Frank Loesser
b. June 29, 1910, New York, NY, USA, d. 1969, New York, NY, USA.
One of America's major lyricists. Early on in his career, he primarily wrote lyrics, but later he wrote both lyrics and music.

A New Yorker, Frank was the son of an immigrant German piano virtuoso. Loesser never took any lessons from his parents, rather he was self taught in piano and harmonica. Frank attended Speyer and Townsend Harris Hall High Schools. dropped out of City College in 1926 at age 16. His first jobs were as a process server; office boy, and even a roving reporter.

While attending a Lions Club dinner, he wrote some silly couplets to accompany the doings. He was encouraged to keep it up by the members. He started to write lyrics for popular songs. He sold his first song "Armful of You" for $15.00 to a vaudevillian. In time, Loesser was hired by the Leo Feist Music Publishing company, mostly writing lyrics to the music of Joseph Brandfron, none of which was good enough for Feist to publish. In 1931, after Loesser had left, Leo Feist did publish one of Loesser's pieces, with music by William Schuman, who later became president of the Juilliard School of Music.

He took a job with RKO in 1932, but none of his work ever reached the screen. So he left, and became a nightclub singer on New York's famed 52nd Street.

In 1934, Eddie De Lange and Joseph Meyer wrote the music, and Loesser wrote the lyric to a song called "I Wish I Were Twins".

In 1936, Irving Actman, wrote the music, and Loesser got together and they wrote most of the score for a revue called 'The Illustrator's Show', which ran for four or five days at New York's 48th Street Theater. But, during those four or five days were enough for a scout from Universal Pictures to hand Loesser a contract. The job didn't last too long, and Frank went back to New York.

In 1937, he returned to Hollywood, this time to Paramount where he
stayed for four years. Among his hits here were:

In the Bob Hope comedy, 'Thanks For The Memory', he wrote lyric for
	"Two Sleepy People,"
For Bing Crosby film, 'Sing You Sinners', Hoagy Carmichael's music,
	"Small Fry"
For film 'Destry Rides Again', with music by Frederick Hollander,
	"See What The Boys in the Back Room Will Have"
For the film 'Forest Rangers', with music by Joseph J. Lilley,
	"Jingle, Jangle, Jingle"

Frank was a Private First Class during WW2, working in the Army's Special Services Division. ' He supplied sketches and songs for all-soldier revues. He also managed to write hit songs, including "Praise The Lord, and Pass The Ammunition", "Roger Young" and "What Do You Do In The Infantry?". In 1946, he again became a civilian.

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." But later 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."

After WW2, Loesser returned to Hollywood. This time around, he wrote
both the Words and the Music for such successful songs as:
from film 'Variety Girl': "Tallahassee",
from 'The Perils of Pauline', with Betty Hutton: "I Wish I Didn't Love You So"
from film 'Red, Hot, and Blue', with Betty Hutton: "(Where Are You) Now That I Need You"
from Neptune's Daughter, (Esther Williams film) "Baby, It's Cold Outside", (won Academy Award)

In 1948, Frank produced the score for Broadway's smash hit 'Where's Charley'. It was a George Abbott adaptation of the comedy `Charley's Aunt', starring Ray Bolger as Charley. Two Hit songs (words and music by Loesser): "Once in Love With Amy" and "My Darling, My Darling"

In 1950, he had an even more successful Broadway show with `Guys and Dolls', which had a run of 1200 performances. Later, Samuel Goldwyn made it a motion picture starring Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra. Some of the hit songs in the show (words and music by Loesser) included:
"If I Were a Bell"
"I've Never Been In Love Before"
"Fugue For Tin Horns"
"Take Back Your Mink"
"A Bushel and a Peck"
"A Woman in Love", written for the Goldwyn screen version.

His last screen musical was in 1952 for 'Hans Christian Andersen' (another Samuel Goldwyn film), starring Danny Kaye and the hit song "Thumbelina." Also in 1948, he had a Tin Pan Alley hit, "On a Slow Boat to China", published independently.

In 1956, 'The Most Happy Fella' opened on Broadway. Loesser's score was extensive and superb. It included over thirty numbers, with duets; canons; folk hymns; arias; parodies; recitatives; and instrumental interludes. "Big D" was probably the shows biggest hit. The show opened in London, England in 1960.

In 1960, Loesser scored the Broadway show 'Greenwillow' which met only with very small success.

But the following year, 1961, saw Loesser with another big success, in the Broadway musical 'How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying". It starred Rudy Vallee and Robert Morse. In 1996, the show was again mounted on a Broadway stage. ('How to Succeed...' and 'Where's Charley?' were both also filmed.)

A Songwriters' Hall of Fame member, Frank was 59 when he died in 1969, a victim of too many cigarettes.