable fella: Frank Loesser and the guys and dolls in his life: a portrait by his daughter

A most remarkable fella: Frank Loesser and the guys and dolls in his life: a portrait by his daughter

Frank Loesser's Hidden Class

Popular songwriter Frank Loesser (1910-69) portrayed himself as an intelligent lowbrow. He had, however, a complex love-hate attitude toward classical music. His family background reveals the source of a negative identity that helped form this attitude, which influenced both his personal life and the Broadway musicals he wrote.

The Broadway Musical: A Critical and Musical Survey

The Broadway musical, one of America's most distinctive contributions to Western music, has been chronicled, dissected, described, and debated, but never until now has its essential element--that glorious music--been analyzed directly in any significant detail. Moving beyond the anecdotes, production histories, and generalizations about theatrical style that mark so much of the critical literature, Joseph P. Swain offers a unique survey of the most important or representative musical plays, one that shows how the great Broadway composers have used the traditional tools of composition--melody, harmony, tonal movement, rhythm, and texture--to become powerful dramatists in their own right. Illustrated with over 150 musical excerpts--a unique feature that gives Swain's analysis unparalleled depth and precision--the book yields new insights at every turn. It shows how particular musical solutions to dramatic problems gave Showboat and Oklahoma! the power to change the course of the Broadway tradition, brought Carousel and West Side Story to worldwide recognition as masterpieces of their kind, and lent a light popular genre the formal complexity and emotional range to encompass a tremendous diversity of styles and materials, from Shakespearean drama (Kiss Me, Kate and West Side Story) to European opera (Porgy and Bess), and from age-old myth (My Fair Lady and Camelot) to still-current ethnic conflict (Fiddler on the Roof). All the great Broadway composers and musical-comedy teams are here--Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Frank Loesser, Leonard Bernstein, Lerner and Loewe--as well as a representative sample of the classic shows, including the sadly neglected The Most Happy Fella. In addition, Swain's thoughtful evaluation of the current scene illuminates issues of dramatic approach (Godspell), plot (A Chorus Line), subject matter (Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita), and musical rhetoric (Stephen Sondheim's output, exemplified by Sweeney Todd) that may determine the future course of the musical play. Precise in focus, uncommonly rich in detail, and accessible to fans and scholars alike, The Broadway Musical will have to be read by anyone concerned with contemporary American music and drama, and by anyone who hopes truly to know this supposedly best-known of music.

Frank Loesser's Sketchbooks for The Most Happy Fella

DESPITE protestations that he had composed not an opera but musical with a lot of music, Frank Loesser's The Most Happy Fella, which premiered at Broadway's Imperial Theater, on May 3, 1956, ranks among the relatively few American musicals that merit the operatic rubric.' It had 676 performances, a first-run success that far surpassed other operatic musicals, including Gershwin's Porgy and Bess (124 performances in 1935), Bernstein's Candide (which began its run of 73 performances several months after Loesser's triumph), and Sondheim's Sweeney Todd (1979), with its Broadway run of 557 performances. The Most Happy Fella, adapted from Sidney Howard's 1924 play, They Knew What They Wanted, is further distinguished by its sole authorship (libretto-lyrics-music), the only one of Loesser's five Broadway musicals for which he chose to work entirely without a librettist, a phenomenon as rare in opera as it is in musicals.2