The Most Snappy Fella

(3 of 3)

In the nearly unprecedented role of composer, lyricist and librettist for a Broadway show, Loesser adapted Sidney Howard's 1924 play They Knew What They Wanted, the story of a naive Italian-American grape grower who tricks a pretty waitress into marriage. The result, after five years' work, was The Most Happy Fella, a rich and deeply felt pastiche of popular and operatic vocabularies. If none of its 40-plus songs have quite the lasting power of Guys and Dolls' tunes, the show has an emotive force rare on Broadway; the feeling is big enough to fill an opera stage.

After Greenwillow, a daring flop, and How to Succeed, his longest-running hit, Loesser worked on two more shows: Pleasures and Palaces, which closed in Detroit, and Senor Discretion, for which he had composed drafts of all the songs. This workaholic was a smokeaholic too; in his study, cigarette butts would pile up like a Watts Tower of spent nicotine. Loesser called them coffin nails, and he was right: he died of lung cancer at 59.

He left behind legacies that perhaps only Frank Loesser could turn into hit songs. Music, no matter what its pedigree, can be great music. A tempestuous composer can be a sweet guy -- a goodnik. Loud, of course, is good. And Loesser is more.