Guys and Dolls History:

Guys & Dolls (1950)

"It's the perfect musical comedy."
--Daily News
History:
The original production opened on Broadway November 24, 1950 and ran for 1,200 performances. A
1976 revival, featuring Robert Guillaume and an all-black cast, ran for 239 performances, and the hit
1992 revival with Peter Gallagher, Nathan Lane and Faith Prince ran almost as long the original! The
film version, starring Marlon Brando, Jean Simmons, Frank Sinatra & Vivian Blaine (recreating her
role as Adelaide), had the highest box-office gross of 1955.
Awards:
"Guys & Dolls" won 8 Tony Awards (including music & lyrics) and the New York Drama Critics Circle
Award. The 1992 production won a Tony for Best Revival, and its cast album was awarded the
Grammy.
Short Synopsis:
It all begins with a bet. Nathan Detroit bets high-rolling gambler Sky Masterson that Sky cannot
persuade Save-A-Soul Missionary Sister Sarah Brown to accompany him on a trip to Cuba. While the
worldly Sky works his charms on a wary Sarah, Nathan is doing his best to stay outside the
matrimonial clutches of his long-suffering fiance, Miss Adelaide. "Guys and Dolls" is a fable about
what happens to gambling men and the women who long to tame them. Set in the colorful world of
New York City in the mid 20th century, the romantic and funny "Guys And Dolls" is populated with
gangsters and gamblers, missionary dolls and scantily clad showgirls, and one the great musical scores
in the history of American theatre.
Reviews:
"Nathan needs one thousand dollars to rent a garage for the crap game. From then on,
character is destiny."
"One of the funniest and melodious shows in seasons. Everything about it seems practically
perfect."
--Variety
"This is why Broadway was born! "
--Newsweek
"The Beggar's Opera of Broadway"
--Kenneth Tynan
"Yes it's setting is unique, it's patois is unique and its score is unique. But what's uniquely
unique here is the way the show concentrates on the quartet and its two very separate
networks, of life on the street and life in the lord. This is a young show, but a wise one,
something that shouldn't be possible."

"It's astonishing how many mundane situations tickled Loesser's muse..."

"It was the quintessence of Broadway - naive, impulsive, self-centered, and lively. The
music in Frank Loesser's The Most Happy Fella... was imaginative and rich in the finest
tradition of character description. Frank Loesser's Guys and Dolls, in 1950, was a masterly
achievement in the new tradition - music, story, characters, acting, and direction pouring
out of the same crucible. Musical dramas with nobler themes have been less perfectly
composed than this breezy legend of an underworld derived from some of Damon Runyan's
stories. Less original writers than Runyan, Burrows, Swerling and Loesser could have
romanticized (the gamblers of Guys and Dolls) into Bohemians. But the genius of Guys and
Dolls was to portray them without glamour, and the genius of Loesser was to characterize
them musically with candor and relish. There was not a commonplace or superfluous song
in the score. "The Oldest Established Crap Game" "A Bushel and a Peck" "Adelaide's
Lament" "If I Were a Bell" "My Time of Day" "Take Back Your Mink" "More I Cannot
Wish You" "Sue Me" "You're Rocking the Boat" and "Marry the Man Today" were both the
structure and the pith of the story.. Guys and Dolls was a carnival of shoddy Broadway
innocents lost in a furtive but favulous world, and nothng George M. Cohan wrote had the
insight, humor, compassion, and variety of Loesser's Broadway Classic."
--Brooks Atkinson, BROADWAY (MacMillan, NY 1970)
http://frankloesser.com/work_theater/2