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[0:00] Paul Lazarus: Hi, this is Paul Lazarus. In the 1980s, I produced and hosted a radio series called Anything Goes, a celebration of the American musical theater. Now the Broadway Podcast Network is bringing back these shows. Kicking off our fourth season, this is the first of a two-part program with legendary creator Frank Loesser. Loesser is perhaps best known for The Most Happy Fella, the Pulitzer Prize-winning How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, and the Broadway classic Guys and Dolls. This program originally aired in November of 1982.

[0:59] ♪ Musical number: "Guys and Dolls" — performed by Stubby Kaye and Johnny Silver ♪

[3:30] Paul Lazarus: The title song from Guys and Dolls, and welcome to Anything Goes, I'm Paul Lazarus. Frank Loesser here on Anything Goes today. I just felt like it, no particular reason, not a birthday, not any commemorative date, but I just, it's been a long time since we listened to the music and words of Frank Loesser, and I felt it was too long, so today some rare and some well-known Frank Loesser. Of course, Stubby Kaye and Johnny Silver sing the title song from one of the masterworks of the American musical comedy theatre, Guys and Dolls. I have collected over the years as many recordings of songs by Frank Loesser performed by the composer-lyricist himself, and I thought I'd play a lot of those today. They're certainly very rare, and he didn't record many of his songs, sadly, and he did them rather well.

What's amazing about his body of work to me is that it is such a high quality throughout. There's relatively few clunkers in the Loesser canon, and I think it's because he was such a perfectionist. He threw out a lot, so as a result we don't have that much by Loesser, especially if you consider only the theatre songs. He wrote a lot, a lot of movie songs as a lyricist with other composers, and there are many, many of those, but his theatre work, in which he wrote both music and lyrics, really comprises about five or six shows, all of which we'll listen to today. I thought we'd start off with something kind of fun. Frank Loesser wrote two children's pieces, one called The Ugly Duckling and the other, The King's New Clothes, based on the famous children's stories, and recorded them for MGM. I wish I knew who had commissioned this, or how did this come about, but I think it's delightful, and this is Frank Loesser performing his The Ugly Duckling.

[5:31] ♪ Musical number: "The Ugly Duckling" — performed by Frank Loesser ♪

[8:16] Paul Lazarus: Frank Loesser himself performing the Ugly Duckling and of course from Hans Christian Anderson. Both the Ugly Duckling and the King's New Clothes were included in the score to Hans Christian Anderson and we mainly know the versions by Danny Kaye. I have to say one of my favorite scores of all time is Most Happy Fella by Frank Loesser and many people accuse this show of being overly melodramatic and kind of soupy and I think done correctly would be about as soupy as Porgy and Bess but certainly I don't think anyone would argue with me that there are some wonderful moments in this score. Frank Loesser's Most Happy Fella and this song performed here by Art Lund is certainly one of them.

[9:03] ♪ Musical number: "Joey, Joey, Joey" — performed by Art Lund ♪

[12:06] ♪ Musical number: "Joey, Joey, Joey" — performed by Frank Loesser ♪

[12:57] Paul Lazarus: Lester, before he started writing music, there must be hundreds of lyrics for film songs in the 30s, late 20s, and all through the 40s. One of the ones that I've always enjoyed was a song he wrote for the film *Perils of Pauline*. I've never really been able to find a good version of this song, unfortunately, but I love the song. This is a decent rendition of it from a record entitled *Ben Bagley's Frank Lester Revisited* featuring Margaret Whiting. I don't know, it's just always been a special favorite of mine, a Frank Lester song. *I Wish I Didn't Love You So*, written in 1947.

[14:01] ♪ Musical number: "I Wish I Didn't Love You So" — performed by Margaret Whiting ♪

[17:16] Paul Lazarus: You're listening to *Anything Goes* about legendary writer Frank Lesser. I thought I'd move into his very first book, which is called *The Perils of Pauline*. I wish I didn't love you so. And he wrote both music and lyrics for that one, unlike many of the movie songs that he wrote with Arthur Schwartz and Burton Lane and Jemay McHugh. The list is endless. Jilly Stein, I thought I'd move into his very first complete score for the theater. He contributed to shows like *The Illustrator Show* before this, but his first major foray into the musical theater was with *Where's Charlie*, which is a really charming show, and it's certainly not mature Frank Lesser, but I had a lot of fun doing it once in college, and I love this score. This is the score to *Where's Charlie*.

[18:14] ♪ Musical number: "Where's Charlie?" — performed by Frank Loesser ♪

[19:55] ♪ Musical number: "Once in Love with Amy" — performed by Ray Bolger ♪

[23:18] Paul Lazarus: The inimitable Ray Bolger, or Scarecrow from *Wizard of Oz*, and the original Charlie in Frank Lesser's *Where's Charlie*, performing the gigantic hit song from that show, *Once in Love with Amy*, and one of the more successful sing-alongs in the theater ever to have been pulled off in a Broadway show. We used to stop the show and have everybody join in with him as he performed it. Here's another one of those very rare recordings of Mr. Lesser performing one of his own works, and this is also from *Where's Charlie*, the song *Make a Miracle*, and this is performed by Frank and his then-wife, Lynn Lesser.

[24:04] ♪ Musical number: "Make a Miracle" — performed by Frank and Lynn Lesser ♪

[24:13] ♪ Musical number: "Make a Miracle" — performed by Frank and Lynn Loesser ♪

[27:02] Paul Lazarus: Frank and Lynn Loesser performing a song from Where's Charley? "Make a Miracle." I thought I'd bounce back to the film songs for a second and just acquired a collection of records called the Tommy Dorsey Frank Sinatra Sessions from RCA, and they have released all of the very famous Dorsey Sinatra recordings of the early 40s on a three-double-record set, and among those songs recorded was "Say It," which was a Jimmy McHugh Frank Loesser song for a 1940 Paramount film Buck Benny Rides Again, and immediately after Sinatra croons that one, you'll hear Betty Davis from the Arthur Schwartz Frank Loesser score Thank Your Lucky Stars doing a very famous World War II song. They're either too young or too old.

[27:57] ♪ Musical number: "Say It" — performed by Frank Sinatra ♪

[28:54] ♪ Musical number: "Say It" — performed by Frank Loesser ♪

[30:29] ♪ Musical number: "They're Either Too Young or Too Old" — performed by Frank Loesser ♪

[34:26] ♪ Musical number: "I'll Never, Never Fail You" — performed by Frank Loesser ♪