Frank Loesser

At 59 years old, Frank Loesser has this physical status:

Frank Henry Loesser, 1910-1969) was an American songwriter who composed the lyrics and music to the Broadway musicals Guys and Dolls, as well as others.

In both shows, he received separate Tony Awards for sound and lyrics, as well as revealing the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the latter.

He also wrote numerous songs for film and Tin Pan Alley, some of which have since become standard, and was nominated for five Academy Awards for best song, winning once for "Baby, It's Cold Outside."

Early years

Frank Henry Loesser was born in New York City to Henry Loesser, a pianist, and Julia Ehrlich. He grew up in a West 107th Street in Manhattan.

His father had to leave Prussian military service and work in his family's banking industry in America. Bertha Ehrlich was married to Bertha Ehrlich, and Arthur Loesser, the couple's son, was born on August 26, 1894. Julia Bertha's younger sister Julia immigrated to the United States in 1898, marrying Henry in 1907 after Bertha died in childbirth. Grace, their first child, was born in December of that year. Frank was born on June 29, 1910, and they had a son named Frank.

Loesser's parents, secular German Jews, coveted a high degree of intellect and culture, and educated him musically in the style of European composers. However, although Henry was a full-time piano teacher, he never taught his son. Henry wrote in a 1914 letter to Arthur that the four-year-old Frank could play by ear "any tune he's heard and will spend a considerable amount of time at the piano." (Frank Loesser later collaborated with musical connoisseurs to ensure that his written scores accurately represented the music as he imagined it.)

Loesser was dissatisfied with his father's refined taste in music and resisted by composing his own music and playing up the harmonica. He was kicked out of Townsend High School and moved to City College of New York. After one year of struggling in every subject except English and gymnastics, he was kicked out of the CCNY in 1925.

Loesser was forced to seek jobs to help his family after his father died unexpectedly on July 20, 1926. He worked as a restaurant reviewer, process server, classified ad salesman for The Tuckahoe Record, knit-goods editor for a small newspaper company, and city editor for a short-lived newspaper in New Rochelle, New York, titled New Rochelle News.

Later life and death

Loesser's book, music, and lyrics for Seor Discovert Himself, a musical interpretation of a Budd Schulberg short story, appeared from 1965 to 1968. In 1985, the New York Musical Theatre Works produced a version. A complete version of the Arena Stage, Washington, D.C., was unveiled at the Arena Stage, with the support of his widow Jo Loesser, a complete version of the group Culture Clash and director Charles Randolph-Wright.

Loesser replied that he did not write more shows because he did not write more shows. It's just that I throw out fast." Loesser "was fueled by a lack of sleep, and as a result slept only four hours a night, the bulk of the time working," the New York Times reported his difficult working habits.

Loesser, a heavy smoker, died of lung cancer at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan's East Harlem neighborhood at age 59 on July 28, 1969. The body of his father was cremated and his ashes were scattered at sea the next day.

Personal life

After 21 years of marriage, Lynn Garland and Frank Loesser split around 1957. They had two children together: John Loesser, who works in theatre, and Susan Loesser, a writer who wrote her father's biography Frank Loesser and the Guys and Dolls in His Life (1993, 2000, ISBN 06340093393).

After being introduced by Lynn, he married second wife Jo Sullivan (born Elizabeth Josephine Sullivan) on April 29, 1959. In The Most Happy Fella, Jo Sullivan had lead. Hannah and Emily had two children. Emily is a performer who is married to actor Don Stephenson. Hannah died of cancer on January 25, 2007, and she was an artist in oils, pastels, and mixed media. Jo died on April 28, 2019, at the age of 91.

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Early career as lyricist

Loesser's first song credit was "In Love with the Memory of You," with music by William Schuman, published in 1931. Other early lyrical credits included two hit songs of 1934, "Junk Man" and "I Wish I Were Twins", both with music by Joe Meyer and the latter with co-lyric credit to Eddie DeLange. "Junk Man" was first recorded that year by Benny Goodman with singer Mildred Bailey on vocals.

In the mid-1930s, he performed at The Back Drop, a night spot on east 52nd Street, along with composer Irving Actman, while by day working on the staff of Leo Feist Inc. writing lyrics to Joseph Brandfon's music at $100 per week. After a year, Feist had not published any of them. Loesser fared only slightly better collaborating with the future classical composer Schuman, selling their 1931 song to Feist that would flop. Loesser described his early days of learning the craft as having "a rendezvous with failure." While he dabbled in other trades, he inevitably returned to the music business.

Loesser's work at the Back Drop led to his first Broadway musical, The Illustrator’s Show, a 1936 revue written with Back Drop collaborator Irving Actman, which lasted only four nights. The year before while performing at the Back Drop, Loesser met an aspiring singer, Lynn Garland (born Mary Alice Blankenbaker). He proposed in a September 1936 letter that included funds for a railroad ticket to Los Angeles where Loesser's contract to Universal Pictures had just ended. The couple married in a judge's office. Loesser was offered a contract by Paramount Pictures. His first song credit there was "Moon of Manakoora", written with Alfred Newman for Dorothy Lamour in the film The Hurricane. He wrote the lyrics for many popular songs during this period, including "Two Sleepy People" and "Heart and Soul" with Hoagy Carmichael and "I Hear Music" with Burton Lane. He also collaborated with composers Arthur Schwartz and Joseph J. Lilley.

One of his notable efforts was "See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have", with music by Friedrich Hollaender and sung by Marlene Dietrich in Destry Rides Again. In 1941, Loesser wrote "I Don't Want to Walk Without You" with Jule Styne, included in the 1942 film Sweater Girl and sung by Betty Jane Rhodes. Irving Berlin was a huge fan of the song and once played it repeatedly, telling Loesser why he believed it was the greatest song he wished he'd written.

Members of the Western Writers of America chose the 1942 song "Jingle Jangle Jingle", for which Loesser wrote the lyrics, as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time.

He stayed in Hollywood until World War II, when he joined the Army Air Force.

Broadway and later film career

In 1948, Broadway producers Cy Feuer and Ernest H. Martin asked Loesser to write music and lyrics to George Abbott's book for an adaptation of the Brandon Thomas play Charley's Aunt. The musical, Where's Charley? (1948), starred Ray Bolger and ran for 792 performances. A film version released in 1952.

Also in 1948, Loesser sold to MGM the rights to "Baby, It's Cold Outside", a song he wrote in 1944 and performed informally at parties with his then wife Lynn Garland. The studio included it in the 1949 movie Neptune's Daughter, and the song became a huge hit. While Garland was mad at Loesser for selling what she considered "their song", it won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

His next musical, Guys and Dolls (1950), based on the stories of Damon Runyon, was again produced by Feuer and Martin. Guys and Dolls became a hit and earned Loesser a Tony Award. Bob Fosse called Guys and Dolls "the greatest American musical of all time." A film version was released in 1955, starring Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, Frank Sinatra, and Vivian Blaine.

In 1950, Loesser started Frank Music Corporation. Initially created as a means of controlling and publishing his work, the company eventually supported other writers, including Richard Adler, Jerry Ross, and Meredith Willson. Loesser also started the theatrical licensing company Music Theatre International in 1952. Frank Music and MTI were sold to CBS Music in 1976. CBS in turn sold Frank Music to Paul McCartney's MPL Communications holding company in 1979.

Also in 1952, Loesser wrote the score for the film Hans Christian Andersen. The movie's songs included "Wonderful Copenhagen", "Anywhere I Wander", "Thumbelina", and "Inchworm".

He wrote the book, music, and lyrics for his next two musicals, The Most Happy Fella (1956) and Greenwillow (1960). Around the beginning of 1957, Garland and Loesser divorced, and Loesser began a relationship with Jo Sullivan, who had played the character of Rosabella in Fella. He wrote the music and lyrics for How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961), which ran for 1,417 performances, won the 1962 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and received another Tony and a Grammy Award for Best Musical Theater Album.

Pleasures and Palaces (1965), the last Loesser musical produced during his lifetime, closed during out-of-town tryouts.

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