Frank Loesser

Born in 1910, Frank Loesser never studied music formally like many of his contemporaries. He taught himself harmonica and piano starting at an early age. He attended Speyer and Townsend Harris Hall High Schools, then dropped out of City College in 1926 at age 16. His first jobs were as a process server, office boy, and city editor of a New Rochelle newspaper. He began writing lyrics for popular songs and Loesser's first published lyric was "In Love With the Memory of You" (1931) with music by William Schuman, who later became president of the Julliard School of Music. He sang and played piano in nightclubs and began writing lyrics to music by Irving Actman. They contributed five songs to a 1936 flop Broadway show, The Illustrator's Show, which ran only five performances. However, this exposure was enough to land him a contract, first with Universal, then Paramount, where he wrote his first film song, "The Moon of Manakoona" with Alfred Newman, for the Dorothy Lamour film Hurricane (1937). In 1937, he returned to Hollywood, this time to Paramount where he stayed for four years. He went on to write lyrics for songs in over sixty films, including Destry Rides Again (1939), Neptune's Daughter (1948), Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943) and Let's Dance (1948).

Loesser may have been the only person to arrive in Hollywood as a lyricist and to leave as a composer. Originally, he only wrote the words to songs such as "Dolores," and "They're Either Too Young or Too Old." Later on however, he wrote both words and music to such songs as "I Wish I Didn't Love You So Much," and "Baby, It's Cold Outside." Loesser wrote five Broadway musicals in total, including the ever popular Guys and Dolls, which ran for 1200 performances, and How to Succeed in Business Without Even Trying, which won seven Tony awards including Best Musical and the Pulitzer Prize. In the late 1940's he formed his own music publishing company and was instrumental in furthering the careers of three successful theatrical songwriters, Richard Adler, Jerry Ross and Meredith Wilson. Loesser had four children, a son and three daughters. He was 59 when he died on July 26, 1969, of lung cancer.


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