FRANK LOESSER ESSAY:

Frank Loesser, or Francis Henry Loesser, was one of the most important 20th Century composers in
America. He was born in New York in 1910, to a family of musicians. Both his Father and Brother
were talented classical pianists, so Loesser was encouraged to learn, and by the age of four, he could
work out songs on the piano. Unlike his family however, Loesser leant towards jazz, rather than
classical playing.
In the 1930’s, Loesser found success song plugging and writing in Tin Pan Alley, much like Gershwin,
and other composers at the time. There, he was noticed, and in 1936, signed a contract with
Universal, moving to Hollywood with his wife. He worked in California as a lyricist with Hollywood
composers such as Arthur Shwartz and Burton Lane.
Loesser’s first work as both a composer and lyricist came with ‘Where’s Charley?’, which he came to
write only because the originally intended composer’s house burnt down, so he was forced to
abandon the project. Before this, Loesser had only written lyrics for other composers, although he
had written a few hit songs, one of which being ‘Baby it’s cold outside’ which won an academy
award. The hit song of ‘Where’s Charley?’ was ‘Once in love with Amy’.
In 1948, Loesser wrote ‘Guys and Dolls’, his biggest hit, running for 1200 performances, and winning
a Tony for best musical. It was also adapted into a film, which was highest grossing in box offices in
1955.
‘The Most Happy Fella’ was Loesser’s three act, three hour musical, consisting of almost 30 songs.
This however, was not such a big hit, with Loesser’s own brother claiming that only ‘five or six bars’
were reasonably good music.
Loesser’s longest running, and last musical on Broadway was ‘How to succeed in business without
really trying’, which won the Pulitzer prizes, and won Tony awards for best musical, author, director,
producer, actor and supporting actor.