Word: loessers
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...hear all of Loesser's smarts and sparks in Guys and Dolls - fast and forceful, perennially revived and the one period musical that never loses its topicality. That show exemplifies the credo Loesser lived by: "LOUD is good." Which echoes in a comment Hutton made in the TCM interview: "Oh, I couldn't sing good, but boy, I sure sang loud!" Talk about true minds meeting: Loesser was just the fella to put funny words in her big mouth...
...LOESSER GIVES HER MORE...
...Others might run screaming from this jackhammer assault; Loesser ran and embraced it. He didn't want subtlety, he wanted salesmanship, and Betty has the pertest peddler around. He wrote more than a dozen songs for her, all to be found in The Complete Lyrics of Frank Loesser . They started with the 1943 "Murder, He Says," about a girl's jive-talking beau; during the number she jitterbugs, seesaws her shoulders, puts her hand to her tummy and sashays sexily - all stops out for Betty...
...Loesser kept feeding her novelty numbers to test her skills of pronunciation and breath control. Often the songs have her complaining, if not about a boyfriend, then about work. "The Sewing Machine" (from The Perils of Pauline): "I bobbin the bobbin and pedal the pedal / And wheel the wheel all day/ So by night I feel so weary / That I never get out to play." And in another Pauline song, the sublimely frantic "Rumble Rumble Rumble," Betty practically falls off the piano top she's perched on, so agitated is she singing about how she can't get to sleep...
...Hutton and Loesser reconvened at MGM in 1950 for Let's Dance. Theoretically it was a Fred Astaire musical, but Loesser didn't go highbrow. He gave her a patter number with these lyrics - "I can't stop talkinaboutim antalkinaboutim antalkinaboutim, I can't stop talkinabout the man that I adore" - as Astaire stands by in understated disbelief. The singer and the songwriter never worked together again, which is a shame, since Hutton might have inspired a snazzy Broadway score from Loesser and kept her own career in flourish. In a way they did duet once more, once removed. Hutton...