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Two 1950s classics by Frank Loesser, Guys and Dolls (1950) and The Most Happy Fella (1956), remain the toast of Broadway in the 1990s. Even those who love to hate Broadway musicals make an exception for Guys and Dolls and consider this show one of the most entertaining and perfect ever. The Most Happy Fella continues to boast the longest initial run, 678 performances, of any Broadway work prior to the 1980s that might claim an operatic rubric.

This chapter examines the work of Frank Loesser. It begins with an extended commentary of his career, followed by details on productions, with data and song information. Loesser came from a musical family. His father, Henry, was a Prussian-born piano teacher; his older brother Arthur was a renowned concert pianist. Frank, though, was a musical black sheep; refusing to study the classics, he taught himself piano and immersed himself in popular music. His first published song was In Love with the Memory of You (1931), with music by William Schuman (later a classical composer and the president of Juilliard). By the mid-1930s Loesser was singing and playing in nightclubs, as well as writing special material with composer Irving Actman.

This chapter traces the end of Schuman's high school career, his ill-fated studies at New York University's School of Commerce, and his discovery of classical music at Carnegie Hall in 1930. From the late 1920s through the early 1930s, Schuman continued to explore the possibility of becoming a Tin Pan Alley composer, and he lived a rather seamy and colorful life as a young bachelor in pursuit of liquor and women. He tried to persuade Marks to continue to collaborate with him, and together they considered other large-scale musical projects. Frank Loesser was an occasional collaborator at this time, but the evidence indicates that the more important partnership was with Marks. This chapter refines the “creation myth” that Schuman crafted about these years and analyzes a few of the songs he wrote at this time.

This chapter focuses on the Hollywood musicals of Johnny Mercer, Frank Loesser, and Harold Arlen. Mercer was primarily a lyricist but he occasionally wrote music as well. His works include the theme song “Moon River” for Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) and the score for The Harvey Girls (1946). Loesser was strictly a composer-lyricist on Broadway; he almost invariably wrote words only until his very last years of regular Hollywood work, which lasted from 1936 to 1950. His songs include “You Can't Tell a Man By His Hat” for Blossoms on Broadway (1938) and “Baby, It's Cold Outside” for the film Neptune's Daughter (1949). Arlen worked most often with Johnny Mercer, E. Y. Harburg, and Ira Gershwin. His works include writing the music for The Wizard of Oz (1939) and A Star Is Born (1954).

It is the coming together of Irving Berlin and Frank Loesser, Ethel Merman and Vivian Blaine, Moss Hart and Michael Kidd, slambang musical comedy and the stimulating musical play—the old guard and the newborns—that tells us how vigorous the musical was. Here is a community of old and young talent egging each other on, everyone a student and teacher at once. Cole Porter was probably as old time as one could have been, counting a Broadway debut in 1916. Yet his Can-Can (1953) was somewhat new wave, an old-fashioned show bursting with relative newcomers—producers Feuer and Martin, book writer Abe Burrows, choreographer Michael Kidd. Can-Can was all for fun. It had a look and a style, vaguely suggestive of Paris in 1893. But what it mainly had were the Cole Porter things—sex, speed, great songs, and a lot of personality in the cast. Other musicals during the period are discussed.

Chapter 8 chronicles the inception and creation of Where’s Charley?, Bolger’s most important Broadway show. The estate that held rights to the show agreed to let Feuer and Martin produce it if three conditions were met: Bolger needed to be the star, the show had to play in a first-class Broadway theater, and Feuer’s edits to the original Samuel French edition of the play had to be the basis of the finished musical. The chapter includes accounts of director George Abbott, composer and lyricist Frank Loesser, choreographer George Balanchine, and new producers Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin, who received assistance from Bolger’s wife, Gwen Rickard. In particular, Bolger’s “Once in Love with Amy” number is discussed for its importance and for the role it played in securing him a Tony Award for his performance as Charley Wykeham.