Word: loesser
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Songs just popped into his head. Or so Frank Loesser liked to say. "Of course," he would concede, "your head has to be arranged to receive them. Some people's heads are arranged so that they keep getting colds. I keep getting songs." During a 35-year show-business career, Loesser caught songs by the hundreds and infected millions with his melodious malady. Originally a lyricist, he came into his own as a composer-writer with the rousing Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition and the poignant Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year, both World...
...Loesser was as single-minded about his work as any compulsive crapshooter. Rising at 5 every morning, he toiled long and hard, pruning his tunes and polishing his words. "For every song I let out," he once said, "there are six in the basket that nobody will ever see." A small (5 ft. 6 in.), tough-talking, chainsmoking man, he reminded some of George Raft, others of a Guys and Dolls bookie. To keep busy in his off hours he took up hobbies (painting, carpentry), and from time to time he expressed the hope that they would help him give...
Monosyllable Champion. After Cole Porter, Loesser was probably the greatest American composer-lyricist. They were both superb melodists, but Loesser was not as interested in sophisticated word play as Porter. As his producer, Cy Feuer, recalls, Loesser "was a champion of the one-syllable word." As good proof as any is this line from the title song from Guys and Dolls...
...Succeed in Business Without Really Trying--An unabashedly artless production of the Frank Loesser musical. Ideal football weekend entertainment. At AGASSIZ THEATRE...
...those who care, this year's sobering-up session goes under the name How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. It's a fine musical and always has been, therefore a joy to behold. Frank Loesser's songs remain smart and fast, and the Abe Burrows-Jack Weinstock-Willie Gilbert book might have been written by bonafide comic geniuses. The story, it is true, proves nothing of anything, but for beauty of construction and quantity of laughs it can't be faulted...