Frank Loesser | "Luck Be a Lady Tonight" from Guys and Dolls / 1950

my favorite music theater songs: “luck by a lady”

by Douglas Messerli

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsvApGAhRWA

Frank Loesser, Guys and Dolls / 1950

Performer: Robert Alda, the 1950 original cast recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmEwtWBte84

Frank Loesser, Guys and Dolls / 1950

Performer: Marlon Brando from the 1955 movie

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4ejzGu4KWM

Frank Loesser, Guys and Dolls / 1950

Performer: Peter Gallagher, from the 1992 revival

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxawfxXbmQA

Frank Loesser, Guys and Dolls / 1950

Performer: Frank Sinatra / 1965

 

The gambling hero of Guys and Dolls, Sky Masterson’s, major song, “Luck Be a Lady,” appears quite late in the musical, and even then is sung in the bowels of New York City’s sewers. One might never have imagined that such a rousing prayer to the heavens sung so gloriously at such low depths, both psychically and spiritually. Yet Sky’s bet, matched by almost all of these low-denizen dice-tossers, strangely enough, is primarily an attempt to save their souls, or, at least, to pretend to save their souls by requiring them to attend a spiritual gathering at his would-be lover’s Sergeant Sarah Brown’s Save-a-Soul Mission, a venture that may save her job and redeem Sky’s apparent deception. 

     It is hard to imagine so much “evil” behavior devoted to such absolute “goodness,” but then that’s the true delight of Frank Loesser’s impossible-to-forget song.

     Sky sings not to the gods, but the Lady Luck herself, the goddess to whom he has spent most of his life bowing. This goddess is a lady—or in the lingo of his world, a dame—but of course that “dame,” this time around, psychologically speaking, is a stand-in for a preacher woman, which makes the song even more fun. In the hell of his world (a sewer lit up in garish greens, blues, reds, and purples) he is unconsciously praying to a high authority, human love itself, and in a manner that is strangely enough not very different than a prayer to a deity; after all, the man has spent many years of his life reading the Gideon Bible in cheap hotels.

 

They call you Lady Luck.

But there is room for doubt

At times you have a very unladylike way of running out

You're on this a date with me

The pickings have been lush

And yet before this evening is over you might give me the brush

You might forget your manners

You might refuse to stay and so the best that I can do is pray.

 

A bit like a jealous lover, his “lucky protector” may behave badly, may leave him for other men, or, even more sexually suggestive, blow on their dice.

 

A lady doesn't leave her escort

It isn't fair, it isn't nice

A lady doesn't wander all over the room

And blow on some other guy's dice.

 

So let's keep the party polite

Never get out of my sight

Stick with me baby, I'm the fellow you came in with

Luck be a lady

Luck be a lady

Luck be a lady tonight.

 

    The macho terms of this song demand that his “lady friend” remain loyal to him, no matter what he does. But in his song of prayer, Sky also reveals that he attends to be loyal to his lover, Sarah Brown, a relationship later consummated in a true Broadway marriage. That Lady Luck does remain loyal to him is nearly a miracle, but then, that’s what this musical is entirely about: a series of miraculous transformations that occur in the midst of selfishly bad behavior. Nearly everyone in this marvelously joyful work gets converted in one way or another. Even mobsters join in singing “Hallelujah,” particularly when Nicely Nicely perceives the errors of his ways in another of my favorite songs from the work, “Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat.”

     The original Broadway Sky Masterson, Robert Alda, beautifully sings this ballad of sinful love in a full-voiced rendition that reiterates the macho elements of a song in which a full male chorus joins him. Maybe these underground men may not be so sexually desperate as the more homoerotic male chant of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “There Is Nothing Like a Dame,” but the demanding chants of this song clearly do hint at something similar, even if the “coming out” of which it speaks, is something closer to “moving up” and “going straight.”

 

Stick here, baby, stick here, baby.

Stick with me, baby, I'm the fellow you came in with

Luck be a lady

Luck be a lady

Luck be a lady tonight.

Coming out, coming out, coming out

Right!

 

      Similarly, Frank Sinatra regularly sang this paean to love in a more authoritative, jazzier manner; Sinatra, it has been reported, was more than little disappointed that he was tapped to play Nathan Detroit in the movie version instead of more appealing Sky. And singing this song was clearly his way of taking over the role from Brando.

     In the 1992 Broadway revival, which I saw, Peter Gallagher sang it also quite beautifully and with a zest that the song seems to demand.

     Yet, the quieter-voiced, almost shyly sung Marlon Brando movie version, is my very favorite. Brando sings it almost with a reverent, boyish infatuation that makes you truly believe in his adoration not only with “luck,” but his luck in having found the highly religious Sarah Brown. Now he truly may have someone with who he can discuss the fine differences between Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. And after all, isn’t one of Damon Runyon’s points that every marriage is a kind of gamble. Despite what may seem as an utterly odd pairing, they’re obviously perfect for one another, which this song makes apparent.

 

Los Angeles, August 9, 2017

Reprinted from USTheater, Opera, and Performance (August 2017).