Customer Reviews

A Most Remarkable Fella: Frank Loesser and the Guys and Dolls in His Life: A Portrait by His Daughter

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I highly recommend this well written, thoughtful, highly personal biography by Frank Loesser's daughter. If at all possible it is a good idea, I feel, to be playing through the "Frank Loesser Songbook" on your piano during the period you are reading this biography, as the combination of playing Frank Loesser's music on the piano in conjunction with reading his daughter's explanations of how the music came to be, is powerful to say the least. I had not realized until I read this book how important Frank Loesser is to Broadway. I now understand that Loesser is up there with Rogers/Hammerstein and Sondheim. Frank Loesser was larger than life. In my opinion we all owe a debt of gratitude to his daughter for writing a book about him that will live on to be the definitive, and only, book about this important man's amazing, interesting life.

This book shines from the Broadway History bookshelf. What appears as a modest portrait of Frank Loesser by his daughter, turns out to be a delightful history of Broadway. The beautifully researched stories of his productions are priceless. The lyrics, which lavishly illustrate Loesser's wonderful use of the language, are perfectly scattered throughout. The stories of the man himself, the era in which he worked, and the people who were part of his creative world, reveal the complexities and changing scene of Broadway production. Driven and demanding, he alienated Sinatra and slapped a leading lady; yet he meticulously crafted legendary shows like Guys and Dolls, and Most Happy Fella. Susan Loesser brings great warmth, an enormous amount of research and, obviously, a first-person sensibility to the story of this brilliant, funny, difficult, irascible, demanding, creative, and driven man. Frank Loesser told his casts "Loud is Better". This book is not loud, but it is wonderful.

Susan Loesser's biography of her father, Frank, does what it set out to do: Tell us about the man behind the songs. Unfortunately, that man wasn't as appealing as his music. I was disappointed to find out how Mr. Loesser treated his family and those he worked with. It seems that those who are most talented are often prima donnas personally, and Frank Loesser certainly fit that mold. HIs violent temper, condescending attitudes toward those who didn't meet his standards, and complete failure as a father comprised the dark side of Mr. Loesser. And that sailor's tongue! Hats off to the author for not glossing over these facts. She's frank (no pun intended) in expressing her disappointment with certain traits of her father.

However, there was a very bright side to Frank Loesser, and the book focuses primarily on this side of his life. His astounding command of the language in his lyrics and his entertaining personal letters highlight the brilliant talents that made him the household name he is.

Of particular note are the details surrounding his vision of such shows as Guys and Dolls, and his various friendships (with people such as John Steinbeck) and his conflicts (his disagreements with Frank Sinatra were entertaining to read). It's also fun to hear the fascinating personal anecdotes shared by Susan Loesser.

Early on, I found myself bored with the details of the Loesser family, but soon warmed up to the book, enjoying it greatly. Frank gave us some wonderful lyrics and music, and despite his personal shortcomings, his story is, as the title says, remarkable.

Frank Loesser, who wrote "Guys and Dolls," "Where's Charley," "Greenwillow" and the newly produced musical of twentieth Century Mexico, "Senor Discretion Himself," had two intriguing wives and a life filled with smart business decisions and personal unhappiness. His daughter, Susan, has written an affectionate memoir of her old man which opens up the tarp in a pretty bizarre pup-tent. Loesser's blue language is startling, and his temper and amour-propre make me dislike him intensely. Other glimpses of his personality depend, I suppose, on how much the reader can swallow. Here's that's always subjective. His sketches and doodles are cute, but not worth reprinting here as though they were fine art. The descriptions of her father's hand-made furniture have more mystery to them, one wonders what kind of person would make such strange contraptions. However, he couldn't have been that bad if his daughter, apparently the salt of the earth, and his widow, the cabaret songstress Jo Sullivan, give vivid testimonial to his time on earth. A remarkable fella indeed, even if a kind of creep.

What do writers of today have in common with this popular 20th century composer and lyricist?

Not much except perhaps passion.

I picked up A Most Remarkable Fella because I'm drafting a book about my father, and I wanted to see if I could steal a few writing tricks. However, before I could focus on Susan's writing style, she'd swept me up into the portrait she created of her father.

It's a lively portrait, studded with lyrics from Frank's many songs, including his classic Guys and Dolls with its familiar tune, "Luck Be a Lady Tonight."

Susan captured Frank's astonishing gift of language. As I writer, I felt stunned by his apparent ease of composition, how rhymed and scanned language seemed to pour out of his mind, how he easily he invented lyrics and tunes like "Baby, It's Cold Outside" or "Heart and Soul."

Susan also catches her father's personality, his passion for partying, his sense of humor, and the nasty bite of his angry words. We quickly learn what a high-energy man Frank was - and how swift his temper.

And I did pick up a few writing tips from Susan as I watched the way she skillfully splices her own life into his: her difficult childhood, her mother's alcoholism, her parents' divorce.

At last, though, we get to the end of the book, the part I always despise about biographies, where the person predictably dies. As I dropped A Most Remarkable Fella to the floor beside other finished volumes, I felt chagrin at the shortness of human life, even lives as remarkable as Frank's.

...well told. Susan Loesser wrote this portrait of her father, Frank Loesser, because she stated that a definitive biography had not been written about him. Since he was a talented composer/lyricist, we are lucky that Susan Loesser decided to commit his musical triumphs to paper. What emerges is a grossly immature man of great talent, who was a complete egomaniac with a superiority/inferiority complex. Loesser is not a daughter engaged in character assasination, but one who subtly reveals what a jerk her dad could be despite the fact that he wrote great standard songs, won an Oscar for one of them, and wrote three smash Broadway hits. The detail provided on the Broadway endeavors is satisfying and the primary reason to read the book.

The story is creepy in some respects. Susan Loesser is forgiving of the fact that her father wanted to escape her alcoholic mother, and therefore left her for a much younger woman he met while working on "The Most Happy Fella." While it is nice that he escaped an unhappy relationship, he left his two minor children with an alcoholic mother who neglected them. When Loesser states she wanted to live with her father and step-mother, but they they did not want her to live with them, despite the fact she and her brother were being neglected, the reader is shocked and saddened that her father was so unbelievably selfish. Frank Loesser was actually worse than selfish, he was also violent. The author recounts an incident in which her father hit his leading lady from "Guys and Dolls" because she wasn't singing a song as he expected her to sing it. This incident is presented as something that just blew over. So Frank Loesser was such an important talent that he could assault singers with impunity. Loesser was also incredibly foul-mouthed, even in front of his young children. Yuk...

I am always surprised that great talents can also be people who deserve great scorn. I guess talent doesn't care who owns it. Loesser stresses the fact that her father never achieved admiration from his mother and half-brother even though he was an accomplished composer/lyricist. Maybe they didn't admire him because they valued character over talent, and Frank Loesser obviously lacked character.

I, of course, have a copy of Susan's book detailing the life of Frank Loesser who happened to be my uncle. I grew up in a small town in the midwest and only got to see Uncle Frank on a few occasions. One above review refers to him as "foul-mouthed" and ill-tempered. And while that may have been somewhat true, my memories of him are those of a man who loved his family, was quick-witted, and had an infectious laugh. I remember the time he took all of his nieces and nephews to the County Fair when we were children. I remember trading knock-knock jokes with him as a child. We all adored Uncle Frank. And thankfully I got to know him better when I was older through this wonderful book which Susan wrote. It gave me new insight into an uncle who died way too early and of whom I have only the fondest of memories. This book is a must-read for anyone who really wants to get to know the real Frank Loesser. He was a genius and I still miss him almost 40 years after his death.

If you love Loesser's work (like me) and want to know about the the man behind the great work, this is a good book to read. Written by his daughter, it's frank, honest, loving and revealing. I enjoyed it very much.