Boy Loses Girl: Broadway’s Librettists

Whenever the distinguished Broadway songwriter Stephen Sondheim is asked what comes first, the music or the lyrics, he always answers, ＂the book.＂ All theater lovers know that Irving Berlin wrote the score for Annie Get Your Gun, that Rodgers and Hammerstein did the songs for The Sound of Music, and that Frank Loesser penned the musical numbers for Guys and Dolls. But who wrote the librettos for these Broadway classics? The libretto is the script of a musical, what the characters say and do when they are not singing or dancing. It is the backbone of every musical play yet too few theatergoers know who these important librettists are.

Boy Loses Girl is the first book to look at the careers, works and characteristics of Broadway’s most important libretto writers during the past one hundred years. Here are all the major authors, from George M. Cohan, who wrote the librettos for all his musicals, to Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan who scripted The Producers. Meet Otto Harback, Alan Jay Lerner, Dorothy Fields, Abe Burrows, Peter Stone, George S. Kaufman, Guy Bolton, Dorothy Donnelly, Joseph Fields, Betty Comden, Adolph Green, Arthur Laurents, George Abbot and others. Current and up-and-coming writers like Terrence McNally, Lynn Ahrens, William Finn, and Michael John LaChiusa are also covered. One hundred years of libretto writing are explored as the growth and changes in the Broadway musical are charted through the work of these important writers. Boy Loses Girl presents a whole new perspective for looking at the American musical theater.

For scholars and enthusiasts of the American musical theatre; frequent theater goers.

Thomas S. Hischak is professor of theatre, State University of New York College at Cortland. In 1996 he received the Stanley Drama Award (playwriting) for his screenplay Cold War Comedy. He has published numerous plays and books including The Tin Pan Alley Song Encyclopedia.