Guys and Dolls - Background

Background

Guys and Dolls was conceived by producers Cy Feuer and Ernest Martin as an adaptation of Damon Runyon's short stories. These stories, written in the 1920s and 1930s, concerned gangsters, gamblers, and other characters of the New York underworld. Runyon was known for the unique dialect he employed in his stories, mixing highly formal language and slang. Frank Loesser, who had spent most of his career as a lyricist for movie musicals, was hired as composer and lyricist. George S. Kaufman was hired as director. When the first version of the show's book, written by Jo Swerling, was deemed unusable, Feuer and Martin asked radio comedy writer Abe Burrows to write a new version of the book.

Loesser had already written much of the score to correspond with the first version of the book. Burrows later recalled, "Frank Loesser's fourteen songs were all great, and the had to be written so that the story would lead into each of them. Later on, the critics spoke of the show as 'integrated'. The word integration usually means that the composer has written songs that follow the story line gracefully, Well, we accomplished that but we did it in reverse". The character of Miss Adelaide was created specifically to fit Vivian Blaine into the musical, after Loesser decided she was ill-suited to play the conservative Sarah. When Loesser suggested reprising some songs in the second act, Kaufman warned: "If you reprise the songs, we’ll reprise the jokes."