When You See A Guy.....

"...reach for stars in the sky, you can bet that he's doing it for some Doll!"

There's a reason why GUYS AND DOLLS is my favorite Broadway show, and it's not the great music, the clever lyrics, the New York setting, or the romantic plot. It isn't even that it's about a time when men were guys and women were dolls.

No, it's because it's the ONLY classic musical in which I've actually performed. And while I wasn't Adelaide, or even one of the Hot Box girls, I was on stage and my name was in the cast list. I love everything about this show, including the things listed above. So it was a great treat for me last week when my Florida Orchestra performed the music of Frank Loesser.

He wrote a lot of other things, too, but GUYS AND DOLLS is probably his best known and certainly his best loved. To make it even more special, the orchestra was accompanied by four singers, one of whom was Frank Loesser's real life daughter, Emily. Also singing for us were her husband Donald Stephenson, Ron Raines who plays Alan Spaulding on The Guiding Light and can sing the paint off the Mona Lisa, and Debbie Gravitte, a sultry singer with jazz thumping beneath her Broadway fare.

Lucky for all of us, Ms. Gravitte was selling her CD in the lobby, so I've been "Defying Gravity" all week as I listened to it.

But I would be remiss if I didn't mention another great thing about GUYS AND DOLLS. If you take away all the music, you have an absolutely perfect romance novel. Here's New York City's most dangerous gambler falling in love with the Uber religious Mission Girl. And if that isn't conflict enough for you, his ability to seduce her is the heart of a major bet between him and his cronies.

It's almost too good.

So look for the film version if you can. It stars Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando. You can't possibly go wrong with those. It will make you wish you had some cheesecake from Lindy's.

Have a great weekend.

Susan