© Playbill Magazine
March 1992
About "The Most Happy Fella" 
Frank Loesser decided early in his career never to work in the same style twice. He most
certainly had this in mind when he began to set Sidney Howard's Pulitzer Prize-winning
play They Knew What They Wanted to music. The gentle folk of the Napa Valley were worlds
away from the small-time crooks of Loesser's previous musical, Guys and Dolls, and even
less similar to the farcical corporate
executives of his next hit, How to
Succeed in Business without Really Trying.
Loesser's vision for The Most Happy Fella was vastly ambitious. It would require him to
create over 30 musical numbers and do exhaustive research on Italian dialect for lyrical
accuracy. He would also have to experiment with complex vocal writing in a variety of
musical styles. The project was an immense challenge for a self-taught composer and a far cry
from his earlier days as a Hollywood and vaudeville songwriter.
As he adapted the play, Loesser removed much of the political and social commentary in
Howard's work. As subplots were stripped away, he soon discovered that The Most Happy
Fella was an intimate love story played out on a grand scale. It would eventually take him
four years to complete the project.
When the show was ready for production, Loesser wanted to insure that thte integrity of his
work was maintained. By becoming a silent co-producer of the show, he could be certain that
the larger-than-life quality of his writing would be realized in the physical production. the
orchestra pit of the Imperial Theatre was enlarged to accommodate 35 musicians. Even the
original cast album was larger than life. Columbia's unprecedented three-record set was
the first recording of a musical to incorporate all the music, lyrics and dialogue heard
by a theatre audience. It remains a standard by which others are still measured.
Critics have been divided for some time over wheather The Most Happy Fella belongs to the
world of musical theatre or opera. Today, with musicals such as Sweeney Todd, On the
Twentieth Century, and Les Miserables, the differences have not only become blurred but
less important. However, in 1956, many critics had not heard so music-heavy a score since Porgy
and Bess 20 years earlier and were anxious to "put it in its place". In Loesser's mind there was
no doubt where the show belonged, "this is a musical comedy-with a lot of music".
The original cast included Met-trained Rober Weede as Tony, Jo Sullivan (who would later become
Mrs. Frank Loesser) as Rosabella, Susan Johnson, Art Lund, Mona Paulee and Shorty Long. The
production was directed by Joseph Anthony and choreographed by Dania Krupka. After
engagements in Philadelphia and Boston, The Most Happy Fella opened at the Imperial
Theatre in New York City on May 3, 1945, where it ran for 676 performances.
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