Frank Loesser wrote only five musicals that opened on Broadway, yet they established him as a master of the form. He was an innovator who created everything from musical comedy to Broadway opera, a self-taught composer who wrote a surprisingly diverse body of melody, and a lyricist with an unsurpassed ear for the great variety and vitality of American speech. Although Loesser was a native New Yorker, he was also one of the few lyricists who established himself in Hollywood before trying his luck on Broadway.

Frank Henry Loesser, the first son and second child of Henry and Julia Ehrlich Loesser, was born in New York on 29 June 1910. Both parents were nonreligious Jews who prized intellect and high culture. In the 1880s Henry Loesser fled to the United States from Prussia to avoid military service and employment with his family's banking business. He initially worked as a grocer...