Frank Henry Loesser ( "lesser"; June 29, 1910 – July 28, 1969) was an American songwriter who wrote music and lyrics for the Broadway musicals Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, among others. He won a Tony Award for Guys and Dolls and shared the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for How to Succeed. He also wrote songs for over 60 Hollywood films and Tin Pan Alley, many of which have become standards, and was nominated for five Academy Awards for best song, winning once for "Baby, It's Cold Outside."
Frank Henry Loesser was born to a Jewish family in New York City, the son of Henry Loesser, a pianist, and Julia Ehrlich. He grew up in a house on West 107th Street in Manhattan.
Henry had moved to America to avoid German military service and work in his family's banking business. He married Bertha Ehrlich; their son, Arthur Loesser, was born August 26, 1894. Bertha's younger sister Julia arrived in America in 1898, marrying Henry in 1907 after Bertha died in childbirth. Grace, their first child, was born in December of that year. Their son Frank was born June 29, 1910.
Loesser's parents, secular German Jews, prized high intellect and culture and educated him musically in the vein of European composers. Although Henry was a full-time piano teacher, he never taught Frank. In a 1914 letter to Arthur, Henry wrote that four-year-old Frank could play by ear "any tune he's heard and can spend an enormous amount of time at the piano." (Frank Loesser later collaborated with musical secretaries to ensure that his written scores reflected the music as he conceived it.)
Loesser disliked his father's refined taste in music, and resisted by writing his own music and taking up the harmonica. He was expelled from Townsend Harris High School; from there, he went to City College of New York, but was expelled in 1925 after one year for failing every subject except English and gym.
After his father died suddenly on July 20, 1926, Loesser was forced to work to support his family. His jobs included restaurant reviewer, process server, classified ad salesman for the New York Herald Tribune, political cartoonist for The Tuckahoe Record, sketch writer for Keith Vaudeville Circuit, knit-goods editor for Women's Wear Daily, press representative for a small movie company, and city editor for New Rochelle News, a short-lived newspaper in New Rochelle, New York.
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 Mildred Bailey on vocals.
In the mid-1930s, Loesser (along with composer Irving Actman) performed at nightspot the Back Drop on East 52nd Street. By day, he worked at Leo Feist Inc. writing lyrics to Joseph Brandfon's music for $100 per week. However, after a year, Feist had not published any of the songs. Loesser fared only slightly better collaborating with future classical composer Schuman, selling their 1931 song (which unfortunately would flop) to Feist. Loesser described his early days of learning the craft as having "a rendezvous with failure." While he dabbled in other trades, he persistently returned to the music business.
Loesser's work at the Back Drop led to his first Broadway musical (which lasted only four nights), The Illustrator's Show, a 1936 revue written with Back Drop collaborator Actman. The previous year while performing at the Back Drop, Loesser met aspiring singer Lynn Garland (née Mary Alice Blankenbaker). He proposed marriage in a September 1936 letter that included money for a railroad ticket to Los Angeles, where Loesser's contract to Universal Pictures had just ended. The couple was 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 for the film The Hurricane. He wrote 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 the composers Arthur Schwartz and Joseph J. Lilley.
One of his notable efforts (with music by Friedrich Hollaender) was "See What the Boys in the Back Room Will Have," memorably 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.
Loesser stayed in Hollywood until his enlistment during World War II.
Loesser enlisted in the Army Air Forces in October 1942; he continued to write lyrics for films and single songs. Loesser created the popular war song "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" (1942), inspired by the words of Navy chaplain Howell Forgy. Loesser wrote other songs at the request of the armed forces, including "What Do You Do in the Infantry?" and "The Ballad of Rodger Young" (1943). He also wrote "They're Either Too Young or Too Old" for the 1943 film Thank Your Lucky Stars.
In 1944, Loesser worked as the lyricist on the little-known musical Hi Yank!, performed by and for U.S. soldiers abroad, with music by Alex North. Hi Yank! was produced by the U.S. Army Office of Special Services as a "blueprint special" to boost the morale of soldiers located where USO shows could not visit. The "blueprint" was a book containing a musical script with instructions for staging the show using materials locally available to deployed soldiers. According to a document at the U.S. Army Centre for Military History, a touring company formed in Italy was slated to produce the musical. Hi Yank! was generally forgotten until 2008, when the PBS History Detectives researched the case of a long-saved radio transcription disc. The disc has two songs and a promotional announcement for the show's Fort Dix premiere in August 1944, when the disc was broadcast there.
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 (who performed one of the musical's more memorable songs, "Once In Love With Amy") and ran for 792 performances. A film version was released in 1952.